The numbers behind the Nokia 808 PureView do boggle the mind. Or at least they should. The populist tech media has leapt up on the '41 Megapixel' figure and generally either misunderstood why it needs to be so high or questioned whether it's real in the first place. Yet that stat is only incidental in the bigger story.

A good read. (Thanks @anig for the link.)

Of the claims for a startup that says it focusses the picture *after* it has been taken: "I still don't understand how you de-focus light that has already passed through a lens (and there is a lens in front of this array of tiny lenses) or how having one lens per pixel gets you the direction of the ray. Because throwing away that information is what lenses are for."<br />
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It's either brilliant - Google brilliant - or it's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nimslo">Nimslo</a> all over again.

"The most plausible reason is that Cisco wants the technology in the Flip more than it wants the business. Cisco is, after all, in the videoconferencing business, and the Flip’s video quality—for its size and price—was amazing. Maybe, in fact, that was Cisco’s plan all along. Buy the beloved Flip for its technology, then shut it down and fire 550 people."