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The Verge Interview: Nokia's Damian Dinning on the 808 PureView's history and future

The Verge Interview: Nokia's Damian Dinning on the 808 PureView's history and future

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Nokia rather blew the doors off MWC 2012 this morning by announcing a 41-megapixel camera sensor ensconced within the confines of a smartphone, the 808 PureView. In order to understand what lies beneath the large bump on the back of the 808 handset, I spoke with Nokia's Damian Dinning, the man in charge of keeping the company's leadership in camera performance.

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Damian Dinning interview
Damian Dinning interview

Nokia rather blew the doors off MWC 2012 this morning by announcing a 41-megapixel camera sensor ensconced within the confines of a smartphone, the 808 PureView. The product of five years of development work, the collection of technologies under the PureView umbrella is only starting off with the Symbian-based 808 and should make its way to other devices and platforms over time. Nokia is promising amazing image quality from this camera thanks to some oversampling wizardry — taking data from seven pixels in order to fill just one — that uses the full 41-megapixel canvas to generate excellent 5-megapixel stills. At the same time, as a sort of creative mode, Nokia's also allowing users to capture images as large as 38 megapixels in size. They'll be nowhere near as pretty, but the option's there if you want to mess around.

In order to understand what lies beneath the large bump on the back of the 808 handset, I spoke with Nokia's Damian Dinning, the man in charge of keeping the company's leadership in camera performance. He was able to elucidate the finer points of the technology, while also bringing a little surprise out of his inside jacket pocket. Watch the video interview below to uncover the mystery for yourself.