Editor's Letter: The mobile megapixel wars go thermonuclear

In each issue of Distro, editor-in-chief Tim Stevens publishes a wrap-up of the week in news.

Nokia has been teasing a zoomable Windows Phone smartphone for what seems like ages now, and finally it has been revealed. It's the Nokia Lumia 1020, stepping up another 100 over the 920 thanks to the addition of a 41-megapixel, backside-illuminated sensor sitting behind a six-element Zeiss lens. Video capture is 1080p and the cameraphone intriguingly offers full manual control, but it's basically a Lumia 920 beyond that, with a 4.5-inch, 1,280 x 768 display and a 1.5GHz dual-core Snapdragon processor.

So, naturally, the draw is that camera, and while we've seen some promising early results from stills and videos, we're obviously going to have to spend more time with the thing to see if it's worth the considerable dent it will make in your pocket. Admittedly, it's far more pocketable than Samsung's Galaxy S4 Zoom, but it remains to be seen whether megapixels can really sell phones. We'll find out on July 26th, when the phone will be available at AT&T for $300.

Gallery: Nokia Lumia 1020 hands-on

Filed under: Apple, Microsoft, Google

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