The cameras in our phones have been getting better over time; 5-megapixel and now 8-megapixel cameras are commonplace in high-end phones today. Although I've seen some devices that were really cameras with phones built in (instead of the reverse), the problem has always been getting good quality images into a thin smartphone.

The cameras in our phones have been getting better over time; 5-megapixel and now 8-megapixel cameras are commonplace in high-end phones today. Although I've seen some devices that were really cameras with phones built in (instead of the reverse), the problem has always been getting good quality images into a thin smartphone.

Nokia recently took what, to me, was an unexpected move: It added a 41MP sensor to its new PureView 808 smartphone. The result is a camera that takes better pictures than other smartphones and, in some ways, better pictures than the vast majority of point-and-shoot cameras. The company showed poster-sized prints of images taken with the phone camera which looked incredibly vivid.

I was curious about how this actually worked in practice, so Nokia's Ari Partinen walked me through the device. The phone has a 1/1.2-inch sensor, which is notably larger than the sensors in other phones and indeed much larger than what you'll find in compact cameras. The camera also has a Carl Zeiss optics lens.

It never actually takes 41MP images, however, in part because the file sizes would be too big and in part because it actually uses the additional megapixels to capture more information, which it then turns into better standard images.

In the automatic mode that comes standard, the Nokia 808 takes 5MP images. In this mode, about seven of the sensor's native 1.4 micron pixels work together as a single "superpixel" to create images that simply look better. This is particularly evident in samples taken in low-light.

It also has a creative mode, which offers a lot more options. Photographers can take 16:9 format images at 34 megapixels and 4:3 images at 38 megapixels; these options seem particularly useful for later cropping and in zooming images. The file size, though, is much larger. The ISO can be set up to 1600 and the exposure and the white balance settings can be set. Photographers can use continuous autofocus or tap on a particular part of the image to focus. That's much more flexibility than you'd get with most phone cameras.

The camera has two different flashes: a Xenon light for quick shots and a LED light that is better for video shots.

It has a number of video camera modes, including the ability to take up to 1080p video at 30, 25, 24, or 15 frames per second; as well as 720p or VGA video.

The sensor allows up to 4X zoom while in 1080p mode and much more zoom in lower-resolution modes.

I was also impressed by the sound recording of the camera. Nokia added a "rich recording" mode and incorporated better microphones, which really does seem to make a big difference in video recordings.

It's a Symbian phone—a bit surprising in an age when Symbian is mostly taking a back seat to Windows Phone at Nokia. (Nokia said it would consider adding such features to its Lumia line running Windows Phone later.)

It looks to have a good number of Nokia apps, but the user interface isn't at the level of Android or Windows Phone these days. Still, it's a quite powerful phone that will sell for 450 euros, not counting taxes or subsidies.

My colleague Sasha Segan wrote a hands-on look at the phone itself, but as I tried the camera features out (in the admittedly limited setting of the show booth), I was pretty impressed.