Nokia has announced a new camera phone, the Nokia 808 PureView, with a whopping 41-megapixel sensor and a Carl Zeiss, lens as it tries to push the boundaries of what is possible in mobile picture-taking. 

In a move you will probably think is a typo, the Finnish company has launched the new handset to show what it is planning for future devices in the Nokia range.

With a sensor that size, the 808 PureView can obviously take massive pictures, which can be printed in huge formats - banners, etc. Of course, you probably won't want to all the time, so it features multiple options for image size, with standard resolution settings of 2/3, 5 and 8-megapixels, and a high resolution setting of up to 38-megapixels.

The picture on the back wall at the Nokia press conference was taken with the 808 PureView phone

However, the main reason given by Nokia for adopting a 41-megapixel sensor is not to take enormous stills, but to allow you to make great use of a 4x zoom without any loss of definition. There's also 1080p video recording on board for good measure, with the first outing of Nokia's Rich Recording functionality which allows you to capture CD-quality audio.

"The PureView doesn't compete with the SLR," Niklas Savander, EVP at Nokia, covering Brand, Marketing, Sales, Supply Chain, Customer Care and Information Technology, told Pocket-lint. "People aren't actually going to keep 38-megapixel pictures. but it shows what we can do."

As to why the new device is Symbian rather than Windows Phone, Savander explained: "This [the 808 PureView] has been in the works for a very long time. It runs on Symbian, because that was our platform when we started this project."

The phone will also include Dolby Digital Plus sound quality. 

"With this device we are setting new standards whatever you do," Nokia said. 

The camera phone will be launched in May and cost €480.