When it concerns camera, it's not just the megapixel that counts.
In some of the full-frame modern DSLR cameras, 12-megapixel is enough for a pro grade output and this is on a 35mm sensor at the back of the lens. How do you suppose Nokia cramp the 41 megapixels of data in a smaller-than-35mm sensor?
I guess we'll just have to wait to find out.
A promotional image from Finnish phone maker, Nokia announcing a special product launch next month. - © AFP/Relaxnews 2013
More megapixels than top of range DSLRs?
An official Nokia blog post promises 41 million reasons to follow its July 11 product launch in New York.
Initial invites to the event, which will be streamed live over the internet, had simply stated "Zoom Reinvented," but rumors have been swirling around the web since November 2012 that the Finnish phonemaker intends to launch a phone on the Windows Phone 8 platform that offers the same imaging capabilities as a standalone digital camera.
In fact, since February this year, images and specifications have been leaking on a fairly regular basis detailing what Nokia had up its sleeve.
The handset - which in internal Nokia documents is codenamed the EOS - is reported to support 4G LTE mobile internet, feature a 4.5in high definition AMLOED display, be powered by a dual-core 1.2GHz processor with 1GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage and of course to feature a 41-megapixel image senor located behind a Carl Zeiss lens.
This means that the phone's rear housing will feature a bulge to allow sufficient space for the monstrous sensor. But it will be the bulge that will make the difference.
When it comes to capturing digital images, the number of megapixels the camera can capture is secondary to the number of megapixels of information its sensors can process.
The better the sensor the better the device is at discarding 'noise' - the corrupted, overexposed and underexposed pixels of photos - and producing a crisp, clear, color-balanced whole.
But there's a problem - the better the sensor, the bigger it is.
The image sensor on a DSLR camera, for example is the same size as the lens it sits behind. And this is the main reason why smartphones until now have gone with small lenses and equally small sensors.
Smartphones that put the final nail in the standalone digital camera's coffin appears to be one of the most notable tech trends of 2013, and Nokia wants to be the trendsetter.
However, a number of other competing phonemakers are also looking for a piece of this action, most notably HTC with its UltraPixel technology, which lays three small image sensors on top of each other for a fine image-filtering effect and which debuted on the HTC One handset in March, and Samsung, which has chosen to approach the situation from the opposite direction.
With the Galaxy SIV Zoom, revealed earlier this month, rather than trying to squeeze professional camera features into a phone, the company has taken a professional camera complete with a 10x optical zoom lens and built a smartphone into it.
To see how Nokia's 41-megapixel phone stacks up against the competition, a live stream of the press event will start at 11am EDT on July 11 will be able to be viewed on the Nokia Conversations blog. - © AFP/Relaxnews 2013
