Nokia's Damian Dinning and PureView for the Lumia 920

Camera quality and features have been promoted by Nokia as key differentiation for its Windows Phone 8 handsets vs. competition from Apple (AAPL) and Android hardware OEMs.

Nokia's imaging chief Damian Dinning will leave the company on Nov. 30, 2012. He has been in charge of image and photography since 2004, and instrumental in the development of Windows Phone imaging software. Dinning's background includes roles at Minolta and Eastman Kodak, and Nikon.

Nokia's efforts to distinguish its smartphones with advanced photographic capabilities, introducing the PureView 808 with a 41MP rear-facing camera was Damian Dinning's PureView phase I development. His phase II was to improve low-light photography and eliminating camera shake for PureView for the Lumia 920.



With this technology, its pictures were limited to 8.7-megapixels, and rather than pixel oversampling was used. Custom optics was developed to increase the aperture size to f/2.0 which was paired with a backside-illuminated CMOS and a high pulse power LED. The above image is taken with the PureView for the Lumia 920,  while below, there's a comparison shot taken by a Samsung Galaxy S III.




The comparison shows the 920 does take much brighter, better images in low-light situations.

According to Daniel Cooper, the company customized Optical Image Stabilization (OIS) to reduce camera shaking. The OIS detects a camera's movement with a built-in gyroscope, compensating accordingly. Te entire optical assembly is moved mechanically to maintain parity with what you're shooting, which it claims is 50 percent more effective in reducing shake.

The following video compares OIS and non-OIS shot.

Omote 3D Printing Photo Booth

The world's first 3D-printer photo booth will be open on November 24th for business. Omote 3D, a pop-up store in Tokyo’s Harajuku district, is now creating portraits of customers via a 3D printer after scanning by the store.

Then it will transform the likenesses of persons into tiny, anatomically accurate, full-length figurines. 

Omote 3D offers discounts on parties of three or more, listed in the following table, but it’s still relatively expensive. For example, a single 10cm figurine of one person will set you back 21,000 yen, or $262 USD.

Table 1 The price of 3D Printed Figure

	Solo	2 persons	3 people or more  (per person)
S (up to 10 cm)	¥ 21,000	¥ 42,000	+ ¥ 16,000 people ×
M (up to 15 cm)	¥ 32,000	¥ 64,000	+ ¥ 21,000 people ×
L (up to 20cm)	¥ 42,000	¥ 84,000	+ ¥ 32,000 people ×

Q3 2012 Smartphone OS Market Share and Growth

According to new figures released from analyst firm IDC, Android shipments reached 136 million units in Q3 2012, which accounts for 75% of the 181.1 million shipments during the quarter. The 91.5% year-over-year growth was nearly double the overall market growth rate of 46.4%. 

iOS came in second place, but was the only other mobile operating system to claim double-digit market share in the quarter with 14.9% and 57.3% year-over-year growth rate. Note, however, that the iPhone 5 was released late in the quarter, and the full impact of its sales aren’t felt yet. But without a splashy new OS-driven feature like Siri in 2011 and FaceTime in 2010, the iPhone 5 relied on its larger, but not wider, screen and LTE connectivity to drive growth.

It is interesting that Microsoft Windows Mobile operating system surged 140 percent from last year, but only holds 2 percent of the total market share. With the launch of Windows Phone 8, it may performance better.

Other mobile OS, such as BlackBerry, Symbian, Linux, all are losting ground. 

Total Android units shipped totaled 0.7 million in 2008, but has grown to 333.6 million units year-to-date.