Nokia 808 PureView Mobiles Compare - Nokia 808 PureView Mobile Specifications Comparison

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful

By Anoop Kammaran

10 January 2013

Best Phone with Camera ever.

Pros:

Best camera on a mobile phone ever.
Best sound system on a mobile phone ever.

Cons:

The size of the device.
Required Micro-SIM with PUK2 feature. So, you might want to get your SIM replaced when you buy this phone.

Summary:
First of all, the pricing mentioned in the above article is wrong. The phone only costs around 25000 these days.

First of all, I don't quite agree with many of the people talking about Symbian OS as a bad feature of the phone. Other than the fact that it doesn't have the hype which Android and iOS is having, the OS is fine and its speciality is that it can run smoothly on low hardware specifications. Thats something which neither Android nor iOS can do. I mean if you really need the high performance of multi-core processors, you have to admit that its not a phone that you are after, but rather a mobile/compact workstation with the ability to make calls. This one has got a 1.3GHz processor and I find it sufficiently fast in the sense that I haven't yet experienced any kind of delays/lags in this phone. The Asphalt 4 game is preinstalled and its performance is as good as my android phone with dual core and tegra 2. So, if Symbian can give me that performance of dual core with dual core GPU on a single core processor, that is something Nokia can be quite proud about. For those who didn't understand any of this, the result of being able to have performance on low hardware spec is that your battery lasts longer.

Anyways, regarding the 41MP camera. This is not as good as your would expect. I mean the images are great only if you have the proper lighting. With low light, even when using the phone's xenon flash, I don't seem to get a clear image at all. So, it looks to me like the camera only gives you the quality(thats pretty much as good as a high end DSLR, but with much more details from the scene) when you have the right lighting(outdoors and studio). Also, the camera cannot save the image in full 41MP(its a circular sensor and based on aspect ratio, it gives you a rectangle from the sensed info). Instead it gives you a choice between 34(16:9) and 38(4:3) in the full resolution mode. Regarding the Pureview, I was quite skeptical because being a student on Digital Image Processing, the idea of sampling at 41MP and saving to 2/5/8MP seems stupid because by doing that you end up throwing away a lot of pixels and by throwing away those pixels you end up loosing many of the fine details of the scene which you are trying to capture. This is exactly whats happening with Pureview technology. But for non-professionals, this is okay because they don't quite bother with the fine details. When you capture the same scene in full resolution and the pureview mode, and try viewing the images in its actual size in your monitor, you should be able to compare and see the amount of information that you are loosing. As far as I can see, the only advantage of the Pureview technology is the ability to do lossless digital zoom, even though its very restricted(untill the pixel density becomes same as that of the sensor(in other words its like taking a large image and then cutting out just a part of it, which gives you the illusion of a zoom; there is no actual zooming involved at all), beyond which you'l get noise because of duplication of pixels as part of the scaling operation. Inspite of all that, I should congratulate Nokia for making the 41MP sensor available for this price.

Regarding Music playback, I am happy about this feature because I have seen many phones and nothing sounds as good as this one. Probably the only phone that comes close to this is the old Nokia 5800 Music Xpress, which is why I wish Nokia had advertised this by calling it Music Xpress 2 or something like that. The built-in speaker sounds absolutely amazing and gives you the same quality sound as the 5800. However, for the best sound, do connect a headphone or an external speaker and thats when you will appreciate the sound chip in the phone, which is quite frankly the best I have seen on a phone.

Pros:

1) Great for Music

2) Its a Nokia phone. So, thats pretty much self explanatory.

3) Great pricing considering the 41MP camera.

Cons:

1) The only disadvantage of the Symbian OS is the lack of that many apps as android or iOS. One disadvantage in particular for me that that google stopped its support for the Symbian Google Maps app, when they released android. But Nokia maps is a good alternative to google.

2) The phone is quite bulky in the sense that its pretty much as big as the iPhone 5, but wider because of the camera.

Conclusion:

1) If you are looking for a camera that takes great photos no matter what, then you should be getting a camera rather than this phone. Even though this has the 41MP sensor, all the problems in an average camera in a phone still exists, like no room for actual zoom, lighting issues, etc. So, DON'T buy this phone if camera is your priority, unless you have ways to ensure adequate lighting of the scene(good for studio use).

2) If you are looking for a phone which has a good camera and has a good sound system, I would highly recommend this phone.