Juha Alakarhu, one of the guys in charge of the team that created the PureView camera technology that was the hallmark of Nokia's Lumia Windows phones, is finding a new home at Axon. The company is a global leader in connected law enforcement technologies, and will be creating a new imaging engineering team, led by none other than Juha himself.
"For the last decade, our team has revolutionized the imaging industry, and the revolution will continue at Axon," says Alakarhu. "The team and I are excited for the opportunity to apply our skills to help ensure Axon can deliver the highest quality cameras to law enforcement across the world."
Indeed, the team has changed imaging in a lot of ways. The Nokia PureView 808 was the first to include a 41-megapixel camera, and it used oversampling to take a high resolution image and condense it into a smaller one, which was more optimized for sharing. The larger image remained, so you could crop it without losing quality. The Nokia Lumia 1020 had a similar 41-megapixel camera, although that device was powered by Windows Phone, and it's still regarded by many as one of the best smartphone camera on the market despite being four and a half years old.
Nokia's Devices and Services division was later purchased by Microsoft, and Microsoft eventually let go of everyone working on mobile. Alakarhu headed back to Nokia to work on the company's 360-degree camera project called OZO. Unfortunately, the $60,000 camera was killed off by the company in October.
"We are thrilled to bring this talented group of imaging engineers on board,” says Axon CEO and founder Rick Smith. "We never stop trying to improve upon the technology we produce for our customers. We know this team will take it to another level, creating next generation breakthroughs for our body-worn and in-car cameras."
Juha's new team will be based out of Tampere, Finland, and will focus on wearable and in-car cameras, as well as creating a platform that leverages augmented and virtual reality, as well as artificial intelligence. Neowin wishes him the best of luck on his new venture.
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