Nokia has said that it will begin rolling out its Symbian-powered Nokia 808 PureView to “select markets” in May, initially launching the 41-megapixel handset in Russian and Indian markets.
Having been unveiled in this year’s Mobile World Congress, the 808 Pureview won awards for its impressive optics and ability to capture incredible amounts of detail in its photos.
The company noted at the time that it would look to launch the device as soon as possible but it has today confirmed that it will be available in two of its most popular markets from this month.
The device sports a 4-inch 16:9 nHD (640 x 360 pixels) AMOLED screen, 1.3GHz single-core SoC, 512MB of RAM and 16GB of internal memory. However, the Nokia 808 PureView is obviously going to attract attention for its high-resolution 41-megapixel sensor with Carl Zeiss optics and its ‘new pixel oversampling technology.’
The 808 allows you to choose from different camera modes to get the best from your photos, whether it’s snapping a 38-megapixel shot (the maximum it will go) and resizing it to find detailed elements within the image, or choosing the standard 3-megapixel, 5-megapixel or 8-megapixel option and utilising the PureView technology to condense seven pixels into one for super sharp images.
The same PureView technology helps make the best of low-light conditions, working to keep the 808′s 1080p HD videos as clear as possible.
While the camera does pack 41 million pixel capturing elements, Nokia doesn’t recommend you use all of those at once. Instead, it says (PDF link) that 5 megapixels is more than enough. The phone uses the extra pixels in the sensor to ‘distill’ images down, using the information from 7 elements to deliver one pixel. This, Nokia says, allows it to deliver ‘lossless zoom’ of up to 3x for stills and better quality pictures at substantially lower resolution than the maximum available.
Recently, the company launched a new marketing campaign, sharing a new promo video on its YouTube account that was created using video and image stills taken using the smartphone itself.
Nokia is said to be working to incorporate its PureView technology into its future Windows Phone smartphones, expanding the capabilities of its Lumia range. However, the company has not commented on when we can expect such devices to become available on the market.
If you’re interested in the device, why not take a look at our hands-on overview here.
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