Nokia holding event on February 13th in Barcelona

Adnan just tipped us that Nokia is holding an invitation-only event at Mobile World Congress on the 13th of February, which happens to be the Sunday before MWC officially kicks off. This in addition to the event scheduled for the 11th that Stephen Elop mentioned in his comments on Nokia’s Q4 earnings call indicate that  Nokia has a lot to say/show us in the coming weeks.

Possible Announcement?

Having done some late night snooping, a commenter on the mobile-review forums left a link to some work being done with the camera drivers for  the iCDK MeeGo reference design . A very interesting bug mentioned is a discrepancy between the image processor and the  camera sensor output. The camera sensor mentioned has a maximum resolution of 4416*3312 pixels or 14.6 megapixels. Further searching highlights both 720p and 1080p video encoding and decoding on an Intel Medfield SOC. There’s no information that I could find about the specific manufacturer of the sensor but a bit of looking around highlights OmniVision’s 14.6 Megapixel sensor as having the exact resolution an similar capabilities as the sensor mentioned in this report.  The sensor uses “backside illumination technology” to provide comparable performance to sensors using larger pixel sizes in a smaller package. (individual pixel size in this sensor is 1.4 microns on a sensor of size 1/2.33″” as opposed to ~1.75 microns in both the N8 and iPhone 4).

What’s even more intriguing is the fact that there is little to no information outside of these bug reports and logs that characterizes the capabilities of Intel’s SOC. Even searching for information on the GPU and image processors on the SOC have proven fruitless. What we DO know is that any GPU will be based on a similar architecture to the PowerVR series of GPU’s found in the iPhone, iPad and Sony’s recently announced NGP.

Let’s hope Nokia’s announcements in the coming weeks aren’t a total waste of time and energy eh! 🙂

Tags: Intel, Medfield, MeeGo, MWC, Nokia

Category: Event