The Nokia 808 PureView drummed up a considerable amount of interest when it was unveiled at the Mobile World Congress last week. Packing a massive 41MP 1/1.2” image sensor that’s five times larger than standard sensors in smartphones and three times larger than sensors in most compact shooters, the 808 PureView with its novel – for a smartphone – pixel-binding method promises an immensely better picture quality than standard smartphone digital imaging methods.
The 808 PureView created a lot of buzz but many didn’t like Nokia’s decision to mate the device with the ageing Symbian platform (even if it is the latest “Belle” update). With Nokia now in partnership with Microsoft, most of expected the 808 to run Windows Phone instead.
So will we see a Windows Phone PureView device from Nokia?
Looking at Nokia’s commitment to the Windows Phone platform, it’s safe to assume that Nokia will eventually come up with a PureView Windows Phone. However, Jo Harlow, Nokia’s Executive Vice President for Smart Devices, obliterated any room for assumption or speculation when she confirmed that Nokia will indeed make PureView technology available in the its upcoming Windows Phone devices. Harlow didn’t offer much detail but said that a PureView Windows Phone device “will not take very long”.
Looking at Nokia’s trend of re-using designs to speed up development, we can pretty much expect a PureView device running on Windows Phone to look very much like the 808 (that elongated home and power button you see in the picture above can certainly make room for the standard Windows Phone navigation button-array) and we can also expect the device to be available within this year.
With regards to when this PureView Windows Phone will make it to Malaysia, it’s too early to say but we’ve been hearing a lot of talk about Nokia gearing up for something big in June – and this could just be it.