Leaked image teases Nokia phone with five cameras

HMD appears to be working on an impressive camera array for a future Android-powered Nokia handset. Leaked design sketches and images hint that we could be about to see a Nokia-branded phone with five cameras on the rear. The penta-lens setup first appeared in rumors about a Nokia 10 device earlier this year, and now an alleged photo has leaked of the handset.

The camera module includes five lenses arranged in what looks like a circle, with prominent Zeiss branding. HMD Global, the Finnish company that licensed the rights to produce Nokia phones, teamed up with Zeiss last year to reunite the Nokia and Zeiss brands for the Android era. HMD has started to use Zeiss optics in its latest Android handsets, and the lens maker has even patented a miniaturized zoom camera system that looks very similar to this leak.

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It’s not clear from the leaked images alone what this five camera setup would be used for on a Nokia device. Huawei launched its P20 Pro earlier this year with three rear cameras, which support 3x optical zoom or 5x hybrid zoom. LG is also rumored to be considering five cameras (three at the back and two at the front) for its next flagship phone. Five camera sensors could certainly assist in any zoom capability, but they’re likely to do far more than just that. Nokia has a history of camera work, dating back to the 808 PureView and Lumia 1020 cameras, and more recently with the company’s Ozo VR camera.

HMD recently acquired the PureView brand from Microsoft, so we could be about to see a new Nokia PureView phone. That doesn’t mean we’ll see the same image sampling technologies from the 808 or Lumia 1020, as most of Nokia’s talented PureView engineers left the company when Microsoft acquired Nokia’s phone business and killed it off. Apple even hired Nokia’s Lumia photography expert. Still, if a Nokia-branded phone with five cameras is genuine, it could be an interesting entry into the competitive smartphone market.