Daily: Will Nokia’s 41-megapixel phone save the company?

By Edward Harrison On Jun 16, 2012

Reports of a cool new product out of Nokia give investors some hope that the company’s product palette can keep the loss-making company alive as its cash resources dwindle. My understanding is that the latest cuts at Nokia will include the research and development function, meaning that Nokia is definitely cutting into bone and not just fat in its quest to staunch the drain on cash flow. However, now we learn of an exciting new product, a phone with an incredibly powerful camera.

Mashable reports:

Nokia may be bringing the Nokia PureView 808, the smartphone with a mammoth 41-megapixel built-in camera, to the United States.

Announced at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona earlier this year, the phone combines a high-resolution sensor with Carl Zeiss optics and Nokia-developed algorithms to create a smartphone camera like no other out there.

While the 41-megapixel number certainly sounds impressive, what’s really fantastic about the Nokia PureView 808 is what it does with those pixels. The 808 uses a new pixel oversampling technology that captures seven pixels of information, and then condenses all seven into one single pixel. The result is an exceptionally sharp 5-megapixel picture.

Unlike your traditional 5-megapixel picture, however, you can zoom in on any part of the photograph and still see everything clearly, thanks to there essentially being seven pixels where the traditional photo would have one.

Nokia posted teaser images on its U.S. Facebook fanpage Friday, with Monday’s date, which also happens to be the date of Microsoft’s mystery event, leading many to believe that Microsoft was perhaps planning a tablet announcement involving Nokia.

Sounds very cool.

In related news, I am hearing that Microsoft may be concerned about Nokia’s financial health since it has hitched itself to Nokia for its Windows Mobile platform. The rumour is that Microsoft will begin manufacturing its own tablet to lessen its dependence on Nokia and enter that important market.