40 
Forgive our capitals-explosion, but we’re a little shocked right now. Nokia just announced a cameraphone with a 41-megapixel sensor. FORTY-ONE MEGAPIXELS. Naturally Nokia’s sticking with Carl Zeiss lenses, but that 41-megapixel camera can shoot 7728 x 5354 photos in 16:9 format, or if you prefer 4:3, in 7152 x 5368. There’s just one thing: It runs Symbian.
As snappers know though, it’s not just the size of the sensor which counts. Nokia spoke of a feature called “over-sampling” which does something special with the pixels, grouping seven of them together to create one super-pixel, with the GPU processing one billion pixels per second. This basically means you can choose which size to take the photo in, from 5, 8 or 38-megapixel options. If you’re still confused about how this works, let’s hear what the official Nokia blog has to say on the matter:
“The technology means that taking typically sized shots (say, 5 megapixels) the camera can use oversampling to combine up to seven pixels into one “pure” pixel, eliminating the visual noise found on other mobile phone cameras. On top of that, you can zoom in up to 3X without losing any of the details in your shot – and there’s no artificially created pixels in your picture, either.
Otherwise, you can use ‘Creative Shooting Mode’ to capture images at high resolution – 38 megapixels; then reframe, crop and zoom to find the best “picture within the picture” after the image has been shot and before saving it at convenient sizes for sharing and storage.”
Zoom-wise, it can lock in to up to 4x digitally, and if filming any 1080p video, it can zoom right into 3x (or 6x if you downgrade to 720p). Along with being a camera, the 808 Pure View is also the first Nokia phone that can record audio in high-definition, plus has Dolby Digital Plus too.
On the hardware front, we’re looking at a 4-inch ClearBlack AMOLED Gorilla Glass display, with a 1.3GHz processor and 16GB of onboard storage. The microSD card slot is a worthy addition, considering the size of the photos and video you’ll be shooting.
Considering the thickness of the frame, the total weight is listed at only 169g. While Nokia wouldn’t let us hold the device ourselves, it did look light, owing to its (very) plastic build.
On sale in May, for 450 Euros. Suddenly their teaser trailer from last week makes a whole lotta sense. But, err, Symbian?
For more deets about the 808 Pure View, check out Nokia’s release here.
Updating live
Hmmm… It would be pretty revolutionary to fit such a sensor in a phone AND price it at 400-odd quid. The likes of Canon and Nikon would have gone there first of it were true. What we are talking about here is a phone that could potentially compete with the likes of Hasselblad…
I find hard to believe this rumour. Even if it was software, it will have to be some amazingly awesome software.
Where’s the edit button? :-p
Just re-read the article; you did indeed mentioned it is software. Interesting to see what the pictures look like…
Supposedly these are the photos http://cdn.conversations.nokia.com.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Archive2.zip
If you look at the photo info it says f/2.4, ISO-58
These images look impressively detailed!
Have they given up on Windows 8 phones already?
i doubt it haha, i would imagine Microsoft would through a massive wobbler if they tried to put this in a windows phone tho
They made it clear during the conference that this tech would be coming to other platforms… which can only mean it’s coming out on the next Nokia Asha device
…or more likely the next Lumia phones once Windows Phone Apollo comes out.
Great, more pixel spam. Now another load of people are going to believe they’re professional photographers because they have a medium format resolution sensor crammed onto a tiny image chip with some post processing algorithms bolted on the end to try to make it all work. Worthless gimmick at this stage.
Usually I’d agree with you – but the samples show that this sensor and the lens it uses is a beast regardless of the Megapixels you choose to take your photos in. That’s the real news here.
41 megapixels. That’s a big number. The proof of the pudding, as always, shal be in the pictures. Also, seeing as this runs symbian, an OS that everyone thought was dead, should we consider it the world’s first zombie phone?
I must say I love this Zombie idea… maybe they should run with that as the theme of their marketing campagin? Would make it far more appealing.
I can see the add now. Shot in a graveyard, you pass by tombstones until you get to one marked Symbian. You zoom in on that grave. Suddenly a hand bursts out of the ground holding the 808. Now we just need to think up a snappy tagline, maybe something to do with brains?
Symbian?!
“Here’s the new Ferrari. The engine? Yeah we just took that out of a Morris Minor, it’ll do the job.”
Why do Nokia persist in releasing what should be great, innovative products, but cripple them with an OS which hasn’t been relevant since 2006?
To be fair, Windows Phone devices as they stand right now wouldn’t be able to support a sensor like this due to a limitation in place by the Snapdragon processors they’re using. I imagine this would change by the time Apollo comes round. Don’t think any of the competion would have caught up just yet, and perhaps it would mean Nokia has a bit more time to perfect this tech and shave a few inches off from the Lumia device.
I prefer to think of it as like putting a Trent 900 in a Ferrari. Yeah it’s a very powerful operating system that gives the user a lot of choice and control, but it’s probably not the right place for it.
Fair play to them for taking the only thing Symbian was ever good at, camera support, and running with it.
It has 41 actual megapixels as opposed to 41 metaphorical megapixels?
The 41 megapixels are not actual if the phone software is using oversampling of sorts…
Symbian and what sounds like a made up megapixel count, this is already a flop.
I think you have interpolation and oversampling mixed up.
This has 41 actual megapixels (with a maximum output of 38megapixels depending on if you optimise height or width). As you’ll commonly want a much smaller image size by oversampling you can get rid of noise.
No, that’s not it. I’m talking sensor size and you’re talking photograph size. In that context you are, of course, correct. Personally, unless Nokia managed to somehow squeeze a 41 megapixel sensor in a phone for 400 quid,I find the 41 megapixel claim pretty misleading.
Thats what they have done. hence its not misleading.
from http://europe.nokia.com/find-products/devices/nokia-808-pureview/specifications
Camera
41 megapixel camera sensor with Nokia Pureview Pro imaging technology and Carl Zeiss optics
Maybe it is true and Nokia has trumped even the camera manufacturers. I can’t claim to be certain about the sensor, since the thing is not even out yet, but this is not what I read around.
http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/27/why-you-cant-dismiss-nokias-41-megapixel-phone/
“First, the 41 megapixel figure is really misrepresentative, not to say untrue. It doesn’t take 41-megapixel photos in any way, shape, or form.”
There is a lot of doubt in the internets, although everyone is most certainly guessing. Basically, I don’t think anybody has a clue how the thing works yet.
I’m struggling to know what to say to that. It bears no relation to reality. You’ve taken one quote out of context from an article that states it does have a sensor of that size.
I appreciate you may not understand it but please don’t then claim the ‘internets’ (?) don’t
Out of context? I wasn’t planning on pasting the entire article, hence the hyperlink.
Anyway, all I said was that everyone on the “internets” with any kind of analysis on the subject was just guessing. You can say anything you want about whether my post bears no relation to reality but until someone gets hold of the phone, which I assume will happen shortly, nothing you read about it bears any relation to reality, whether it’s coming from me or a “reliable” source. You can choose, of course, to believe anything you read on the internets.
Oh, by the way, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internets
Comedy gold!
Out of context as in a distortion of the quote in its original setting not that you hadn’t posted the entire page.
No one whos had the phone? Apart from all the sites that have had the phone in their hand / shot pictures with it, the detailed manufacturers specifications, the existing body of optical theory….?
Yes I know where it comes from, as taken from your link “to portray the speaker as ignorant about the Internet or about technology”
Are you for real? If you googled at the time of the article you would have seen that very few had the phone in their hands at that point, yet all the blogs and tech sites were talking as if they knew how the thing worked – all based on promo information and random postings in the internet. Hence the “internets” comment, which referred to all these blogs.
Now, a week after this conversation started, things are clearer as these sites have had the phone in their hands. And it turns out that Nokia has indeed managed to squeeze a 41 megapixel sensor in a phone for £400. That’s it.
By the way, those practicing contextomy don’t usually include the original source in their quotes. I’m not a politician, I’m an amateur photographer. And quite frankly, really rather bored.
Can’t reply to below for some reason therfore replying here.
My comments refered to the information that was availble at the time of the article. Again your statement doesn’t match what was actually available if you googled and read fully.
As for not including links to items when practicing contextomy it happens all the time, forget our random musings on an internet comments board, look at articles in the newspapers in an area of your expertise. When I do journal club on papers of interest in the scientific literature its suprisingly common to find references cited that have no bearing on the point they are supposedly supporting.
All the best with the photography.
Still not enough mega-pixels to take a picture of my pen…thouse.
Pics or GTFO.
Why does Nokia appear to have a model village as part of their display?
It could be Nokia’s way of showing off tilt-shift photography with their new phone.
But isn’t tilt shift used to make real pictures look like model shots? Are you suggesting that these pictures were taken high above a real city?
Yes, tilt shift is used to do that.. Maybe it isn’t a model town at all and in fact a lifesize town and everyone at Nokia are giants and the camera is so big as it has to squeeze in 41MP
That is one beast of a camera bulge!
yeah, looks like a phonecamera.
So the 41 ACTUAL megapixels aren’t ACTUALLY 41 megapixels then?
No they are actual thats why its different and says “FORTY-ONE ACTUAL MEGAPIXELS” in Kat’s title for the report