Released last year, the PureView 808 was essentially a prototype phone. It ran Nokia’s dying — and now officially dead — Symbian operating system, but its 41-megapixel, one-inch image sensor was a beast. Now, The Guardian reports what people have been speculating and rumouring since Nokia dropped the PureView 808 nearly a year ago: the 41-megapixel sensor is destined for a Nokia Windows Phone.
According to a report by The Guardian, a new Windows Phone 8 handset with the large image sensor is on the way. It will be called EOS, and it will arrive at the end of the month at the Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona. Now the first part of that rumour is pretty ridiculous and hard to swallow. Canon has been using the EOS name for 25 years for its system of interchangeable lens cameras. It would be foolish — and possibly illegal — for Nokia to use the same name for an imaging-heavy phone.
But the second half of the rumour makes sense. Why would Nokia develop a sophisticated imaging technology only to abandon it? What’s more, Nokia reps have told us that there would be big PureView news in the near future, maybe this is what they’ve got in mind? We sure hope so. [The Guardian via Fast Company]