Nokia 808 PureView

The 808 PureView is the true successor to Nokia's N8, the 12-megapixel cameraphone that has ruled as the undoubted king of phone photography since 2010. As with the N8, the 808’s sensor is larger than standard not only in terms of pixel count but physically as well, necessitating a rather amusing hump on the phone's back to contain the camera meeting. So, before you even pick this handset up, you know you’ll have to concession on two major things: software ecosystem and physical dimensions. But Nokia’s aware of this too, and its release of the 808 PureView in spite of these hurdles signals just how confident the company is in the device’s camera capabilities. To find out if that bullishness has been acceptable .

Hardware:

Nokia’s PureView camera technology has been in the works for more than five years, which is plain to see in the 808 handset’s design. Whereas a 13.9mm thick phone may have been considered slim in 2007, that profile is definitely plump by modern standards, leading Nokia to taper off everything that doesn’t need it and resulting in the unusually shaped device you see before you.

The top third of the phone’s back is occupied by the supersized 41-megapixel sensor, Carl Zeiss optics, a Xenon flash, and the phone’s loudspeaker, all of them covered in a chromed-out projection from the main case. A plastic cover then slopes off from there into a much more predictable phone shape, with the sides curving nicely toward the front. The congruence between this cover and the shell encircling the handset is great. They fit together perfectly and the finish is the same on both: a matte, grippy quality that’s at the same time welcoming to the touch and resistant to scuffs. Pop open the cover — which is rigid and thick sufficient to provide real protection for what lays inside — and you’ll find the 1400mAh battery covering up slots for microSD storage growth and a Micro SIM card. An NFC antenna is build into the inside of the cover.

Display:

 

640 x 360. That’s the resolution of the Nokia N8, the Nokia E7, the Nokia X7, and, unfortunately, the Nokia 808 PureView. The N8 was already behind the Android curve when it came out, what with the Nexus One starting up the move to WVGA (800 x 480), the succeeding E7 and X7 had even less of an reason, and the 808 is all out of reasons for keeping that resolution. Nokia’s distance from the leaders is best illustrated numerically: the 808 PureView gives you 230,400 dots on the screen, whereas a 720p smartphone such as the HTC One X offers 921,600. Another way in which the 808 falls behind the likes of the One X is in not having a laminated screen — meaning Nokia’s screen has a physical gap between the glass surface and the display panel — which is no big deal until you see the profit of lamination in person.

It’s not all destiny and gloominess, however. The 4-inch AMOLED display on the 808 is of the non-Pentile range and doesn’t suffer from the same blue tinging when viewed from the side as you’ll find on Samsung panels. Also an upgrading on Samsung’s technology is the auto-brightness, which works beautifully on the 808, adjusting step by step and imperceptibly as you move between bright and dark locations. Samsung’s AMOLED phones, including the most recent Galaxy S III, have tended to handle this much less elegantly.

Color facsimile on the 808 PureView is done accurately and faithfully, which is an important factor for a device planned primarily for imaging. Blacks are also what you’d expect from an AMOLED screen — deep and looming. It’s just really disappointing that Nokia didn’t match that quality with an suitable resolution. This is a device that can capture 38-megapixel stills and you’re only ever looking at 0.2 of those megapixels at any one time.

Camera:

 

I look at the photos I’ve taken with the 808 PureView and keep asking myself, where is the noise? Nokia, what did you do with the noise? Of course, if you dig around, you’ll find some manifestations of particle and artifacting, and yes, the 808 PureView has a limited full of life range, but on the whole, this feeler at 5 megapixels is simply untouchable. I say that with respect to any phone challenger, including the elder N8, but it’s also true vis-à-vis most point-and-shoot cameras. The 808 PureView is that good.

Battery life, reception, and  audio:

 The 808 PureView can survive for days, even while continuously displaying the time on its sleep screen. On the other hand, start cranking out 1080p videos or shooting with the Xenon flash and you could drain the entire battery between breakfast and lunch. As has been a reliable hallmark of Symbian phones, the 808 PureView is usually very efficient with its energy, making the rather small 1400mAh battery last longer than it should, but there’s little you can do to stop intensive processing tasks from devouring it. As noted above, the 808’s 1.3GHz processor is barely powerful enough to keep up with the rigors of PureView oversampling, guarantee that you’ll be running it at full throttle any time you get trigger-happy with the shutter button. Games and video playback have less of an impact, though you clearly won’t be taxing this phone with the likes of Infinity Bladeor Shadowgun. Typically, I got through about a day and a half between needing to recharge the 808.