Amber has already been confirmed to include the Smart Camera app, which brings effects like Motion Focus, Action Shots, and other burst-image-related trickery to the Lumia 925. However, Alakarhu also told us that Amber will expand the supported ISO range of the Lumia 920, just as the 925 comes with support for out of the box.

Nokia Smart Camera hands-on:

Currently, the Lumia 920 tops out at ISO 800; with Amber installed, that will be quadrupled to ISO 3200. The result will be better low-light shots as well as improvements in sports photography and when snapping images of moving subjects.

It’s not only the old flagship which will get a photography polish after Amber. All of Nokia’s Windows Phone 8 line-up will get the newest version of the photo engineers’ algorithms, which will help increase sharpness – particularly in cropped shots, Alakarhu explained – and lower noise, in addition to improvements in exposure. There’ll also be support across the range for remapping the camera shortcut key to the Smart Camera app, instead of the Windows Phone default.

Not all of the Lumia models will see the same degree of improvement, of course. Nokia will adjust the level of tweaking depending on the core sensor; the Lumia 520, for instance, won’t attempt ISO 3200 shots, since the hardware really isn’t up to it. A final decision on what changes will be delivered to each device is yet to be reached, with Alakarhu’s team still working on that ahead of Amber’s expected release in July.

The speed at which Smart Camera clusters of shots open up – something we found to take around 15 seconds with Nokia’s current pre-production software on the 925 – will also be improved, though the photo team couldn’t tell us exactly how fast the process will become. Although it’s slower than how quickly, say, HTC’s One can open up a Zoe set, there’s a good reason for that.

One of our ongoing criticisms of the One is how much space Zoe photography takes up, both on the smartphone itself and in the cloud. Nokia has addressed that by packaging the ten stills together, rather than storing each as an individual frame; the end result doesn’t follow the “ten shots so 10x the size” explanation you might expect, Alakarhu explained. Opening and editing those takes some processing time – in fact, it’s currently the most processor-intensive thing the Lumia 925 is asked to do – but while there are other ways Nokia could deal with the files, the company is wary of diverging too greatly from imaging standards.

“I think what we want to do next is make the sharing super-easy, so that your friends can also enjoy making those changes on Facebook or their own phone” Alakarhu told us. “And so we need to find the right format, the right way to do it. There is currently no industry standard for doing that, and I don’t want to take the proprietary route for doing that, because this needs to be accessed by everyone.”

Exactly how that common format might look is unclear. HTC has opted for Zoe Share, a free – albeit temporary – web-gallery service that One owners can use to show off select stills, video clips, and highlight reels created on the smartphone. Nokia currently has no specific sharing system that preserves the Smart Camera post-processing potential, though you can of course push out the final results as regular photos through the usual Facebook, Twitter, email, and other routes.

“In the 920, we actually did a lot of the foundations” Alakarhu concluded, hinting that there was plenty more photo-centric news to be shared later in the year. “The algorithms we had have, for example. But now we have been able to do that optimization, and the pace of the development has been incredible now that we have that great foundation of algorithms.”

There are a couple of things worth considering. Most important is that the Lumia 925 isn’t due to hit store shelves until next month, and as such Nokia is likely to continue tweaking its camera software in the intervening period. Things like processing may well change between these samples and the end-result. Also, Nokia told us that it purposefully stripped out the EXIF data from the shots, just in case they leaked prematurely and gave the 925 game away.

It’s hard not to be impressed by what the Lumia 925 achieves. Nokia is billing the phone as being capable of the best low-light performance, without a flash, of any current smartphone. While it fell short of comparing the Lumia 928 with the HTC One, our current king of low-light abilities, when it made similar boasts last week, the company tells us that it will show no such reserve when it comes to comparing the Lumia 925 with rivals.

In fact, Nokia says, both it and Microsoft plan to be more aggressive in their comparisons between Lumia Windows Phones and rivals, whether they run iOS, Android, or something else. A glance through the sample shots suggests photography isn’t a bad place to start, either. Close-ups are crisp, colors look great – without the cartoonish over-saturation some phones tend toward – and though there’s clearly noise and grain to be found in images taken in lower-light conditions, they’re nonetheless impressive.

As for Nokia’s Smart Camera, with the right subject we can see effects like Action Shot – which pieces together time-lapse images from multiple frames – and Motion Focus being popular. They’ll require some forward planning, maybe, though given Nokia will allow Smart Camera to be set as the default photography app, there’s perhaps no real downside – barring the impact taking ten frames each time will have on the non-expandable 16GB of storage – to always shooting in the new mode.

Nothing quite satisfies like running a camera through its paces yourself, so we’ll reserve our full opinion on the Lumia 925′s camera skills until we can spend more time one-on-one with it. That said, Nokia’s own samples have certainly left us hopeful that this could be another bar-raising option for mobile photography.

Nokia stoked that camera speculation itself with its TV commercial yesterday; since then, the first shot of the Lumia 925 has leaked. You could be forgiven for seeing Nokia almost as a mobile photography company first these days, given imaging tends to be its top-line features for every new smartphone.

Nokia has been pushing camera tech for years now, but arguably made its name as an innovator with the 808 PureView of 2012. It may have been chunky, and used Symbian – which Nokia had already confirmed was in its death-throes – but it also tore up the playbook for mobile photography, approaching elements like lossless zooming and balancing picture size with levels of noise in previously-unseen ways.

The 808 is best remembered for its 41-megapixel sensor, a huge CMOS positively overspilling with pixels. At the time, Nokia likened it to putting out more buckets to catch more rainfall: the 808 was designed not to produce ridiculously high resolution stills, but more average shots (the default was 5-megapixels) that combined data from clusters of pixels to smooth out glitches and aberrations, and make for more accurate colors and brightness.

“The new Nokia Lumia is coming…” teaser video:

In the process, it also enabled lossless digital zooming: zoom without the moving lenses of an optical system. By cropping sections of the image – still at the 5-megapixel resolution – the 808 could effectively zoom into the frame but without the quality loss associated with every other digital zoom.

So far, though, we’re yet to see that original PureView approach replicated on a Windows Phone. The Lumia 920 and 928 both bear PureView branding, for instance, but their emphasis has been on the way more typical megapixel sensors can be supported with optical image stabilization to boost picture quality. Instead of the pixel-clusters of the 808, both of the high-end Windows Phones try to craft better images by holding their sensors steady.

That’s not to say they can’t be “true” PureView just because they lack a few dozen megapixels, however. The massive sensor was only half of the 808 story: equally important was Nokia’s custom Carl Zeiss optics, which were essential for piping the right light in the right way to the oversized CMOS. Nokia even took us to meet with the Zeiss team for a behind-the-scenes look at what optical magic was used, a complex, five-lens assembly with a range of aspheric surfaces that explained some of the 808′s thickness, just as the broad sensor explained its width.

Lenses may not be as immediately headline-grabbing as great lashings of megapixels, but they’re the unsung heroes that Nokia has been busily working away on. Zeiss and Nokia renewed their partnership back in early 2012, and came up with what’s described as “PureView Phase 2″: a groundbreaking optical image stabilization lens which can be paired with a more traditional-resolution sensor.

Discussed in this white paper [pdf link] around the time of the Lumia 920, the second-gen system actually has a more light-friendly lens than the 808 manages: f/2.0 versus the original PureView’s f/2.4, with the same 26mm wide optics. That works with an image stabilization system that rather than move just a single lens element, actually shifts the whole optical assembly up to 500 times per second.

Hardware is only half of any story, of course, and Nokia will undoubtedly have software news to share about the Lumia 925 as well. As we’ve seen from the company’s own work to-date on Camera Lenses, and on rivals’ photography systems like Zoe on the HTC One and the native GIF-maker on the Galaxy S 4, ways of not only shooting but of manipulating stills are big business in today’s handsets.

They all demand good quality to begin with, though, and interestingly all approach that in different ways: a small number of gigantic UltraPixels from HTC, 13-megapixels-worth of smaller pixels from Samsung, and whatever PureView combination Nokia decides to bless the Lumia 925 with.

Nokia isn’t a camera company, but it’s camera technology that it’s counting on to set it apart in the market. We’ll find out how the Lumia 925 fits into that strategy tomorrow, when Nokia unveils the phone officially at its London, UK event on May 14th.

The obvious interpretation of the tagline is a super-high-resolution sensor, something previously rumored for the EOS and to which Nokia itself is no stranger. Chatter of the EOS picked up at the top end of the year, described as offering “proper PureView” in a similar manner to the well-esteemed but niche 808 PureView. However, there’s also talk of a separate device, the Nokia Catwalk, which is also believed to have a large-megapixel-count sensor (though smaller than EOS) and a metal body.

Although recent Lumia handsets, such as the 920, have borne the PureView brand, Nokia has yet to repeat its complex pixel-clustering approach to high-resolution photography on the 808. That phone used a whopping 41-megapixel sensor, though defaulted to roughly 5-megapixel stills: the camera combined data from multiple adjacent pixels to iron out any glitches or mistakes, or alternatively could provide lossless-quality digital zooming.

As a system, the original PureView technology worked – you can see quite how well in our review of the Nokia 808 PureView – but the oversized sensor had unavoidable consequences on the heft of the handset. The larger-than-normal build, along with the fact that the roughly five year development time meant it was still running Symbian, rather than Windows Phone, meant it never amounted to much more than a curio in Nokia’s line-up.

Assuming the EOS – or whatever Lumia name the phone is officially dubbed – can avoid that bulk issue, it could well succeed where the 808 struggled, however. According to the rumor-mill, it will use a specially-waterproofed, aluminum casing courtesy of nano-coating experts P2i, though it’s impossible to tell from the commercial whether the handset is metal or metal-effect plastic.

Nokia is no stranger to teaser-campaigns, with the company having spent much of the last seven days flirting around the new Lumia 928. That handset, headed to Verizon in a few days time, was originally expected to make its official debut alongside the “EOS” on Tuesday, but Nokia pulled the trigger on the announcement on Friday last week.

SlashGear will be with Nokia this coming Tuesday to bring back all the details of the new Lumia.

SOURCE: TechCrunch; Pocket-lint

The Nokia 808 PureView is a smartphone that’s meant to be used primarily as a camera. It’s got a massive lens configuration on its back that Nokia never intended to compete with the thin and light frames of the high-end smartphones we’re seeing throughout the industry today. Instead it was (and is) meant to show the world that Nokia can, indeed, deliver this camera power in a real market-ready handset.

What we’ve got with the Nokia Lumia 920 is a device that takes on the same “feel” for the brand that Nokia is pushing with “PureView”, this time in a more realistic package for the mass market. This device is not the thinnest smartphone in the world – not by a long shot – but it’s certainly ready to compete against the average top-tier smartphone in its overall package delivery. Nokia is banking on the idea that the camera brand PureView technology will push the rest of their handsets into the limelight.

SIDE NOTE: There’s also the possibility here that the Nokia EOS Windows Phone spoken about recently could be connected to a real-deal high-powered PureView sensor. Think about it!

With the tip you’re seeing here about the 41-megapixel sensor coming to the standard handset, it’s much more likely that a game of “telephone” is going on. That means that the original message was likely something more like “Nokia will bring on more high-powered PureView smartphones in 2013″, translated several times to come out to “Nokia PureView smartphones (started with the 808) will come to market in 2013.” The realistic way of looking at this situation is as follows:

Nokia will continue to push forth with PureView brand camera technology in the handsets they deliver that, first and foremost, deliver an overall solid experience in and of themselves. Another possibility is that Nokia is evolving as quickly as HTC and will deliver something wild like multiple layers of lenses sandwiched together to create a camera that, in the end, works with enough sensors that they’d have otherwise created a 41-megapixel photo.

Perhaps four layers of 10 megapixel sensors to create one beast of a photo? We shall see!

While Nokia has so-far used polycarbonate plastic in a variety of bright hues for its Windows Phones, the EOS will supposedly have an aluminum chassis. That won’t be the only aesthetic tweak; rather than the curved edges of the current Lumia line-up, the EOS will supposedly have “squared edges” as Nokia refreshes its design language.

Exactly what’s meant by a “similar sensor” to that of the 808 PureView is unclear at this stage. Nokia’s first PureView handset introduced an incredibly pixel-dense CMOS, though the chip was still oversized in comparison to the usual smartphone camera fare. That made the 808 a hefty handset, though allowed Nokia to do clever software tricks combining data from clusters of nearby pixels to create 5-megapixel-equivalent shots with considerably more detail than what might normally be produced from a phone.

One possibility is that Nokia could be more conservative in its oversampling, combining data from fewer clustered pixels and thus allowing for a smaller sensor overall. That would maintain the ethos of PureView technology, without contributing too heavily to bulk. Alternatively, Nokia could have developed a smaller version of its 41-megapixel sensor, which would help reduce the bulk of the EOS.

The Nokia EOS won’t be the first Windows Phone to bear the PureView branding – that would be the Lumia 920, which we reviewed last year – but it would arguably be the first to properly stick to how PureView was originally billed. The Lumia 920 used a relatively standard camera sensor, but mounted it in a special “elastic” framework which helped reduce camera-shake and allowed for longer exposures without blur.

Also rumored to be in Nokia’s pipeline for 2013 is the “Catwalk,” a Lumia 920 replacement that would also have an aluminum chassis. That new material will supposedly allow for a smaller, lighter device, addressing criticisms that the 920 was too heavy in comparison to rival devices.

Finally, there’s also believed to be a Windows RT tablet in Nokia’s future, with the speculated slate supposedly coming with a Surface-style keyboard cover. The 10-inch tablet could be revealed as soon as February, insiders claim, potentially at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

“Nokia recently apologized when it became clear that a video, which had been produced to demonstrate the benefits of optical image stabilization, failed to make clear that it was a simulation only and not shot using the new PureView camera on the Nokia Lumia 920. This video was produced when the Nokia Lumia 920 was in preproduction. While there was no intention to mislead, the failure to add a disclaimer to the video was obviously a mistake, and we apologize for the misunderstanding it did cause” Nokia

Nokia had already apologized once for the camera mistake, where the company was caught using footage shot with a DSLR to demonstrate the potential effect of its PureView optical image stabilization. ”We are dealing with the situation swiftly, fairly and privately” a spokesperson told the WSJ; a second video demo, this time filmed with the Lumia 920 itself, had already been released.

Whispers of a November European release had begun shortly after the new Lumia launch last week, amid speculation that Nokia’s sales plans would be more focused than for its Windows Phone 7 range. CEO Stephen Elop said several months back that Nokia intended to mimic its strategy from the US for new European launches; for the US Lumia 900, that meant putting all of its eggs into AT&T’s basket rather than spreading the device across multiple operators.

Although Nokia declined to comment on any potential negotiations with specific carriers, the company did confirm that the LTE version of the Lumia 920 would be compatible with the 1800MHz 4G bands Everything Everywhere intends to use for its new network. The handset will also support four other LTE bands, though it’s not clear at this stage whether that means the same Lumia 920 will operate on both UK and US LTE.

Everything Everywhere is holding a “next-gen network” event on Tuesday this week, noted initially for being staged the day before the expected launch of the iPhone 5, itself believed to use LTE. It’s possible that a deal with Nokia could be announced at that event.

“In an effort to demonstrate the benefits of optical image stabilization (which eliminates blurry images and improves pictures shot in low light conditions), we produced a video that simulates what we will be able to deliver with OIS. Of course, hindsight is 20/20, but we should have posted a disclaimer stating this was a representation of OIS only. This was not shot with a Lumia 920. At least, not yet. We apologize for the confusion we created” Nokia statement

According to Nokia, the error was one of giddy confusion rather than an actual intent to mislead would-be Lumia 920 buyers, but it’s another black mark in the score column for what turned out to be a mixed event in NYC yesterday. Although the Lumia 920 and Lumia 820 were widely received as decent hardware, the absence of any pricing or specific availability information – beyond both phones launching “later in the year” – left Nokia looking unprepared.

Meanwhile, over-enthusiastic video pimping isn’t the only crime Nokia is accused of. Former Helsinki resident Youssef Sarhan took issue with the stills in Nokia’s original PureView video as well, arguing that the defractions around the bright light sources in the photos are simply impossible to capture with the Lumia 920′s f/2.0 camera.

He points to the expansive defractions around street lighting in the PureView promo (on the left in the image below) versus the more diffuse defractions seen in a sample shot from a Lumia 920 prototype that Nokia itself shared (click for larger version):

Nokia has released the following video – shown as part of its presentation yesterday – demonstrating the PureView OIS system at work on an actual Lumia 920 prototype device. It certainly looks good, though we’ll wait until we can review the WP8 smartphone before we pass any broader judgement.

After we had finished up with Nokia’s event, it was straight over to Gotham Hall, where Motorola and Google held an event of their own. Google’s Eric Schmidt took the stage first to boast the latest Android numbers, before Motorola CEO Dennis Woodside hopped up on stage to outline the company’s plan for the “The New Motorola.” After that, it was all about the reveals. Motorola revealed three new phones in total: the long-rumored DROID RAZR HD and the DROID RAZR M, which has had its share of rumors as well, along with the surprise announcement of the DROID RAZR MAXX HD. If you were waiting for Motorola’s new devices, you’ll be pleased to know that we have a couple of hands-on posts that cover all three devices.

Woodside also said today that any Motorola phones from 2012 that don’t get updated to Jelly Bean by the end of the year will be a eligible for a $100 voucher, and it was announced that the developer editions of the DROID RAZR M and the RAZR HD will come with unlockable bootloaders. A little bit later on in the day, we found out that the PureView ad Nokia showed during its presentation may be a little bit misleading, and even though there was a ton of Nokia and Motorola news today, there was still time for a new iPhone leak, this time giving us an up-close look at the battery. Windows Phone 8 will be getting screenshot support, and today the EC approved a mobile wallet team up between three European carriers, much to Google’s chagrin.

Sony is putting its massive 84-inch 4K TV up for pre-order tomorrow, T-Mobile has rolled out unlimited 4G data across the country, and Getac has revealed its new Z710 Android tablet, which looks to be capable of taking a few hits. Pre-orders for the Samsung Galaxy Note II have opened in the UK, where the new device has an expected mid-October ship date, and Ubisoft has announced that it will stop implementing always-on DRM in its PC games. Valve has been forced to impose a submission fee for those looking to list something on Steam Greenlight, Epson has unveiled a pair of home projectors, and finally tonight, NASA scientists today delayed the second engine firing of the Juno spacecraft, which will be headed for Jupiter before long.

That’s all for tonight’s Evening Wrap-Up! Remember to check in with us tomorrow, as we’ll be at Amazon’s press event, where it’s expected to reveal a couple of new devices in the Kindle line!

To show off OIS, Nokia played a very impressive ad featuring a lovely couple as they enjoy an evening bike ride. That ad wowed attendees and those watching at home alike, but according to The Verge, it also may have been faked. In the ad, we’re treated to side-by-side comparison reels of the video shot without OIS and the video shot with OIS. Obviously, the video shot without OIS doesn’t look very good, whereas the video shot with OIS activated looks excellent. There isn’t any shakiness, despite the fact that the person filming the scene is riding on a bike.

Or is he? Toward the end of the video, our blonde-haired subject passes by a parked trailer. When she does, we see the reflection of a white van keeping pace with the girl in one of the trailer’s windows. When the video is paused at exactly that point, we can see what appears to be a cameraman recording the scene with something that definitely doesn’t look like a Nokia Lumia 920, along with a lighting rig at the front of the van to make sure that the shot is perfect. Have a look at the screen capture below to see for yourself.

So, it seems that Nokia’s ad may have been helped along by the work of a professional cameraman and crew. Keep in mind though that it’s possible the cameraman was actually using a Lumia 920 in some kind of rig, which would make it appear to be a different type of camera. It’s also important to remember that we’ve already seen optical image stabilization used in other devices, which should give us a good idea of how it functions with the Lumia 920. Still, this revelation does shed a little bit of doubt on the idea that Nokia’s OIS implementation is amazing as it appears in the video. What’s your take on the whole situation?

The 808 PureView uses oversampling to construct incredibly detailed, accurate pictures. Each pixel of its roughly 5-megapixel final stills is made up of the combined data from seven pixels on the sensor itself: by averaging out the results, and discounting anything which is obviously an outlier, Nokia can create a more impressive image than you’d get from, say, a regular 5-megapixel (or even 8-megapixel) traditional camera-phone.

In contrast, the Lumia 920 has just that: a regular 8-megapixel sensor. What’s special is how it’s mounted, with what Nokia calls “floating lens” technology, putting it on a set of actual, physical springs inside the 10.7mm thick chassis. As you can see in the video below, the difference is marked: video is smoother, as if your Lumia 920 is mounted on a tiny Steadycam, while stills should show an improvement in low-light performance, as exposures can be longer without introducing blur from shaky hands.

Update: Nokia has admitted that the video demo it put together was not filmed with the Lumia 920, and that it was only intended to simulate what the OIS system could do. The second video, however, shows an actual side-by-side comparison filmed on the new smartphone.

Unfortunately, what it also means is that none of the 808 PureView’s other ambitious enhancements are present: you don’t get lossless zooming on the Lumia 920, and there’s no sign of Rich Recording for higher quality audio in video clips. Whether the market has heard enough about the 808 to know what they’re missing on the Lumia 920 is questionable, though.

Still, as Nokia’s imaging chief Damien Dinning said earlier in the week, there’s more to PureView than just big sensors. We’ve been waiting for Nokia to show us how it will differentiate its Windows Phones from those of other OEMs – in more ways than just software – for some time, and it’s good to see the Lumia 920 finally deliver on that promise.

The 920 may not have the same 41-megapixels of the 808 PureView, but it does bring a new sensor and lens technology. It can smooth out hand-shake by a so-called “floating lens” system, which works for both stills and video. The latter is recorded in up to 1080p HD.

As for the screen, that’s a Pure Motion HD+ 4.5-inch WXGA higher-than-720p HD panel, with a curved glass cover and clad in a polycarbonate chassis that will be available in yellow, red, white, grey, and black. There’ll also be exclusive Nokia apps, and Nokia Maps integration including offline support with voice turn-by-turn navigation.

Meanwhile, Nokia City Lens will also be built into the Lumia 920, an augmented reality system which will float suggestions for restaurants, entertainment, and other options, on top of a real-world view of the scene ahead. Nokia Maps will also get augmented reality, triggering automatically when you shift the phone from looking ahead to looking down at your feet.

Inside, there’s a 2,000 mAh battery, which Nokia insists is enough for a full “average” day, and which can be recharged using the new Fatboy charging pillow. The dualcore 1.5GHz S4 processor is tipped to be up to 30-percent more battery-efficient than quadcores.

Nokia hasn’t confirmed pricing for the Lumia 920, but has said it will be available pentaband LTE and HSPA+ variants later in 2012.