One of the most interesting devices to come out of this year’s Mobile World Congress is the Nokia 808 PureView. The 808 runs Symbian Belle over the company’s current crop of smartphones running Windows Phone. What makes it special is the new 41-megapixel camera sensor — no that’s not a typo — paired with Carl Zeiss optics, which Nokia has aptly named PureView.

Nokia hasn’t gone completely crazy, jamming more pixels into a tiny sensor and letting you handle crappy 41-megapixel files. First of all the sensor size is 1/1.2 inch, about five times larger than the typical 1/3.2-inch sensor found in most mobile phones. Because the sensor is bigger, the pixel size is still 1.4µm, the same as most current phones. You can actually see the 808 PureView sensor below at the bottom right, compared to an 8-megapixel and a 5-megapixel sensor this thing looks enormous. When you combine the Carl Zeiss f/2.4 lens and a Xenon flash the entire camera array takes a substantial amount of real estate.
continue reading