Ex-Nokia and Apple camera expert joins Microsoft’s Surface Team

Ex-Apple employee Ari Partinen announced on Twitter that he has joined the Microsoft Surface Imaging team. A well-known name in the mobile camera industry, he’s worked for Nokia from 2017 to 2014 as an Image Quality engineer and later as the Lumia Photography Lead. After that he was hired by Apple for their camera team as a Senior Imaging Engineer from 2014 to 2015 and a Senior Manager of camera validation and testing from 2015 to 2018.

Ari Partinen has worked on some incredible camera performers in the past. His work on the Nokia 808 PureView and its Windows Phone successor, the Lumia 1020, is his most notable accomplishment. Both devices were innovators in the camera department with their 41MP cameras breaking the limits of how good a phone camera could be.

Since leaving Apple, he has been working as a Senior Manager at AAC Technologies, an electrical and electronic manufacturing company, until now.

The Surface lineup has not been the greatest in the camera department. The Surface Duo had a disappointing 11MP camera on the front and none on the back. The device also had some other major flaws in the software, performance and battery departments. The Surface Duo’s starting price of $1,199 and the lack of 5G support didn’t help the company’s new mobile endeavor either.

With the dual-screen device’s successor already in development, Ari Partinen could bring big improvements in camera performance in the Surface Duo 2. It is not yet clear if he is going to work only on the Duo or also on other Surface devices, like the successors to the well-known Surface Pro 7, Surface Laptop 3 and Surface Book 3 devices.

The Nokia devices that Ari Partinen has worked on had innovative cameras, more megapixels and greater zoom performance. These achievements meant a jump in picture quality, especially in pixel quality, zooming and low-light performance. Many of the concepts these cameras experimented with are commonplace in high-end phones today.

The Surface Duo 2 is expected to improve on its predecessor’s shortcomings, like the poor camera, software and battery performance. The lack of 5G is also expected to be addressed in the next generation of the device. It is not yet known when the device is going to be announced.