Back in July more than 1,000 ideas targeting the sophisticated imaging technology of the Nokia Lumia 1020 were submitted to the Nokia Capture competition from developers all over the world. Out of that massive pool of ideas, 10 teams were invited to travel to Lund, Sweden this past weekend to take part in a 27-hour Hackathon where they could transform those ideas into working Windows Phone apps.

With new Nokia Lumia 1020s in their hands – and the full support of experts from Nokia’s imaging team onsite – the 10 teams (including four teams of two people each, and six individuals competing on their own) set out on Saturday morning to build what they hoped would be the winning app. The teams varied widely in their backgrounds and skill levels, ranging from students to more experienced developers.

From the moment the clock started ticking down, all of the competitors worked straight through to the last remaining seconds of the Hackathon – sleep was not on the to-do list.

By the end of the Hackathon, all 10 teams turned in working demos of their new Windows Phone apps, and needless to say, the judges were extremely impressed by the high level of quality and ingenuity that went into all of the projects.

“All of these teams truly raised the bar when it comes to the power of imaging apps for use with Nokia Lumia camera phones,” said Sami Pippuri, Director, Lumia Developer Offering Product Management.

And the winners are …

The winners of the Capture Hackathon are Rudi Chen and Shida Li (pictured left and right below), friends and students from the University at Waterloo in Canada, for their “Smart Resizing” app (the image at the top of this story shows a sample). 

According to Rudi’s pre-contest interview posted on Nokia Developer, the Hackathon was the “perfect occasion” to try to implement this idea, and clearly it worked like a charm.

Without giving away any secrets, the idea of the Smart Resizing app is to “downsample” an image so that empty space between the more important parts of a picture can be edited or removed, and the rest of the image is maintained.

The first runner-up in the contest is UK-based Jason Podwojski for his app called “Social Scene”; and the second runner-up is Matt Cavanagh (from South Africa) for his yet-to-be-named remote control app.

We cannot share a lot of detail about the winning apps and other hackathon apps just yet, in part because we are helping the developers to protect their intellectual property.

See what you missed at the Hackathon

You can begin to get an idea about the new apps that were developed for the Nokia Lumia 1020 by watching this video that was shot at the Hackathon:

All four Hackathon finalists received new Nokia Lumia 1020s to take home, and additional prizes are forthcoming.

“Naturally, we’re looking forward to helping take these apps to the next level, and seeing them available for consumers to download from the Windows Phone Store,” said Sami Niemi, Director, Capture and Relive Lund.

What will be created next?

Stay tuned to Nokia Conversations for new contest information coming very soon.