If anyone needed more evidence that smartphone manufacturers clearly feel the quickest way to consumers' hearts is through the device's camera, then look no further than Apple's recent hiring of Ari Partinen, the brains behind Nokia's 41-megapixel PureView imaging tech that made headlines last year.
Partinen rose to prominence at Nokia over the last few years to become a senior design engineer for the company and has been the lead man on all things Lumia photography-related the last few years. Among those "things" was the aforementioned PureView tech that appeared in the Nokia Lumia 1020 and the Nokia PureView 808.
Nokia's PureView technology uses something Nokia refers to as advanced floating lens technology, thus the PureView camera takes in five times more light than competitors' smartphones without using flash, so low-light situations, long a problem with smartphones, are handled far better and with more accurate color reproduction.
The days of hearing about advancements in digital imaging coming from the traditional camera manufacturers are waning as most of the headlines for image-capture innovations are coming from smartphone manufacturers these days.
Don't expect to see Partinen's imaging touch in the upcoming iPhone 6. With a rumored release date of August 2014 for the product and a June 1 start date at Apple for Partinen, the timing means the iPhone 6 ship has sailed. But his impact will assuredly be felt on future Apple devices.
Partinen has co-authored two papers specific to mobile imaging titled "Nokia PureView Oversampling Technology" and "Pushing the image of digital imaging." Both papers essentially form the basis for Nokia's very successful and critically acclaimed camera features.
Apple clearly has now loaded its gun for a future run at the imaging capability in the competition's smartphones as it, along with Nokia (now Microsoft), Samsung, HTC, and LG, to name but a few, have all added new imaging tech to their most recent smartphone offerings. And all of the major players in this space are now placing those new imaging features front and center in their marketing plans as consumers continue to turn to their smartphones as their No. 1 image-capture device.
