Zooming in on Nokia’s ‘Picture-Perfect’ Phone

In the magical dome of the smartphone industry, a cool innovation can seep into every corner and crevice of the roof to transcend the pool of latitudinal quality of gizmos sold in the market. Just as when we are only ready for incremental developments of these devices comes the universal change that might altogether change the route of the smartphone race so far.

For a long time it has been the Apple iPhone which gained so much velocity in the global sprint of the handsets. But with the phenomenal arrival of the 41-MP Nokia 808 PureView, is Nokia now prepared to set an obviously rough terrain for the smooth rage of the Apple iPhone? Indeed, this is going to be a picturesque sight.

Photographers, zoom in your camera now and be attuned to what would be the ‘next big thing’ in the smartphone competition.

Last week, Nokia has rekindled the fire of its salvation as it engendered a smartphone with an incredible 41 megapixel camera sensor named 808 PureView. When I first read the scoop on Yahoo News, my initial reaction wasn’t a sort of shock, but of disbelief that a kind of smartphone would exist as such. Just thinking about it as a reality made me want to sell my cell phone in an instant!

But before we dredge upon the mystery of the Nokia 808 PureView, let’s first do a relevant analysis on its name. I urge you to put on that academic cloak and start churning silly theories and literary concepts aiming to shed light on the peculiarity of its title.

808 Pureview…First, the cardinal numbers 8,0, and 8. The number psychology is one of the most interesting topics under the sun: I gather it’s a complex a lot of us can come to terms with. Admissively, few of us are certified mathematicians and anything that simplifies the intricacies of calculus, geometry, and algebra is widely accepted. Any subject that attempts to explain the abstractness of the figures is embraced with romantic intensity.

The set reveals the presence of two 8’s. In Chinese culture, the number eight symbolizes prosperity and wealth as the characters for ‘8’ and ‘fortune’ are the same in Cantonese. Of course, I don’t assume that all you readers are Chinese, but anyone can be Chinese in beliefs and principles with the number ‘8’ in mind.

Also, if you put the number in a lying position, it resembles a ‘lemniscate’, or what we fondly call the ‘infinity’ sign (∞). Zero (0), on the other hand, represents nonexistence, nothingness. However, extremists may suggest that zero also typify fullness, the potentiality to be filled and edified. Ooh, the irony that the liberal world spawns…

PureView is a pretty straightforward statement. Aided by a 41 megapixel camera, anyone can pretend that what he or she holds is a low-end, medium-format digital SLRs. The pizzazz of carrying a seemingly over-priced camera is reduced to positioning your hand to accommodate a small contraption with mutant photo-capturing abilities.

Which brings us to the next question: Has Nokia finally held up under the megapixel myth? Pardon the philosophical questions, but this is the kind of causality which elucidates the attempt to make a smartphone not quite a smartphone. Instead of focusing on what makes a smartphone experience unforgettable, manufacturers continue the battle of ‘mischaracterizing’ the smartphones.

On a positive note, the PureView technology is wrapped with welcome additions to the standard smartphone anatomy- though careful consideration is always necessary. Naturally, a 41-megapixel phone versus an 8-megapixel one is like comparing the mighty Jupiter to the Moon.

Let me emphasize: Camera-wise, 41 MP does not gravitate toward the common notion that it is five times better than phones which have 8 MP. This is another reckless case of snap judgment and fundamental attribution error.

I will cite an analogy for more fortified conviction: If a person ever dreams of playing basketball in the big leagues, he has to submit himself to certain rubrics for evaluation. A significant one is the height requirement. Certainly, if a person who stands five feet tall has a greater chance of being chosen than a player who stands four, then a person who stands six feet tall will more likely be chosen than their 5-foot or 4-foot counterparts. The same conclusion applies to a basketball player whose height is seven feet.

But what if a person stands an enormous 9 feet tall? Does it follow that he will most likely be chosen among others? The answer is a big NO!

In all fields, a set of criteria has been a significant determiner of who is going to succeed and which idea is going to tip. In the case of basketball, the success of an athlete is partially predicted by his height, and a slight increase of the height gives one athlete an advantage over the others.

But a criterion has a threshold- a turning point in which another increase doesn’t matter anymore. This is the point where going further doesn’t yield a significantly measurable result. Six or seven foot is okay, but a ten-foot athlete’s balling skills may now be questionable. The person should be tall but not so tall that his agility and suavity inside the field will jeopardize his playing competence. After all, the greatest basketball players are not the tallest ones. Height matters, but it only matters at a given level.

Same in measuring intelligence: A person with an IQ of 120 (considering IQ tests truly measure a person’s cognitive skills) must be more intelligent than a person who has 100. Also, a person who has an IQ of 150 must be more intelligent than a person who has 130.

But what about a person whose IQ ranges to 230 like Marilyn Vos Savant- whose ticket to fame is her feat of being proclaimed the ‘Person with the Highest Recorded IQ’? Does it mean that she is 80 points more intelligent than a person whose IQ is 150, like Albert Einstein?

Difficult to accept, right?

Intelligence also has a threshold: When a person goes above an IQ of 150, say 180 or 200, the additional points of 30 and 50 do not translate to an intellect which obtains empirical evidence. When you reach beyond 150, the points above it do not matter anymore: The counting stops there. What a person can do with an IQ of 200 can also be done by a person with an IQ of 150, or 170. And there is no way to measure what the person who has relatively higher intellectual capabilities can do better than a person who has an IQ of 150. We simply do not know where to put the yardstick. Once you go past that range, the competition is now even.

We cannot compare that of which we cannot quantify.

And this is the reason why a 41-MP camera is not at all a monumental feat for the smartphone family. Unless there is some logical reason why Nokia amped the camera capabilities in leaps and bounds, there is still some question to that unexplained figure that made a conflagration out of that small furnace.