Earlier this morning, Nokia debuted their 808 PureView phone… featuring a revolutionary 41 megapixel camera. But, I would almost go as far as to say it is a bad move for the cell phone and imaging industry.

Megapixels != Better Image Quality

!= is another way of saying… does not equal.

Congrats to the Nokia camp for cramming a 41mp sensor into a such a tiny space, but it really does nothing but escalate the false truth that more MP are better. By using an f/2.4 lens, they claim the camera phone will have a smaller signal-to-noise ratio than its counterparts, which is nice on paper, but yet to be proved.

For a frame of reference, our Canon 5D MKII has 21.1 megapixels on a full frame sensor. We’ve made production prints using ISO 3200, with no problems. Being the 808 has twice the pixel density on a smaller sensor, we’d put ISO usability around 800, which isn’t something to brag about.

The iPhone 4S and the Nokia 808 both share a f/2.4 lens. The difference between the two… 8mp versus 41mp, but I’d be interested in seeing a side-by-side comparison of the two. My guess is they aren’t to far off from each other.