With the launch of the
Nokia Lumia 1020 that features a 41-megapixel camera, on Thursday, Nokia has reinforced its focus on imaging. In addition to its hardware innovations, Nokia has also announced a new Nokia Imaging SDK that allows developers to build apps making use of Nokia smartphones' imaging capabilities and informed that some new popular apps were coming to the Lumia platform.
Makers of popular apps including apps like Hipstamatic, Path, Vyclone, SNAPCAM, Panagraph, Yelp, CNN and Foursquare, are already building apps for Nokia Lumia phones based on the new SDK.
According to Nokia, the Nokia Imaging SDK incorporates the same technology that the company uses for its own imaging apps, including Smart Camera and Creative Studio.
The SDK allows developers to integrate advanced imaging experiences in their apps for Nokia Lumia smartphones, and includes features related to applying or creating filters, adding effects and adjustments to images, and other personalisation settings.
The SDK comes with over 50 effects, filters and enhancements and includes Nokia's Random Access JPEG technology allowing developers to more efficiently manipulate image data.
In addition to the SDK, Nokia also announced that popular apps such as Path - a mobile focused personal social network, Flipboard- a personalised mobile magazine that pulls feeds from news and social services, Vine - Twitter's short video sharing service, Vyclone - a social video platform, Snapcam - a photo app that helps build photo stories of life events and Hipstamatic Oggl PRO- a camera app that offers advanced features, among others. No specific dates have been announced for the release of these apps on the platform, though.
One big name still missing from the list is of Instagram, the popular mobile focused image sharing service that allows users to post images and videos employing the use of fancy effects. Although, there are some third party apps available for the service, they come with a few limitations. Nokia has even been running a campaign called #2instawithlove and even launched an app with the same name to show Instagram how passionate the Windows Phone community was about the service. But it seems Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, is not sure if its ready to hit the platform, yet.
"Now more than ever, people are using their smartphones to shoot, edit and share pictures," said Marco Argenti, Senior Vice President, Nokia Developer. "With the Nokia Lumia 1020, we are delivering an industry-leading imaging experience that takes people closer to the details that really matter. We've collaborated closely with Microsoft and top developers around the world to deliver unique app experiences, pushing the boundaries of innovation with our ecosystem."
With popular apps making their way to Windows Phone, some being exclusive to Nokia Lumia smartphones, the Finnish giant can look forward to covering the gap when it comes to apps. The lack of popular apps is one major pain point for the platform, at this time.
Nokia is targeting users looking for good imaging experiences from their smartphones for quite some time. It
launched the Lumia 1020 just a day back, that boasts of the "ability to produce some of the sharpest images possible by any digital camera." The Windows Phone 8 powered phone, which is the successor to Nokia's much acclaimed camera focused Symbian Smartphone the 808 Pureview, has six physical lenses and optical image stabilization, and can handle sound pressure levels six times louder than conventional smartphone microphones.