There’s a huge amount of excitement about Nokia’s recent Mobile World Congress (MWC) announcement regarding its new Nokia 808 PureView handset. Overall the 808 PureView is a relatively unimpressive phone, running on Symbian Belle rather than Windows Phone Mango. Unimpressive, that is, until you get to its incredible 41MP camera.
But is 41MP really that consequential, or is it just a gimmick designed to grab the attention of the media and confuse customers who don’t have a full understanding of digital photography? As we’ve said on many occasions phrases regarding megapixels are often misleading, as the MP count is only a very small part of what makes a good photograph.
A great example of this is found by comparing the camera on the iPhone 4 or iPhone 4S to another of equal or similar megapixel count. The 5MP camera of the iPhone 4 is still better than many 8MP shooters on more modern devices. Continuing on the 8MP camera on the iPhone 4S is far superior to many of its 8MP contemporaries, but you couldn’t tell that by reading a spec sheet.
Similarly there’s a reason that professional photographers often spend more on specialty lenses than on the actual camera body. Lenses are extremely important for a variety of reasons and size does matter. Compare, then, the lens on your average SLI to that of a mobile phone camera and the difference should be obvious to anybody. That’s not to say that mobile phone manufacturers don’t do amazing things with the restrictive space they’re given, but there’s no way a tiny handset lens could ever compare to a lens that’s larger than the phone itself and several times more expensive.
Megapixel count alone can’t adjust for lighting, distance and movement. Traditionally smartphone shooters have struggled in low-light areas or with moving targets. Combine these two factors and you can usually completely forget about grabbing a clear image. Of course the software behind phone cameras improves and the intricacies of the camera mechanisms increase. But we just can’t see how smartphone cameras could have suddenly jumped to a point where 41MP is justified.
There’s also the idea of storage to consider. Cramming 41MP in to a photo is going to increase its size significantly. There’s going to be an incredible amount of restriction on how many photos will even fit on the Nokia 808 PureView’s 16GB of internal memory, remembering that some of that 16GB will already be taken up by the operating system, UI and apps.
Nokia 808 PureView Demo Pictures
Now, the Nokia 808 PureView does take impressive images for a smartphone, we’re not denying that. Nokia has a great track record when it comes to mobile cameras and we could definitely accept a significant camera upgrade coming from the Finnish giant before anyone else. If you’d like proof of this prolific shooter’s prowess then you need only check out the demo photos provided by Nokia.
These photos are obviously great but there’s 2 things to consider:
These are photographs taken by a professional photographer whose job it is to make the camera look amazing. Compare these photos to Apple’s official shots taken by the iPhone 4S and you actually won’t see a huge difference. So while these Nokia 808 Pureview photos are undeniably impressive they’re not really 41MP impressive.
To help illustrate this we’ve included some demo photos taken on the iPhone 4S that we found on Apple’s site.
As you can see the photos are of similar quality, yet the 4S only sports an 8MP camera. We’re not saying the 4S has the best camera on the market, just that it’s possible for an 8MP camera to take great shots in the hands of a professional, too.
Don’t take our continuing references to the iPhone 4S as any indication of our own brand preferences; the iPhone 4S merely represents an extremely common example by which we can demonstrate a point. Other manufacturers such as HTC and Samsung also have similarly impressive images on their own sites. We just thought it was important to put Nokia’s new images, however impressive, in to perspective using the world’s current most popular smartphone.
Overall Thoughts
We love the idea of a camera-centric phone. Let’s face it: phone cameras still really aren’t at the point where everyone can abandon dedicated cameras entirely. To the casual photographer who just wants a few snapshots of their friends or a fancy meal then today’s current fare is satisfactory. But for many occasions the technology just isn’t quite there yet. A dedicated camera-phone could be just the thing a lot of folks are looking for, so the overarching concept of the 808 PureView isn’t without merit.
We just want to caution our readers that 41MP definitely does not mean that this camera is light-years ahead of the competition. The only way to really test out the quality of a camera is to see it in action and we don’t mean the shots taken by whatever professional photographer Nokia happens to hire. Pro shots are pretty, but that doesn’t mean you’ll be able to replicate that kind of quality on your own device. 41MP is definitely impressive, but it’s not as groundbreaking as one might initially believe.
