Nokia has today announced the impending launch of its flagship Lumia 1020 Windows Phone in Australia, with the device to be sold through Telstra and Optus.
The Lumia 1020 will be available through Telstra from Tuesday, 17 September, and through Optus from Tuesday, 1 October. Neither network has announced pricing or plans details at the time of writing.
Nokia also confirmed the phone will be sold through "major retailers" across Australia including Harvey Norman, Dick Smith, and Allphones. It will retail for an outright price of $899.
The Lumia 1020 has a 41-megapixel PureView camera, building on the technology first seen on last year's 808 PureView. The camera uses what's called oversampling to combine up to seven pixels into one "pure" pixel when taking typical sized shots (5-megapixels).
According to Nokia, this means it will eliminate the visual noise found on other mobile phone cameras while at the same time allowing you to zoom in up to 6x without losing any detail.
The camera simultaneously takes a 34-megapixel or 38-megapixel high-resolution image, and a 5-megapixel image to share on social networks.
Nokia Australia's managing director, Steve Lewis, says the company believes the Lumia 1020 is "without a doubt" the best imaging smartphone on the market today.
"Every year, Australians take millions of photos with their phones to record important life events. All too often the pictures are grainy, dark or blurry. We want to show people that they no longer have to compromise on image quality.""The Lumia 1020 is without doubt the best imaging smartphone on the market today. We are continuing our commitment to deliver benchmark experiences in photography."
The Lumia 1020 will also debut a new camera app called "Pro Camera". It allows users to manually adjust settings like exposure level, white balance, shutter speed and ISO.
Aside from its camera, the Nokia Lumia 1020 has very similar specifications to both the Lumia 920 and the newer Lumia 925 smartphones, both of which are still sold in Australia.
The device has 2GB of RAM and uses a 4.5in AMOLED screen, but all other internals are almost identical, including a 1.5GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 processor, a 1280x768 resolution display and 32GB of internal memory.
The Lumia 1020 will be available in black, white and yellow colour variants in Australia. Telstra and Optus will only sell the black variant, while Harvey Norman will stock all three colours. Dick Smith and Allphones will sell the black and yellow models.
Nokia also confirmed it will sell the Camera Grip accessory for the Lumia 1020 in Australia for $89.95. Available from October, the Camera Grip clips to the phone and comes with its own 1020mAh battery, a shutter button, and a tripod mount.
The company claims the accessory will give users up to 55 minutes more shoot time. It will be available in black, white and yellow colour variants to match the available Lumia 1020 models.
Nokia will also sell a Qi compatible wireless charging plate that clips to the back of the phone from October. It will retail for $39.95.
