Nokia’s PureView camera technology captured the hearts of the tech bloggers at Mobile World Congress last week. The camera technology featured in Nokia PureView results in images far better than we’ve ever seen in a camera phone, especially in the standard 5 to 8 megapixel output modes that occur when PureView mode is engaged.
Interestingly, Nokia chose to show off their 41-megapixel sensor in a Symbian phone, leaving many to wonder when this technology would make its way into the slightly-more-relevant Windows Phone platform. According to Nokia’s Senior Vice President Jo Harlow, the technology will be coming to the Lumia family in the not-too-distant future, though no firm date was given at this time.
While we’re certainly excited to finally see cell phone cameras finally able to replace carrying a point and shoot, our own Stefan Constantinescu suggests that the 41 megapixel camera adds a significant amount of thickness to the device. The Nokia PureView 808 device on display in Barcelona was a hefty 18 millimeters thick, about double the thickness of most devices hitting the market today. When it comes to smartphones, thin is definitely in, and we hope Nokia is able to figure out a way to slim down the sensor before PureView makes its way to more devices, perhaps taking Stefan’s suggestion of using an 8-24 megapixel camera which scales down to 1-3 megapixel images when PureView mode is enabled.
Depending on what Mrs. Harlow’s definition of not-too-distant future is, we should start seeing PureView make its way into Windows Phone devices sometime in 2012, perhaps in Q4 when we start to see Windows Phone 8 Apollo devices hit the market.