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State of the Art: The Lumia 1020, a Great Camera Grafted to an Oddball Phone

August 14, 2013 by

The mediocrity of cellphone pictures hasn’t stopped us from hitting our phone’s shutter button, of course. Every year, we take billions of photos with our phones, often choosing them over powerful cameras to record even important life events. The cellphone’s handiness seems to excuse a long list of photographic disappointments: feeble sensors, no zoom, no real flash, no ability to freeze action and heartbreaking low-light graininess.

Well, good news: Little by little, the world’s electronics companies are finally turning their attention to this problem. Some of them try to graft cellphones onto cameras; others try to jam real cameras onto cellphones.

Nokia has taken the latter approach with its new Lumia 1020 cellphone ($300 with a two-year ATT contract, $660 without). It’s a huge Windows Phone 8 phone with an absolutely amazing camera.

Now, Nokia says that this phone has a 41-megapixel camera. But if you think megapixels equal picture quality, you’ll be sorely disappointed, both in this camera and any other.

The megapixel count really means very little. There have been 2-megapixel cameras that took wonderful photos, and 20-megapixel cameras that took terrible ones. A high megapixel count is primarily a marketing gimmick.

And in any case, any picture you send wirelessly from this phone — by e-mail, text message, Facebook, Twitter or whatever — is actually a five-megapixel shot. Which, again, doesn’t mean anything good or bad; five is plenty even for a big printout. (The only way to get the full-resolution originals off the phone is to connect the phone to a Mac or PC with a USB cable.)

The high megapixel count is useful in exactly one situation: when you want to crop out much of the scene. If you’re starting with 41 megapixels, you can throw away a lot of a photo and still have enough resolution for a big print. The phone’s Pro Cam app is made for just that: it lets you create photos from a piece of a larger scene.

In total, the 41-megapixel business is a lot of hot air. What Nokia should really be bubbling about instead is the superiority of this camera’s sensor — its digital film. Compared with the sensors in most phones, this one is huge and especially light sensitive.

You’ve never seen, or even contemplated, photos this good from a phone. They really are spectacular. (See for yourself in the slide show that accompanies this column online.)

Most of the time, the photos are just as good as what you’d get from a $300 pocket camera (you know, the kind that doesn’t also make phone calls). Often, they’re better. The low-light shots seem like they came from some kind of “Mission: Impossible” spy gear. And if the subject is close to the lens, the background melts into a delicious blurriness, just as in professional portraits.

Sometimes, though, the photos are worse. Shutter lag (a delay after you press the shutter button) is a problem. There can be distortion at the outer edges of the frame. Some photos are a little “soft.”

Furthermore, even this cameraphone doesn’t have a true zoom; a three-inch telescoping lens would probably be uncomfortable in your palm when you’re on a call. Instead, it has a 3X digital zoom: slide your finger up the screen to magnify the scene. You’re not really zooming at all, of course — just cropping into a smaller area — but it works well enough.

On most cameras, what you get by way of a flash is really just an LED lamp that momentarily lights up for short-range illumination. On this one, you get an actual flash — a mini strobe that works much better. Like most Windows Phone devices, this one has a physical shutter button on the edge, too, so it feels like you’re holding a real camera. (For $80, you can buy a “camera grip” that adds an extra battery, a more convenient handle and a tripod socket.)

The 1020 also has a superb image stabilizer that comes in handy for videos. This phone’s videos really are something: stable, bright, 1080p high definition with crisp stereo sound.

E-mail: pogue@nytimes.com

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: August 14, 2013

An earlier version of this article misidentified an app for the Lumia 1020 phone that allows the creation of photos from a piece of a larger scene. It is Pro Cam, not Smart Cam. The article also included one app incorrectly in a listing of those missing from the phone. There is indeed a Dropbox app.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/15/technology/personaltech/lumia-1020-a-great-camera-grafted-to-an-oddball-phone.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Global Business Tagged With: , ,

Wall St. Opens Lower After Worldwide Slump

May 23, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Following market declines around the world, Wall Street opened lower on Thursday after investors were rattled by signs of a slowdown in Chinese manufacturing and a potential easing of central bank support for the economy.

The worst drop in share prices was seen in Tokyo, where the Nikkei index fell 7.3 percent, the most since the 2011 tsunami there. In New York, the benchmark Standard Poor’s 500-stock index was down 0.9 percent in early trading. Leading indexes were down 2.6 percent in Germany and 2.5 percent in France.

The pessimism that overtook investors on Thursday was a sharp reversal from months of steady advances in share prices around the world. Many investors had voiced concern that the rally was due for a break, but it had not been clear what would serve as a catalyst for a downturn.

The dip began on Wednesday afternoon, after Ben S. Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, testified before Congress that the Fed could pull back on its monetary stimulus programs if the economy continues to show progress. Later on, an index of Chinese manufacturing showed that activity actually slowed down in May for the first time in months.

China’s slowing momentum has been long in the making and is, to some extent, deliberately engineered by the authorities in Beijing, who are trying to bring about a more balanced pace of growth. Still, disappointments over the performance of China’s economy – the second-largest in the world after the United States – remain liable to unsettle markets not just in Asia but around the globe.

The response was particularly stark in Japan, which is in the early stages of an aggressive government effort to prop up the long-suffering economy. High hopes that the bold economic policies of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will succeed have prompted a huge rally in stocks since November. The Japanese market is still up nearly 40 percent since the start of the year.

Akira Amari, Japan’s economy minister, sought to calm nerves after the market closed Thursday. “The Japanese economy is staging a sound recovery, and there is no need for panic,” he said, according to the Nikkei business daily. The plunge “is not exceedingly large, and stock prices in China, where the shock originated, have not fallen so much either,” he added.

“The stock market’s rise has so far been largely driven by expectations of an economic turnaround, but we’ve yet to see Mr. Abe’s policies really gain traction,” said Kiyoshi Yoshimoto, chief senior economist at the Japan Research Institute in Tokyo. “That means even small shocks, like lower-than-expected numbers out of China or some volatility in bond markets, can trigger a big but temporary response.”

Analysts have broadly welcomed Mr. Abe’s efforts to breathe life into the Japanese economy through a three-pronged approach of major fiscal spending, a promise to pursue structural reforms and a monetary policy that has effectively flooded the economy with cheap money through purchases of government bonds, commercial debt and other assets.

One result has been a weakening of the yen, whose 17 percent drop against the dollar since the start of this year has helped lift the earnings prospects of many Japanese exporters. Data released in the last few weeks have shown that the economy has begun to pick up speed.

Taking many market observers by surprise, however, bond yields have risen in recent days, fanning worries about a rising interest rate burden for the government. The yield on the 10-year Japanese government bond briefly spiked above 1 percent Thursday before dropping back to 0.9 percent. The move spooked investors, helping produce the fall in the stock markets, said Stephen Davies, chief executive of Javelin Wealth Management in Singapore.

Japan is vulnerable to rising borrowing costs because of its high public debt, which is twice the size of its economy. Bonds are also the main financial assets held by banks, pension funds and insurance companies, making a surge in debt yields perilous. Given the indebtedness of the Japanese government, there are worries about the impact that this could have if sustained, Mr. Davies said. “It is too early to say whether it will be sustained, so we should not read too much into one day’s extreme move in the markets.”

The sell-off Thursday came in spite of economic news from Europe that was, if not good, at least better than many expected. The Markit Economics euro zone purchasing managers’ index for the manufacturing sector rose to 47.8 points from 46.7, while the services index rose to 47.5 from 47. While a number below 50 indicates continued contraction, the improvement suggests the economy may be getting nearer to its nadir, setting up conditions for a rebound in the second half.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/24/business/daily-stock-market-activity.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Global Business Tagged With: , ,

Apple May Be Aiming to Makeover TV Next

October 7, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Under Mr. Jobs, Apple dipped its toe only slightly into the television business with Apple TV, a set-top box for accessing Internet video. That product has been one of the rare disappointments in its lineup, especially when compared with smashes like the iPhone and iPad.

But many in the tech industry contend that television is ripe for technological makeover, and that the next big challenge for Apple, after the death of Mr. Jobs, is likely to be in that area.

“It’s the big area they haven’t colonized,” said James McQuivey, an analyst at Forrester Research. “It’s the thing we spend more of our time on than sleep.” 

In the meantime, companies like Microsoft have started to take a stronger leadership role in helping to push the technology of television forward, as Apple did in areas like music and mobile phones.

Television is such a tantalizing target in part because people spend so many hours watching it, but also because the industry over all has been slow to innovate except perhaps in making screens larger. In particular, the consuming public is still waiting for television content — everything that people watch — to be delivered over the Internet in a convenient, affordable package on all the devices people are now using.

One big reason for Apple’s failure to gain traction in television is that Apple TV has not had a compelling source of television and movie content that allows the product to stand out. Although the company’s iTunes store is stocked with many popular shows like “Glee” and “Sons of Anarchy,” network and movie studio executives have hesitated to make all of their content widely available at attractive prices, in large part over concerns about angering cable companies, a big source of their revenue, and their pipeline into living rooms.

In August, Apple discontinued an iTunes rental service that allowed viewers to rent television episodes for 99 cents through the store for watching on devices like Apple TV, saying that consumers were not as interested in renting episodes as in buying them.

Last year, talks between Apple and television executives, including NBCUniversal, Viacom and Discovery, stalled over a plan to license their programs for an Internet subscription service akin to Netflix and Hulu Plus, according to executives briefed on talks.

The cold shoulder to Apple from television executives is a stark contrast to the success Mr. Jobs had in wooing the music companies when the iTunes Store was begun eight years ago. At the time, Mr. Jobs used his personal charisma to persuade record executives to let Apple sell songs for 99 cents each through iTunes. It also helped him that the iPod hadn’t yet turned into a blockbuster product.

The subsequent explosion in sales of 99-cent digital singles on iTunes further eroded compact disc sales, many music executives say. Television executives were determined to avoid the same experience. “It didn’t work in TV and movies precisely because it did in music,” said Mr. McQuivey of Forrester Research.

Mr. Jobs himself often downplayed Apple TV’s impact on the market. While he used lofty words like “magical” to describe the iPad, Mr. Jobs on more than one occasion referred to the $99 Apple TV as a “hobby” for Apple because of its lackluster sales. Analysts estimate the company has sold about two million of the devices. It has sold nearly 29 million iPads since the product was introduced in the spring of 2010.

In an on-stage interview last year at the D: All Things Digital conference, Mr. Jobs further expounded on his pessimism about the market by saying that it was hard to sell innovative television devices like Apple TV to consumers, when cable companies give their customers a set-top box for little or no cost upfront. “That pretty much squashes any opportunity for innovation because nobody’s willing to buy a set-top box,” he said.

In the meantime, one of Apple’s rivals, Microsoft, announced a major new push into the television business on Wednesday, before the announcement of Mr. Jobs’s death. The company said it was entering a partnership with nearly 40 television providers, including Bravo, Comcast, HBO and Verizon FiOS, that will allow the 35 million members of its Xbox Live online service to watch mainstream cable programming through Microsoft’s game console.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=fb8492915959e2b5b38d6c7c3263690a

Filed Under: Business News Tagged With: , ,

Profit Lag May Dampen Stock Rally

July 5, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Stocks have seesawed much of this year as investors worried about higher commodity prices, the Japanese tsunami’s impact on global supply lines and Europe’s debt crisis.

Now a string of second-quarter corporate earnings announcements due over the next few weeks could confirm that companies are beginning to have a harder time.

Higher gas prices are soaking up already weak consumer spending, banks are struggling and labor costs may be starting to pick up, squeezing business’s profit margins meaningfully for the first time.

All of that could spell more trouble for the stock market. Stocks rallied sharply last week after the Greek Parliament passed austerity measures. But some analysts question how long the rally will last. If it does not endure, it could complicate the economic picture as these two pistons of the already sputtering economy, profits and the stock market, fire less powerfully.

“For the first time in this economic cycle, there is going to be a fair number of disappointments,” said Doug Cliggott, an analyst at Credit Suisse, referring to the earnings reports. “The economy is going to be without those drivers.”

Europe’s debt crisis may be far from over. Standard Poor’s, the credit rating agency, said on Monday that a plan promoted by France for French and German banks to roll over their large holdings of Greek government debt would in fact amount to a default by Greece, raising questions about how the indebted nation could qualify for a much-needed second bailout.

On the other hand, some analysts are predicting a relatively rosy United States profits season that belies the continued grim domestic economic news. They think companies will do well, since consumers have made some progress in trimming their debt and may be prepared to start spending again. Energy prices have at least stopped going up.

“We are going to get good news out of the corporate sector and markets can move higher,” said Jack Caffrey, equity strategist at J.P. Morgan.

The 5.4 percent jump in the Dow Jones industrial average last week, in one of its strongest weeks in two years, seemed to support that optimism.

Already some investment professionals are predicting that the Standard Poor’s 500-stock index may be back at 1,400 or higher by year-end, if not sooner; it closed at 1,339.67 on Friday. Some are making comparisons with last year, when after a few rocky months markets touched lows in the first week of July — and soared for most of the rest of the year.

“With the exception of the bust of late 2008/early 2009, U.S. stocks are now the cheapest they have been in 20 years,” Steve Sjuggerud, editor of True Wealth, an investment newsletter, wrote in June. He forecasts that the S.P. 500 will be back at 1,450 by year’s end.

But the bears believe that optimism is overdone.

In addition to Europe’s troubles, they point to continued poor United States economic numbers.

Last month the Federal Reserve revised its expectations for economic growth down to a range of 2.7 percent to 2.9 percent, from 3.1 percent to 3.3 percent in April. Many independent economists are more pessimistic. There is a risk that the economy will struggle further from budget and job cuts at the local and state levels, and even at the federal level, depending on the debate about the debt ceiling.

A further drag could be the end of the Fed’s $600 billion asset buying program, which had been buoying stocks since last fall.

Companies had been socking away profits by, among other things, keeping down labor costs and increasing productivity, but their profit margins may now be squeezed as both their unit wage costs and investment spending begin to rise.

Credit Suisse expects the stock market to end the year below its current level, with the S.P. 500 at about 1,275.

“Analysts are expecting blockbuster earnings numbers, but I am not so sure,” said Jeffrey Kleintop, chief market strategist at LPL Financial. “We have a defensive strategy.”

Mr. Kleintop said corporate leaders would most likely reduce their earnings guidance for the second half of this year when they announce their results for the second quarter.

The early earnings reports have been mixed. FedEx reported net income up 33 percent for its fourth quarter, which ended May 31, compared with the same quarter a year earlier — heartening the bulls who see the company as a good bellwether for the rest of the economy.

Frederick W. Smith, FedEx’s chairman, said in a conference call with analysts that the economy had been through a brief soft patch.

Eric Dash contributed reporting.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=3a9f7bcb75c275454e43d03704829ff7

Filed Under: Economy News Tagged With: , ,