Juha Alakarhu

Nokia PureView oversampling technology

This paper describes Nokia’s PureView oversampling imaging technology as well as the product, Nokia 808 PureView, featuring it. The Nokia PureView imaging technology is the combination of a large, super high resolution 41Mpix with high performance Carl Zeiss optics. Large sensor enables a pixel oversampling technique that reduces an image taken at full resolution into a lower resolution picture, thus achieving higher definition and light sensitivity. One oversampled super pixel in image file is formed by using many sensor pixels. A large sensor enables also a lossless zoom. If a user wants to use the lossless zoom, the sensor image is cropped. However, up-scaling is not needed as in traditional digital zooming usually used in mobile devices. Lossless zooming means image quality that does not have the digital zooming artifacts as well as no optical zooming artifacts like zoom lens system distortions. Zooming with PureView is also completely silent. PureView imaging technology is the result of many years of research and development and the tangible fruits of this work are exceptional image quality, lossless zoom, and superior low light performance.

Cameras in mobile phones

One of the fastest growing markets in consumer markets today are camera phones. During past few years total volume has been growing fast and today millions of mobile phones with camera will be sold. At the same time resolution and functionality of the cameras has been growing from CIF towards DSC level. From camera point of view the mobile world is an extremely challenging field. Cameras should have good image quality but in small size. They also need to be reliable and their construction should be suitable for mass manufacturing. All components of the imaging chain should be well optimized in this environment. Image quality and usability are the most important parameters to user. The current trend of adding more megapixels to cameras and at the same time using smaller pixels is affecting both. On the other hand reliability and miniaturization are key drivers for product development as well as the cost. In optimized solution all parameters are in balance but the process of finding the right trade-offs is not an easy task. In this paper trade-offs related to optics and their effects to image quality and usability of cameras are discussed. Key development areas from mobile phone camera point of view are also listed.