Mobile World Congress 2012 kicked off in Barcelona this morning, and as you’d expect there have already been dozens of product announcements from the likes of HTC, ZTE, Asus, LG, and Samsung, with many more to follow over the next few days. For the most part, the announcements have been humdrum — some long-awaited Android Ice Cream Sandwich smartphones and tablets, some mid-range phones, some sexyQualcomm S4-based devices — but Nokia surprised us all with the 808 PureView, a smartphone with a 41-megapixel Carl Zeiss-engineered f/2.4 camera on the back.
Nokia, which hasn’t had many high-end design wins in recent years, likes to hold onto the idea that it’s a cameraphone specialist — a position that it originated in 2010 with the 12-megapixel N8, but which has steadily grown untenable since the release of the well-endowed iPhone 4S. With the 808 PureView, Nokia hopes to reclaim its crown — and judging by the sample images below, I’d say the Finns have succeeded.
Click to see the full-size version of an image.
In case you were wondering, the PureView can shoot 1080p video, too — and yes, the video output looks just as good as the still photos. The sample videos are embedded at the bottom of the story.
Now let’s drill down into the specs. The sensor is 41 megapixels in total, but that only works out at 34MP when shooting 16:9 images (7728×4354), or 38MP at 4:3 (7152×5368). These images, stored as JPEG, are around 10 megabytes — too big for everyday use. The camera has a second function that uses 7:1 oversampling to shrink 34 and 38MP down to a very high-fidelity 5-megapixel image; in other words, in this mode, the value from seven pixels is boiled down into one. We can’t find any 5MP sample images, but presumably they should look like the above — just at a lower resolution (2580×2048, or thereabouts). The sensor is around 10x7mm, or 1/1.2″, if you follow the arcane world of optical formats.
So far, so good — but what about the rest of the phone? Unfortunately “cameraphone” is a very accurate moniker here: The 808 PureView is powered by Symbian Belle, has a low-res 640×360 screen, 512MB of RAM, and a single-core 1.3GHz CPU. Symbian Belle is the biggest issue here — assessed on its own merits it’s OK, but when you compare to iOS, Android, or WP7, it’s left wanting. Nokia, speaking to The Verge, says it’s “reasonable to expect” that PureView will make the jump to other platforms, but there’s no mention of when. In all likelihood, the WP7 spec probably doesn’t include the hardware needed to process 41-megapixel images — but maybe Windows Phone 8 will. The 808 will be released in Europe in May and cost around 450 euros.
The main reason the 808 is exciting, though, is that it’s the strongest hint yet that digital photography is about to undergo a massive shake-up. DSLRs aren’t going anywhere at the high end, but in recent years we’ve seen big growth in the mirrorless mid-range market. It is physically impossible for a slimline cameraphone to compete with larger point-and-shoots or interchangeable lens cameras — but obviously, judging by the 41-megapixel images above, cameraphones might soon be good enough that you don’t have to bring a bulkier camera with you.
For the time being, the PureView 808 might only be a hit with photography enthusiasts, but it’s now only a matter of time until you’re shooting these kinds of photos and videos on a top-end smartphone.
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