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Nokia PureView with 41 megapixel
  • Nokia announced new PureView 808 smartphone today at Barcelona with 41 megapixel sensor. Phone is based on Symbian os. But 41 megapixel !!!!

  • 30 Replies sorted by
  • Its oversampled. So they have a 6mp sensor and extrapolate 41mp from it.

  • @zcream

    You are tottaly wrong. That sensor is for reall. If you are i phone user i understand your comment. Please give me evidense, hardware specs. What you do not have.

  • A camera with that many megapixels is totally obsolete in a phone, it just doesn't make sense or is there any case of use that I can't think off right now? You only need that many megapixels for giant posters etc.

    The iPhone-bashing is quite funny since the iPhone 4 had one of the best quality cameras among its competitors even though there were phones with higher mega pixel counts out there at the time. See this Macworld ranking for comparison: http://cdn.macrumors.com/article/2010/06/25/151916-macworld_camera_rankings.jpg

    This seems to be just another step in the ridiculous direction of an unnecessarily high megapixel count in spite of a decrease in quality and the waste of digital storage.

  • "Nokia has clarified to say that you are able to take true 38- and 35-megapixel photos with the 808 PureView. It's just that their pixel-level quality will pretty much suck, with Nokia admitting that it added those options as a sort of creative mode more than anything else. To get the real quality, you'll want to benefit from the oversampling technique and downsize to 3-, 5- or 8-megapixel shots."

    http://www.theverge.com/2012/2/27/2827158/nokia-808-pureview-launch-pictures-video-preview

  • LOL:

    "The phone says "41 Megapixels" on the back. Nokia EVP Jo Harlow said at its native resolution, it captures 38 megapixel images, that Nokia says are 7,152 by 5,368 resolution. When I looked at one of the images in the file manager, it was only 5.2MB." (good for a phone though - but not a camera)

    This is NOT 41 or 38 megapixels of information.

  • Looks pretty good to me. PureView uses 7 pixels to create one super pixel. This way it's possible to get rid of noise, which is one of the worst problems with phone cameras. image image image

    n0.jpg
    769 x 1024 - 392K
    n1.jpg
    1024 x 769 - 299K
    n3.jpg
    1024 x 577 - 159K
  • Actually, I was surprised that even at full resolution, the images aren't terrible... http://cdn.conversations.nokia.com.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Archive2.zip

    1/1.2 is actually quite a large sensor, even for compact cameras.

    Downsampled to 5MP or whatever they should be great.

    I like that you have the choice of keeping the full resolution file, for cropping/resizing later, even in phone.

    Here's a whitepaper/marketing on the technology: http://europe.nokia.com/PRODUCT_METADATA_0/Products/Phones/8000-series/808/Nokia808PureView_Whitepaper.pdf

  • These samples look fantastic!!

  • It's also about picture/video, but audio quality too. I'm very impressed, check the video found here: http://wmpoweruser.com/nokia-explains-rich-recording-the-new-audio-tech-in-smartphones/

  • Sorry about my iphone comment (i had bad day in work. i work in Apple) New Nokia uses 7 pixels to produse one perfect pixel. This is to remove noise from pictures. In this mode cam is about 5 mp,but it is possible to chage mode so that cam produse 38 mp pictures. Sensor is really 41 mp. Also video and sound is awesome. Bad thing is that video seems to bee only 30 fps. Also Symbian os strts to bee quite old.

  • Too bad about it being Symbian. That OS is yesteryears and support will end soon. It doesn't matter how "great" you think Symbian is. Would buy that phone if it ran Windows Phone, though.

  • I am not fan of any brand or os. I use phone to call. But when looking shooting places i have found phones camera and gps werry handy.

  • I had a N8 for a short time. Nice camera and phone, but I also use email, and that app was flaky. Couldn't retrieve some of my email, whatever I tried. Just wouldn't download. Many people have the same problem on Symbian. I had no problems with Android, iOS, etc. If this 808 had any other OS it would be my next phone. I have no brand loyalty, but I do have foolproof loyalty.

  • @John_Farragut

    I know. New camera tech will come to new win nokias. Do not know when. Maby some competitor make it faster. Lets see. BTW also sound is awsome in 808. Mic can handel eaven 140 db.

  • @tonalt

    Comparison is just horrible.

  • @Vitaliy_Kiselev The only one I have seen.

  • Lets wait some good comparison. It will come eventualy.

  • wow, I'm amaze by this phone. Look at this video, in 1080p. The quality is amazing, the sharpness and details are better than on my GF2 ... And the zoom works very well. Only problem I see is camera shake.

  • Some explanation: And it has real 41 mpix!! If it had android I wanted this phone very bad :-) Symbian sucks!

  • @Vitaliy_Kiselev

    "Comparison is just horrible."

    Let me disagree. When fully zoomed in in playback mode, it IS possible to reliably assess the sharpness of a camera, as one source pixel is rendered by one screen pixel, and with a sufficiently good, high-resolution camera, you can safely reproduce these screen pixels. (Incidentally, this is why I've "only" gone for sharpness tests and not for example dynamic range or vignetting, which would indeed have been impossible to correctly render on the screen of the phone).

    After all, if a certain text shot from a certain distance with a certain FoV is readable on the screen of one camera (the 808), while absolutely unreadable (Nikon P300 comparisons from a bit more distance) or much-much worse (Pana ZS3 comparisons from a bit closer distance), it certainly gives you a lot of information on which of the two cameras are better.

    BTW, I’ve been told the same at the DPReview forums. See my (similar) explanation and the resulting discussion in the “Nokia 808 Pureview – 41mp downsampling sensor” thread in the “Phone Cameras / Tablets & Apps Forum” forum there. (I don’t provide a direct link as I want my post to become visible ASAP.)

    Finally, let me point out again that this was the only way of delivering ANY tangible and reproducible IQ report of the camera. The Nokia staff have strictly forbidden any kind of Bluetooth transfers - there simply wasn't any other (legal) way of getting those images off those 808's. All the other phone manufacturers let me transfer via BT from their new handsets (I've explicitly asked permission with all of them.)

  • Hi guys,

    I had a chance to experience with a Nokia 808 ( intercut with panasonic GH2 )

    the result is an easy video "Karen"

    the video is online at;

    transcoded to 5d2rgb, the footage looks great!