Nokia's augment reality play

Nokia’s new Lumia phones built in the augmented reality in the core that provides on-screen information about the handset’s surroundings.
Here’s how Nokia describes the software:
“Nokia City Lens is Nokia’s location-based augmented reality application. Using the phone’s camera viewfinder, Nokia City Lens provides an augmented reality overlay view of buildings and instantly highlights places of interest.
It basically turns sight into the next interface for searching the world around you. The app then provides information about each building or landmark in the area giving the user an at-a-glance understanding of what restaurants, museums, shops and others places of interest are nearby.”

As we learned in class, we've seen these types of augmented reality apps before, such as Yelp’s monocle feature and the Layar browser, but a few things stand out when I look at City Lens. Firstly, Nokia is going where only third-party developers have tread before. I can’t think of another handset maker that is putting this type of technology front and center by creating its own app.
Second, Nokia didn’t just build an AR app. Instead, it has integrated the software heavily with the hardware on its new Lumia 920 and then made it available on the older handsets.
To use these types of apps, you need a solid camera system and Nokia surely has that in its Lumia line. The new Lumias use Nokia’s PureView technology, but even the older Lumia devices have very capable sensors. Navigation functionality is important as well and as can you see in the video demo, the City Lens software takes advantage of Nokia’s expertise here. Finally, tying the application to the Lumia’s accelerometer doesn’t just change the display orientation
of the app; it actually dictates which functionality you get from the software.