With its twelve-megapixel camera and imaging capabilities that rival stand-alone point-and-shoots, Nokia’s N8 has been the cameraphone to beat since its introduction earlier this year. A recent rumor says that Nokia is working on a spiritual successor, with plans to get this new Symbian model out sometime in Q2 of next year.

The big news for the phone’s camera, at least according to these rumors, is that it will have a hardware optical zoom. The N8 already sacrificed thinness for its camera, so the bulk of an optical zoom has us concerned about just how thick this new model might end up. There’s no particular details available regarding sensor size or megapixel count, only that the sensor will be larger than the N8′s 1/1.83-inch.

The rest of the purported specs aren’t too surprising for a modern Symbian device, like a 1GHz processor and 512MB of RAM. The 3.5-inch Clear Black screen does sound a little unusual, though, forgoing the standard nHD resolution for WVGA (and likely requiring a new OS update to handle it).

While it’s great to see smartphones still being designed with a focus on photography, does it really make sense to relegate this new hardware to Symbian?

Source: Unwired View