Lumia EOS: Is Nokia’s 41MP PureView camera finally coming to Windows Phone?

Lumia EOS: Is Nokia’s 41MP PureView camera finally coming to Windows Phone?

Lumia 920 meets the 808 PureView, with a 41-megapixel camera

At long last, our smartphone photography dreams have been answered: It seems Nokia is finally gearing up to release a version of the Lumia 920 with the 808 PureView’s 41-megapixel camera, dubbed the Lumia EOS. You might think that 41 megapixels is overkill for a smartphone camera — even the best Canon DSLRs have less! — but take a look at the sample photos below and then let me know if you still feel the same way.
While the new phone isn’t yet official, a flood of leaked images from China suggest that the phone is currently being mass produced. So far, we’ve seen yellow, red, and black models, and they all look very much like Nokia’s polycarbonate Lumia 920 — but with an absolutely huge hole for the PureView 41-megapixel sensor.
Nokia 808 PureView sample image 1

Nokia 808 PureView sample image 2
On the hardware side of things, this new Lumia 920-PureView mashup, preliminarily dubbed the Lumia EOS, will presumably have similar internals to the Lumia 920, 925, and 928 — i.e. a dual-core Snapdragon, a 4.5-inch 1280×768 display, and 1GB of RAM. And then there’s the camera.
The 808 PureView camera sensor is 41 megapixels, but that equates to “only” 34MP when shooting 16:9 images (7728×4354) or 38MP at 4:3 (7152×5368). The two images that you see above are full-res 16:9 and 4:3 images respectively. Because the full-res photos clock in at around 10MB each, which is really too big for sharing, there’s a second mode that provides 7:1 oversampling to create a very-high-fidelity 5MP image. (Oversampling is where the input from a number of pixels is averaged/combined to create a single superpixel). In theory, these oversampled images should look like the ones above; you just won’t be able to zoom in as far. For more details, see our original story detailing the 808 PureView.
Rounding out the specs, the leaked photos also suggest that there’s a xenon flash — and yes, the large 41-megapixel sensor, along with its larger lens, creates quite a bulge. Price-wise, we would expect the new Nokia to have a price premium over the Lumia 920, but it probably won’t be that expensive (the 808 PureView was €450, or around $600).
Perhaps most importantly, though, this 41-megapixel sensor will be hooked up to Windows Phone 8, rather than the 808 PureView’s defunct Symbian Belle OS. More exciting than that, though, is Nokia’s new Smart Camera software, which debuts on the Lumia 925 and will soon come to the Lumia 920. When you pair up a 41-megapixel camera with software that can remove moving objects, switch faces between photos, and automatically pick the best photo from a 10-shot burst, you revolutionize smartphone photography.

0 comments: