Nokia Launches 41-MP Camera Phone At MWC 2012

In an attempt to revive Nokia against the swelling perception that it's a smartphone laggard, the company announced a slew of new phones at Mobile World Congress 2012 in Barcelona, Spain Monday. One of the many phones announced isn't quite a smartphone. But it does connect to Microsoft's Exchange Server. Another of the new phones runs the Symbian operating system and comes with a 41-megapixel camera. No. That's not a typo. InformationWeek editorial director Fritz Nelson filed a video report on the new lineup. (Watch it below.)

Nokia spent a significant part of its press conference on the Asha series of phones (the Asha 202, 203 and 302). These are known more widely as "feature phones," as they sit at the very bottom of end of the smartphone spectrum, having only some basic smartphone functionality beyond that of being able to make and receive calls.

The Finnish company also announced the Nokia Lumia 610, a lower-end phone running Microsoft's Windows Phone operating system, to round out its lineup of Windows Phones.

But the day's big news for Nokia was the introduction of the Symbian-based 808 PureView. Harkening back to the days when some of Nokia's Symbian-based camera phones seemed to be more camera than they were phone, the 808 has a 41-megapixel sensor on board. Then sensor enables the user to choose from various megapixel options when taking a picture (e.g., 5 MP, 8 MP, 38 MP, etc.). This theoretically gives photographers more pixels to work with after zooming and cropping.

[ See our complete Mobile World Congress 2012 coverage, live from the mobile industry's hottest event. ]