Nokia 808 PureView will be the cameraphone to beat with whopping 41MP sensor, to arrive on Windows Phone too

UPDATE: You can view a few video and camera samples with the Nokia 808 PureView in our article here.

Nokia was expected to make a splash at MWC today with the announcement of entry level Windows Phone Tango handsets like the rumored Lumia 610, as well as a version of AT&T's Lumia 900 for the rest of the world.

Besides the news on the Windows Phone front, though, we were also expecting with baited breath something associated with the PureView brand, which all clues pointed to being a Nokia N8 successor with a giant camera sensor.

Well, the nail-biting wait is no more, we have a new claimant for the best cameraphone category. It is called the Nokia 808 PureView, with the whopping 41MP sensor with Carl-Zeiss lens, both Xenon flash plus an LED video light, f/2.4 aperture and enhanced low-light abilities. It has a 4" OLED display, 1.3GHz processor with 512MB of RAM and runs Symbian Belle, meaning 360x640 screen resolution still, but we found ourselves just staring at that huge sensor in disbelief.

The phone does 1080p video, and for stills it scales down to 38MP for 16:9 format. The 41 Megapixels allow zooming without losing quality if you shoot at standard 8MP or 5MP resolutions, though, so that might have been on Nokia's mind when deciding which camera sensor in their labs to throw in there. The phone is also ready to shoot in less than a second, which gives the Xperia S camera "Quick" mode a run for its money.

Nokia has been great at cleverly compressing its photos on the N8, so probably the 16GB internal storage won't fill as quickly as you would expect from 30+ MP photos, and there is always the microSD card. The phone will have the ability to shrink the snaps for emailing or posting on Facebook and Twitter on the fly.

The camera guru Damian Dinning is behind this Nokia 808 PureView, and we can be fairly certain the results will be splendid, no matter if Nokia has overdone it with the megapixel count or not. He already hinted that the next best cameraphone "will have a Nokia logo on it, just like the current one :)", and also that "when we do 1080p, we'll do it like no other", so the puzzle starts to fit together. 

The 1080p video can be captured with 4x lossless zoom, because of the huge sensor, using a new audio technology called Nokia Rich Recording. The Rich Recording feat captures stereo sound in CD-like quality, something that has been possible before only with external microphones. The Nokia 808 PureView is also the first smartphone to feature the Dolby Headphones tech, meaning you get Dolby Surround sound with any pair.

The Nokia 808 PureView comes with polished and easy to use camera interface with plenty of options to take advantage of the monster sensor, something that Windows Phone isn't quite ready to offer yet. The interface has allegedly been designed with automatic mode in mind for easy snapping and sharing, but giving access to the maximum sensor capabilities as well.

Nokia's Jo Harlow said at the press event that "People will inevitably focus on the 41 megapixel sensor, but the real quantum leap is how the pixels are used to deliver breath-taking image quality at any resolution and the freedom it provides to choose the story you want to tell."

Nokia has been working for years on this sensor, and the best part is that it will be brought to future devices (nudge, wink, Windows Phone) at some point. The Nokia 808 PureView will be available in May for EUR 450 off-contract (about $600). Any takers?