Nokia’s 41 Megapixel Camera Is Not A Gimmick–It’s a Game Changer

When I saw the press release about Nokia’s 41mp sensor on their new 808 Pureview (running Symbian so nothing else to see here) I thought it was a total gimmick. I mean, fine you put a silly number of megapixels and it’s noisy and useless but you made headlines, right? Wrong. There’s two significant things going on here. One is the sensor itself. Unlike most smartphones the sensor they’re using here is a whopping 1 1/2” which is 2.5x larger than the sensor on the Nokia N8. In fact Nokia isn’t pushing this phone as a 41mp shooter. But the standout features here is that you can digitally zoom and have lossless zoom – so you can zoom in 3x for still and 4x for full HD1080p and 6x for 720p HD video. That gives you the benefits you used to need an optical zoom for but without the space and mechanics that are otherwise required. But the phone is set to 5mp at 16:9 for still and 1080p at 30fps for video. So don’t worry about taking 30mb photos. Sometimes that comes in handy but admittedly it’s not practical. The ability to zoom without loss of quality is special though. And when this comes to Windows Phones I’ll gladly take the bulk associated with it to get that shooter on me at all times.

Here’s a simple video showing it off:

To see this in action though you need to check out Engadget where they have real photos you can zoom into and you’ll see the quality that this tech is kicking out. it’s pure madness!

If you’re into crazy specs take a read of Nokia’s whitepaper.