Nokia today announced the Nokia 808 PureView, a new smartphone that boasts a 41-megapixel camera sensor, with Carl Zeiss optics and new pixel oversampling technology. What many might find discouraging is that this photographic stand out comes running Nokia’s antiquated Symbian operating system.
The company unveiled the 808 PureView at Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, Spain.
The PureView raises the bar for mobile camera technology, with one of the largest sensors ever placed in a mobile phone. At standard resolutions (2/3, 5 and 8 megapixels) the 808 PureView can zoom with almost no loss of picture clarity. At high-resolution (38 megapixel maximum) the device has the ability to capture an image, then zoom, reframe, crop and resize afterwards to expose previously unseen levels of details.
The 808 PureView also includes full HD 1080p video recording and playback with 4X lossless zoom, as well as the use of “Nokia Rich Recording, which enables audio recording at CD-like levels of quality.
“Nokia PureView imaging technology sets a new industry standard by whatever measure you use,” said Jo Harlow, executive vice president of Nokia Smart Devices, in a statement. “People will inevitably focus on the 41 megapixel sensor, but the real quantum leap is how the pixels are used to deliver breath-taking image quality at any resolution and the freedom it provides to choose the story you want to tell.”
Nokia did not release specific availability or pricing information for the 808 PureView.
Along with the 808, Nokia also introduce the Lumia 610, a low-end Windows Phone smartphone. The phone features and an 800 MHz processor and comes running Windows Phone 7.5.
Nokia says the Lumia 610 was made possible because of a new software release from Microsoft, which allows the company to deliver enhanced capabilities to the Windows Phone 7.5 platform. The software release, available in April, optimizes Windows Phone to support lower memory and processor requirements, while still delivering the same experience for more affordable products.
In addition, Windows Phone will now include the network and language requirements for China. As a result, Nokia announced plans to make a range of Lumia smartphones available in China, covering both CDMA and WCDMA technologies, in the coming months.
Check out the video teaser for the 808 PureView that Nokia released last week: