As widely expected, Nokia today unveiled its Lumia 1020 smartphone at its New York City launch event.  The smartphone’s headlining feature is its 41 megapixel camera — more than three times the megapixels of its nearest phone competitors — namely the Samsung Galaxy S4 and the LG Optimus G Pro.  The Lumia 1020 will launch in the U.S. July 26, exclusively on AT&T.

The Lumia 1020 also has a 4.5-inch AMOLED PureMotion HD+ screen running at 1280 x 768, a 1.5 GHz Qualcomm dual-core processor, 2GB of RAM, and 32GB of internal memory.  Like all previous Lumia phones, the 1020 runs Windows Phone 8 — but with the focus on the camera and other specs — that fact was only mentioned in the last few minutes of the launch event.

The Lumia 1020’s PureView camera uses a 41 megapixel backside illuminated sensor, Xenon flash, and Nokia’s Floating Lens stabilization technology.  For each photo you take, the 1020 captures a 34- or 38-megapixel full-res image, plus a “smaller” 5-megapixel picture for sharing.  You can zoom in up to six times without losing any image quality, because of the camera’s “image oversampling” technology wherein each pixel is composed of up to 7 more pixels captured by the sensor. So if you zoom, then crop or retouch a photo, you’ll still get a new 5-megapixel image.  If you want to keep the full-res photo, you’ll have to connect the phone to your PC.

The Lumia 1020 can record 1080p video at 30 frames per second, and supports rich audio recording, a feature that was first supported by Nokia’s 808 PureView phone.  If you really want to go for a camera look and feel, for $80 you can buy Nokia’s camera grip accessory that snaps on the phone (at right), and has a small integrated battery.

On the software side, Nokia’s including a new Pro Camera app that includes manual focus controls.  The company also revealed a new camera software developer kit (SDK) that lets mobile app developers add camera functions to their apps.

At the launch event, Nokia also announced some major new apps for Windows Phone 8, including Flipboard, Path, Panagraph, SNAPCAM, and Hipstamatic Oggl Pro, which will finally offer some Windows Phone 8 users a way to upload straight to Instagram.

The Lumia 1020 will initially come in yellow, black, and white models.  In the U.S., the phone will initially only be available on AT&T, starting July 26 for $299.99 on a two-year contract.

You can check out some hands-on photos of (and by) the Lumia 1020 on Engadget and The Verge.  For some comparisons with other phones, Cnet lines up the 1020 against the iPhone 5, HTC One and Galaxy S4; while Engadget compares the 1020 to the Lumia 925/920 and 808 PureView.