Boasting of a 41-megapixel sensor camera, Finnish handset maker Nokia today launched its Pureview 808 in India, which will not only take head-on competitors like Samsung Galaxy SIII and HTC One, but also cameras from the likes of Nikon and Sony.
“Nokia has always been known for its imaging legacy. The 808 PureView stands for innovation and with partners like Dolby Laboratories and Carl Zeiss, we have jointly created the world’s first super camera phone,” Nokia India Director and Head of Smart Devices Vipul Mehrotra told reporters here.
Currently, most smartphones available in the country offer cameras with 5-12 MP quality. Nokia seems to have raised the bar pretty high, Mehrotra said adding that the initial response to the device is good.
Priced at Rs 33,899, the phone is also placed cheaper than Samsung’s SIII (Rs 43,180) and HTC One (42,999).
Mehrotra however clarified that the handset would not compete with cameras per se.
“We are not looking at competing with cameras. Users can do other things with Pureview 808 apart from just clicking pictures,” he said.
Asked if one would see the Pureview technology coming to its other handsets, Mehrotra said, “We would like to introduce this technology across our lines of products.”
“Nokia is a full line player with focus across product lines. Our aim is to bring innovation at every price point, be it the Asha series or the Lumia devices. We would look at taking the Pureview technology, which has taken five years to develop, across categories,” he added.
Till now, Nokia was offering 12MP as the highest available capacity for cameras with its N8. It offers low-cost phones, especially under its Asha series, while its high-end smartphones include the Windows-powered Lumia series.
The Pureview 808 has Nokia Belle operating system, 1.3 Ghz processor, four-inch touch screen, internal memory of 16GB (expandable upto 32GB) and also allows HD video recording.
Nokia has struggled in the past in the smartphone segment with Korean giant Samsung and Apple grabbing major share of the global pie. It is betting big on its tie up with Microsoft (to bring Windows operating system to mobile phones) and Pureview 808 to help it reclaim its numero uno spot.
As per a Gartner study, Samsung topped mobile phone sales (with 86.6 million units) in the January-March 2012 quarter, dethroning Nokia which could sell only 83.2 million units.