That change came just over twelve months ago with the announcement of a partnership with Microsoft, meaning that going forward, Nokia smartphones would adopt the Windows Phone platform in the hope that Microsoft’s software and Nokia hardware would form a formidable partnership to rival Apple and Google. It is too early to tell if that plan will come to fruition, but Nokia recently took a baby step on the road to recovery after it was announced recently that were the largest vendors of Windows Phone handsets in Q4 of 2011, which represents a positive step for the company but still pales into insignificance when you consider the 0.9 million units were are talking about.
We are getting the news today that Nokia are once again in the business mood with the confirmation that they are about to introduce a new device, the Nokia 808 PureView, which will feature a staggering 41-megapixel camera which is built upon the company’s pixel oversampling technology. The PureView 808 will take over from the Nokia N8 smartphone and will be running the Symbian operating system, but experts are predicting that this could be the last release from Nokia which is built upon the soon to be faded-out OS, with the company shipping Windows Phone devices. If this is indeed Symbian’s swan song, then what a way to go with a camera capable of taking 41-megapixel photographs and bringing satellite imaging to a smartphone.
The PureView smartphone has been unveiled at this year’s Mobile World Conference which is taking place in Barcelona, and although it will showcase on a Symbian powered device, Nokia have confirmed that it does plan to bring the new technology to a new range of phones which will indeed run the Windows Phone OS. Jo Harlow, Executive Vice President of smart devices at Nokia has stated:
We’ve been working on this technology for some time, with the intention to mature and commercialise it to take it across our portfolio. We wanted to make the Pureview 808 recognisable as the best smartphone camera device in the world, and our design team have done a great job accomplishing that.
The fact that the company has mentioned that the PureView 808 is being launched as "confirming our significant short term investments in Symbian" and with the above statement in mind that it will be taken across the Nokia portfolio, is a definite indication that the staggeringimagine technology will soon be seen on Windows Phone devices, something which will encourage users to jump ship from their favored OS and at least give the devices a try.
The new technology which will be featured in the PureView smartphone will not only give users the ability to capture images at 41 megapixels, but allows them to zoom, reframe and crop the images, post shooting, which allows access to previously unseen levels of detail, according to a Nokia statement.
With superior low-light performance and the ability to save in compact file sizes for sharing in email, MMS, and on social networks, the Nokia 808 PureView makes it possible for anyone to capture professional looking images in any conditions.
With full 1080P video playback, lossless zoom and higher quality rich recording, it would seem that the Pureview is definitely here to make a statement and will appeal to photography and media fans who appreciate something that is a little bit different. The smartphone should be available sometime in May of this year with pricing structure yet to be announced.
Dreamt up in a hotel bar in Japan by a couple of Nokia execs, the Nokia 808 Pureview phone has completely stolen MWC with its 41-megapixel sensor. I grabbed some time with Nokia's lead programme manager for imaging, Damian Dinning, to chat about how it's "almost like [they've] just invented time travel, it's that extreme."
Having already confirmed that the company's looking at transferring the imaging capabilities of the 808 Pureview into other Nokia devices (such as Windows Phone 7 handsets), Damian Dinning Nokia's lead programme manager for imaging said "how [they] blend those features in each device may be different, but we'll see the same elements every time."
One question I really wanted to ask - along with many of you, I'm sure - is, "why Symbian?" The technology took five years to get to the point of conception to aaaalmost being ready to hit the market (indeed, Nokia's still fine-tuning its low-light sensor before its May release), but instead of delaying it by another year to propel it onto the best-possible OS within Nokia's reach, Dinning said they just couldn't imagine delaying the technology any longer for its customers, when they can do it today. "I can't rationalise any benefit to delaying it for a further year, just so it can run Windows Phone 7," he said, adding that "if you have something really incredible today, then do it today."
Apart from the fact it's running Symbian (in the Belle OS flavour), an OS Nokia has been oft-rumoured as ditching, there are several more "flaws" I've overheard people pick up on, either on the show-floor or in the comments field of Giz. The thickness of the thing (at its thinnest point, it's 13.9mm, and at the camera lens, it's 17.95mm) is challenging to say the least. The third issue is that it doesn't have an optical zoom, instead leaning once more on digital. Dinning confirmed that they've "been wanting to do a proper zoom for some time, but they haven't been able to do an optical one, because of the size." Adding that "you can increase the size of the optics, but you then end up with a device no-one wants to buy," he said it was back to the drawing-board for the team, which managed to shroud the 808 in absolute secrecy since its original conception - a huge feat in this very leaky age we live in.
It's obvious companies are leaning towards top-notch imaging sensors as being their saviours, with the camera being the crown jewels in the iPhone 4S, Samsung S3 (Soon to be released) and HTC devoting most of its press conference yesterday to its new camera technology in the One series of phones. Dinning cast aside the other manufacturers' efforts, saying "what others have been doing is incremental updates, but no-one's made that step forward to make a real difference."
It's the "pixel-oversampling" technology that Nokia's quick to boast about, lest anyone thinks they just slapped a couple of extra digits on the sensor size, in an obvious ploy to grab headlines. Taking 41-megapixel images and scaling down to 5-megapixels, Dinning told us the chipset retains all the valuable data about a scene, but "throws away the stuff you don't want, like noise and artificial data." Supposedly it excels in low-light because of this pixel-oversampling tech, The company does seem to be very aware that most of its users won't shoot at 41-megapixels, especially given most photos wind up on Facebook nowadays. Within the gallery app, a Facebook logo uploads a picture automatically, at around 2 or 3-megapixels in size. But you can manually switch over to shoot in a 38-megapixel mode, which uses eight pixels for every final pixel (in a 5-megapixel photo anyway), to fold in the kind of crisp details that blew my mind when i saw pictures taken by the phone.
The display, a 4-inch AMOLED, is bright and clear considering its 640 x 360 pixels, and the sample photos shot with the 808 were just incredible. Obviously sending professional photographers to South Africa to take your sample shots makes a world of difference, but I just couldn't believe the level of detail when zooming in on a photo shot at just a 5-megapixel resolution. If our amateur snaps are half as good as the professional sample shots, then I think most people will be happy with the phone's performance.
It seems even the people at Carl Zeiss, which has worked exclusively with Nokia for years on its lenses, are thrilled with the performance of the 808′s camera. Saying that just hearing Carl Zeiss state they were "happy" with a cameraphone would be more than enough for them, but in this instance, they apparently sent Nokia an enthusiastic email saying that "the optics are really good," and even affixed it with a smiley-face emoticon. Quite incongruous for the famously-grumpy Germans, I'm sure you'll agree.
