Camera technology is really surprising with excellent
photo and video capturing. It was a pity that Nokia decided to release it in such
an unimpressive phone.
Price: $701 without SIM ($842 including
VAT). Contract price is not available.
Provider: www..com
Nokia
808 PureView
When 808 PureView was first introduced at World
Mobile Expo at February. There were surprises from journalists by the time camera’s
details appeared. Putting 41MP sensor into the smartphone, Nokia won an
impressive achievement: this was the camera owning highest sensor among not
only smartphones but also professional DSLR camera.
Now, we want to make it clear that 808
PureView, by no mean, can compete with specialized DSLRs. Its sensor’s size is
a downsize, it owns 1/1.2inch size and looks smaller than APS-C sensor in most SLR
consumer-level camera, not including 35mm-equivalent sensors plus FX format of pricier
cameras.
However, in comparison with any other
smartphone (and consumer-level models), it is such a big sensor. Once you start
loading images from it to calibration program, you will feel no worry about either
noise or low image quality. In Full Resolution mode which creates 38MP or 34MP
images, depending on crop ratio) and in standard lighting, images produced by
808 PureView are really amazing. Despite small sensor, images look jubilant and
detailed.
You may be attracted to get along with full
resolution but its image’s size will soon consume 16GB storage of PureView. In
full 38MP resolution, our test JPEG images had sizes range from 10MB to 16MB
per image.
In fact, such large images aren’t necessary
unless you need to create giant pin-ups or show off your photos on Flickr. That’s
why there’s another mode: PureView. Here come 3 settings for 8MP, 5MP and 3MP
images. In these modes, a technique named pixel oversampling is deployed to
combine groups of pixel in attempt of removing noise and color diffraction that
raise difficulties for most smartphones and cameras with small sensor.
It was also effective. We did capture some
low-lit images and get impressed by the result having less noise and speckle
and you could adjust ISO up to 1600 in case the image looked a little blurred. Shooting
at low-resolution mode activates another trick of PureView – lossless digital
zooming which can be monitored via volume switch. In 8MP mode, it brings 3x
zoom yet still retains quality.
Above is all not PureView’s strength. This
smartphone catch vivid colors especially in PureView mode. Besides, f/2.4
aperture and 8.02mm focal length can create surprising depth of field. Don’t
expect any blur of a good SLR camera but it is still better than any smartphone
at present.
It must be ignorant if we don’t mention
video quality, 808 PureView makes smooth and splendid scenes with continuous autofocus
and 4x zooming by lossless digital zooming in Full HD, and 6x zooming in 720p
resolution.
There’re only two controls that we liked:
autofocus which was not always reliable – we felt that we often needed help
from touch-sensitive focusing to sharpen everything and there was seeable optical
distortion in full resolution with a lot of straight lines.
The phone
Despite that, 808 PureView’s camera is
simple the best. It’s the biggest disappointment that the type of phone Nokia
decided to introduce its amazing technology with. First, 808 PureView is not
beautiful at all. It’s short and fat plus its 18.4mm thickest part is where the
convex big camera lies yet the case feels 14.7mm thick near the bottom. This
product weighs 172g and although, which doesn’t sound much though it’s
recognizable despite being in your pocket.
808
PureView’s camera is simply the best for smartphone
Regarding hardware, there’s not much to
show off. Processor is 1.3GHz ARM unit. There’re 512MB of RAM and 16GB of
internal storage plus 1 micro-SD slot for additional 32GB. The 4inch screen is
covered by anti-scratch Gorilla Glass and it appears quite luminously with
337cd/m2 brightness. Though screen resolution is low (360x640), an astonishing decision
based on the phone’s main purpose which is to capture photos and view
high-quality images.
We can live with that if 808 PureView gets
interesting during use but it runs Nokia Belle (which was earlier called
Symbian) whose mother company refused to adopt. With reference to techs, Nokia
Belle is very strong and a great improvement, based on what appeared before,
with many wallpapers and Android-styled utilities plus one simple and boring program
executor. Furthermore, we loved that way Nokia, by default, installs Microsoft
Office Mobile onto the device plus one PowerPoint app allowing for viewing and
adjusting files and versions (of World and Excel) enabling user to create, view
or edit documents.
Symbian continued to be the standard of
efficiency – after our 24-hour battery check, 808 PureView still had 80% of
battery runtime, which was remarkable. In case heavy apps weren’t loaded, this
phone could stand more than 2 days. Adding Twitter and Facebook accounts, capturing
photos and videos, battery capacity would decrease faster. Averagely, we could experience
the phone for one day and a half.
It is easily seen that Nokia made a jumped
to Windows Phone because this operating system is not nice. Firstly, default
keyboard is the worst that we have ever used for long time. It can be replaced
with Swype though this also has problem with PureView, obstructing auto-completing
search fields.
The OS has some little inconsistences. Gallery
app lets you upload photos to Facebook, or Flickr for instance. In case of
needing to upload contents to Twitter, you have to do this separately via Nokia
Social app, which gathers feeds of your friends from Facebook and Twitter.
If you want to read your Twitter feed fully
from the app, you must type one tweet or update status then press Menu button
and All Activity option. Adding one Gmail account, according to common method only
synchronizes your mail – not contact or work schedule – and doesn’t provide
option for distributing emails when they come. The shortest time for update is
5 minutes.
Meanwhile, general performance is medium-low.
Running SunSpider JavaScript test led to 4211ms, lower than your average
Android device. Viewing media webs felt slow and bulky and for some games
downloaded from Nokia Store, only Angry Birds worked smoothly.
Verdict
Final matters relate price and
availability. When this article was being written, no British provider sold 808
PureView – and RPP was $842 (without SIM), putting it in jeopardy. For a
smartphone, we should consider such money for a mobile device owning low
resolution and second-rank operating system. If you are looking for an
excellent camera, it’s better to save more money for a SLR despite the phone’s
latest features and stunning quality.
Taking all aspect into account, we like
Nokia 808 PureView. We give our high respect to the way Nokia spent money on
technology and this had extremely good result. Though, this goodness won’t last
for long before Nokia knows how to put it in another appropriate smartphone –
maybe a Windows Phone 8 model due to appear by yearend – and when that appears,
the product won’t be such thing hard to be sold.
Total: 4/5
Performance: 4/5
Features and design: 4/5
Value: 3/5
Nokia
Belle is a big improvement for Symbian.
Main specs
ARM 11 1.3GHz processor
512MB of RAM
16GB storage
4inch TFT display
360x640 resolution; Bluetooth
Wi-Fi 802.11n
4MP sensor
1080p video
NFC
1400mAh Li-ion battery
2-year RTB warranty
60x18.4x124mm size
172g weight
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