Apple has hired Nokia’s head of Lumia photography

Apple’s iPhone has a solid reputation for its image processing abilities, which helps it have some excellent cameras, but the PureView-branded Lumia smartphones arguably have the best camera sensors on a smartphone. That’s why Cupertino is smiling right now, knowing that Lumia photography lead Ari Partinen will make his way to the big Apple in June:

Today will be my last day working for the amazing #Lumia family. In June I will start a new chapter in Cupertino, California. Much love!

— Ari Partinen (@Partinen) May 9, 2014

The Verge points out that Partinen is listed as a co-author on a paper that details Nokia’s PureView oversampling technology. PureView shrinks a very large image into one that is smaller and higher quality due to its pixel oversampling and on-chip image processing capabilities. The other authors, head of imaging technologies Juha Alakarhu, senior benchmarking specialist Tero Vuori, and head of imaging Eero Salmelin, are currently at Microsoft due to the company’s buyout of Nokia’s phone division.

According to his LinkedIn profile, Partinen also worked with “mobile imaging starting from camera module production all the way to the final image quality tuning and verification” on cameras like the Nokia N8 and 808 PureView. Following the 808 PureView, the PureView name and technology made its way to Windows Phone, starting with the Lumia 920, with the Lumia Icon serving as the most recent PureView-branded Nokia smartphone.

Partinen has yet to reveal what his position will be at Apple, though the Lumia line is known for pushing camera technology boundaries. The Lumia 920 introduced an optical-stabilized sensor for the first time in a phone, while the 808 PureView and Lumia 1020 brought with them 41-megapixel sensors that arguably produced some of the best images taken by a smartphone.