The Nokia Pureview 808 is an average smartphone with a plethora of ordinary features except for one: it has a 41MP Carl Zeiss lens. Photography enthusiasts can rejoice because it’s now available for pre-order on Amazon UK.
Now hold on just a second. Is this thing really capable of snapping photos with a 41 megapixel resolution? If you look closely at Nokia’s advertising, it says that the Pureview 808 has astounding 41MP “image quality.” This means that the photos it does take have quality comparable to a 41MP photo, but in a nutshell, no it does not take 41MP photos.
In certain modes there are options for 35MP and 38MP shots, but the real magic happens in standard Pureview mode. The phone quickly takes a 41MP photo, but then shrinks it down to about 5MP for the final result. In doing so, it’s packing around 7 different pixels into an ultra high-quality pixel free of noise or error. When all these “super” pixels are combined to create the photo, while in reality the size is far less than 41MP, the quality of the photo ends up being phenomenal.
Even though that’s the clear selling point of the Pureview 808, it’s worth mentioning the phone’s specs too. It has a pretty crappy 640×360 4-inch display, runs on the mediocre Symbian OS, holds 16GB of internal storage, and comes in white, red, or black (but Amazon UK only has black available for pre-order.) The bottom line is if you’re going to buy this phone, it’s probably going to be strictly for the awesome Pureview imaging technology.
Pre-orders for the Nokia Pureview 808 are selling on Amazon UK for £499.98, or about $775. The phone will officially be released on June 21, 2012.
