Would a 41 megapixel camera get you to buy a Windows 8 phone?

[Arizona Hot]

Nokia Preps True PureView Windows Phone

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This is a pciture from the existing Nokia PureView camera(don't rush out to get one, it runs the Symbian OS). An article evaluating PureView is below.

Innovation or hype? Ars examines Nokia’s 41 megapixel smartphone camera - Ars Technica

[Renegade]

Wow. Sounds pretty good. Not sure that I'd want one though as it's running Symbian. In other news, there's a Firefox phone coming out as well.

[KynloStephen66515]

Would a 41 megapixel camera get you to buy a Windows 8 phone?

Probably.

[Edvard]

No.

[KynloStephen66515]

Would be awesome if they managed to put a DSLR into it though.  Now THAT would make me want it.

[Jibz]

I don't know why people have gotten this unhealthy idea that more MP means better images. It seems unlikely they can make a lens for a phone that would give any kind of usefulness to 41 MP. Personally, I would much rather have a phone with a 5 MP camera and a stellar lens and better flash.

[f0dder]

I don't know why people have gotten this unhealthy idea that more MP means better images. It seems unlikely they can make a lens for a phone that would give any kind of usefulness to 41 MP. Personally, I would much rather have a phone with a 5 MP camera and a stellar lens and better flash.

This!

Also, while it's nice having a decent camera in your phone to take a quick snap of whatever, with current lens technology, there's just no way to fit anything "awesome" into a phone that's small and comfy. So I'd much rather have just a decent phone camera, and an IXUS or similar compact for taking better pictures.

(If I had any photography skills, I'd of course go for a real camera, but since I don't, an IXUS fits my needs perfectly ).

[fenixproductions]

@f0dder

offtopic

IXUS? You may want to check:
http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/CHDK
if you don't know it already.

[Carol Haynes]

41 megapixels is pure marketing BS. Sure it isn't supposed to read 4.1 ?

Can't remember where I read it but there was a technical article I read a while ago that argued the more pixels actually equals poorer pictures unless you increased the sensor size.

[Arizona Hot]

41 megapixels is pure marketing BS. Sure it isn't supposed to read 4.1 ?

Can't remember where I read it but there was a technical article I read a while ago that argued the more pixels actually equals poorer pictures unless you increased the sensor size.

41 megapixels is correct, but the default is less to decrease noise and improve low-light sensitivity.

[tomos]

41 megapixels is pure marketing BS. Sure it isn't supposed to read 4.1 ?

Can't remember where I read it but there was a technical article I read a while ago that argued the more pixels actually equals poorer pictures unless you increased the sensor size.

41 megapixels is correct, but the default is less to decrease noise and improve low-light sensitivity.

yes to that !
I thought I had posted the same here a while back but must have gotten distracted by something

All those MPs are used to increase the quality of a lower resolution image (artifacts and noise can apparently be reduced a lot via averaging).
They're also used to create a 'real' zoom (well, *not* a digital one) - just crop the full res image for a x3 zoom @ 5mp.

So I'd say it sounds good to me - but I'll stick with my camera all the same

[f0dder]

All those MPs are used to increase the quality of a lower resolution image (artifacts and noise can apparently be reduced a lot via averaging).

Wouldn't it be better to go for a lower mpix input and get a lot less noise to begin with? I'm not much into the tech behind, but I had the impression that the more mpix you try to squeeze out of a (physically too small) CCD, the more noise you get?

[tomos]

All those MPs are used to increase the quality of a lower resolution image (artifacts and noise can apparently be reduced a lot via averaging).

Wouldn't it be better to go for a lower mpix input and get a lot less noise to begin with? I'm not much into the tech behind, but I had the impression that the more mpix you try to squeeze out of a (physically too small) CCD, the more noise you get?

It would be interesting to see a heads-on comparison:
in the left corner a 5mp sensor vs in the right a 41mp sensor producing 5mp images

Note: in this case, they did use a much larger sensor - disadvantage there being that the phone is a lot thicker because the lens has to be further from a larger sensor.

The main advantage of more MP's with final image @5mp is the zoom capability.

[f0dder]

Note: in this case, they did use a much larger sensor - disadvantage there being that the phone is a lot thicker because the lens has to be further from a larger sensor.

Those results aren't really comparable, then

The main advantage of more MP's with final image @5mp is the zoom capability.

Ho humm - digital zooming. I've honestly never really seen good results from that - and if one of the marketing pitches is "we use the insane mpix to resize down to acceptable quality and doing noise filtering stuff", doesn't that imply your image will get noisier and noisier the more you zoom?

Also, is there anybody clever around who knows if there's some big differences between zooming digitally, and the physical-world stuff that happens when you do it through optics?

[barney]

Also, is there anybody clever around who knows if there's some big differences between zooming digitally, and the physical-world stuff that happens when you do it through optics?

Don't know that I qualify as clever  . but I do know a bit about optics.  In the simplest terms, digital zoom basically increases the pixel count [of a specified, smaller area] so that you can kinda, sorta zoom in -focus - on an area of the image - but you are still seeing the same image, just an enhanced area at the same pixel depth.  Optical zoom actually alters the view, so that you now see a magnified version of a much smaller image area.  The digital zoom tries to accomplish what binoculars, telescopes, and macro lenses have been doing for ages.  But it cannot increase what is called depth of field.  Regardless the amount of digital zoom, you still have only the pixel capability of the CCD in your particular device.  Optical zoom provides a true magnification of the given area - it is not pixel-dependent.
(This could probably have been put more clearly, but I've been lagering  .)

[tomos]

Ho humm - digital zooming. I've honestly never really seen good results from that - and if one of the marketing pitches is "we use the insane mpix to resize down to acceptable quality and doing noise filtering stuff", doesn't that imply your image will get noisier and noisier the more you zoom?

no, it's not digital zooming:
digital zooming is resizing an image, e.g. 100x200 pixels gets resized to 200x400 and will print at a larger size. The quality is generally crap because this is a bad idea and an even worse idea to do in-camera, or worse again, in-phone.

What's happening here is:
they normally use all those extra pixels to average out an image and make it (theoretically anyway) a better quality 5mp image.
But if you chose to zoom (up to 3x with this phone) it will use the full resolution and crop the image to make it a 'bigger' image @5mp (i.e. it will print bigger = zoom). The image has not been resized as described above, just cropped (and it wont have the 'averaging' that the unzoomed 5mp has).

[tomos]

okay,
I've been procrastinating

Here's how it normally works:

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and here is how 3x zoom works:

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... and digital zoom would be the reverse of (a) with the enlarged image then cropped to 5mp size
[edit] where e.g. a 5mp image is resized to, say a 20mp and then cropped to show a detail at 5mp (it *always* looks crappy!) [/edit]

[Curt]

An article evaluating PureView is below.
Innovation or hype? Ars examines Nokia’s 41 megapixel smartphone camera - Ars Technica

I was impressed & pleased, how thorough the article's two pages are. Really interesting stuff.  

Thank you for pointing!

Edited:
I was also pleased that Readability (for Firefox) automatically merged the two pages into a single:
http://www.readability.com/articles/fanix630
or http://www.readability.com/read?url=http%3A//arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/03/innovation-or-hype-ars-examines-nokias-41-megapixel-smartphone-camerainnovation-or-hype-ars-examines-nokias-41-megapixel-smartphone-camera/

[jpfx]

I have a nokia 808 pureview.
It's an excellent phone and a phenomenal phone camera. symbian was axed, it hasn't died. there's millions of users worldwide if you can look beyond your own borders.

[Arizona Hot]

I presume ther will be some interest here in Nokia's new Windows 8 Lumia 1020 41-megapixel cameraphone when it starts selling July 26. It will come in black or white as well as the yellow the writers got.
[attach=#]

Nokia Lumia 1020 - Smartphones - CNET Reviews

What's old -- and new -- about the Nokia Lumia 1020's camera  Cell Phones - CNET Reviews

[tomos]

The OP was about Nokia 808 with 41MP camera and Symbian OS.
Apparently no smartphone since has matched it's image quality (including followup Nokia/MS smartphones w. 41mp).

Two recent threads from the dpreview forums:
Why is the Nokia 808 still the pinnacle in Smartphone Photography?
Nokia 808 still rocks! or "Keep quarelling. I'll just shoot..." :D