Nokia 808 Pure View Phone with 41-Megapixel Camera

Nokia 808 Pure View Phone Has a 41-Megapixel Camera. FORTY-ONE ACTUAL MEGAPIXELS.

Nokia has announced a new smartphone, the 808 PureView, which has an unprecedented 41-megapixel camera and is expected to launch in Europe in May.

The €450 device, however, which was announced at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, runs on software that Nokia is phasing out in favour of Windows Phone. 

Mary McDowell, the firm’s executive vice president for mobile phones, said that the firm’s engineers had been working on the product “for years”.

She said it was “natural” to assume that its technology would be used in other Nokia products in the future, although she declined to be drawn specifically on whether it was “when or if” the company would produce a Windows Phone with such imaging capabilities.

At 41mp, the phone is able to shoot images that Nokia claims can be printed at “poster size”. Files, however, condense four or five pixels into one, and Nokia claims they are smaller than equivalent products from rivals. A Carl Zeiss lens shoots in continuous focus HD video, at 1080p. 

The 808 uses the Symbian platform, which Chief Executive Steven Elop described as “burning” before he changed the company’s strategy to use Microsoft’s rival software. In developing markets, however, Symbian remains popular, and Ms McDowell said the device built on Nokia’s existing global reputation for “excellent imaging technology”.

She added that while the device was larger than its rivals, it was still sized to fit in pockets, rather than replace a full-size camera.

The device uses a 1.3GHz processor, comes with 16GB of storage and runs a 4" screen at 360 x 640, which is below HD resolution.

Nokia also announced that it was expanding its range of Windows Phone devices for Europe. The Lumia 900, currently available be America, will be launched in a UK variant, and the 610 will be the cheapest Windows Phone device on the market.