No, that is not a typo. At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Nokia today did not have a lot to announce in the high end smartphone space, but did reveal a new Symbian based phone with a massive 41 megapixel sensor. To put that in perspective – Nikon recently unveiled their highest megapixel SLR camera, and that D800 model ships with 36MP camera.
The specs on this new Nokia “PureView” 808 is not half bad either. It runs a 1.3GHz with 512MB of RAM, but is still using the Belle operating system (yes, that is marketing speak for the latest version of Symbian, which is even considered by their CEO as a “burning platform”).
But people will buy this phone for the camera – and here are the specs:
“¢ Carl Zeiss Optics
“¢ Focal length: 8.02mm
“¢ 35mm equivalent focal length: 26mm, 16:9 | 28mm, 4:3
“¢ F-number: f/2.4
“¢ Focus range: 15cm ““ Infinity (throughout the zoom range)
“¢ Construction:
· 5 elements, 1 group.All lens surfaces are aspherical
· One high-index, low-dispersion glass mould lens
· Mechanical shutter with neutral density filter
“¢ Optical format: 1/1.2“
“¢ Total number of pixels: 7728 x 5368
“¢ Pixel Size: 1.4 micron
So far no-one has gotten actual hands on time with the phone (or more specifically the images) , so we cannot really report on whether that monster sensor can actually deliver a massive leap forward in image quality.
If you want a full run down of how this sensor works, go look at the PureView whitepaper. It looks like Nokia is instead using the large resolution as a way to replace optical zoom lenses in cell phone cameras. While the camera is 41MP capable, the defaulty camera mode is 5MP (which is frankly more than enough for most people). This means that instead of using actual optical zoom, the high megapixels allow it to crop a certain part of the image.
So what do you think – do you need a 41MP camera on your phone?
Check the Nokia PureView Whitepaper here.
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