The new high-end camera flagship phone of the Finnish company, the Nokia 808 PureView has already set a new standard in mobile photography ever since it was announced last February. The phone, equipped with Nokia’s proprietary PureView technology, is being claimed to be the best camera phone ever and we got to try it out for a bit.
The phone itself is a somewhat fat one and has a close resemblance to the Nokia 5800. It has the three obligatory physical buttons ““ call, menu, & end ““ on the front, as well as a 4-inch contoured screen. The resolution is still a 640×360 one, a standard for Symbian devices.
The curvy body is made of polycarbonate plastic, and it feels nice to the touch. The back houses the prominent bulge around the camera, as well as the removable back cover. The back cover feels tough, not flimsy as found on thin high-end phones ““ you can feel that toughness when trying to pry it off from the phone. There’s a dedicated camera shutter key on the side, as well as the volume rocker and lock switch which is pretty similar to that of the N8.
The 808 PureView runs on the good ol’ Symbian Belle FP1 operating system and for me, it has not changed that much since I last used a Symbian phone. Nevertheless, I can say it is fast and fluid. The homescreen stayed the same but Nokia added a couple new widgets.
Finally, let’s move on to the camera. As we all know, it boasts a monster 41-megapixel camera with a large sensor which dwarfs the rest of the competition (in terms of mobile cameras) and even tries to rival some of DSLRs. I’m no photography expert but I can tell you that it is really “˜that good’. Check out our few sample photos taken with the phone.
The second and fourth image above is a crop at 100% zoom level from the first and third image which is captured on full 8 and 38 megapixel resolution respectively. At that zoom level, you can still see good amount of details without too much noise. I took a sample video at full 1080p but unfortunately they forgot to copy it to my flash drive.
Anyway, here’s a group shot of the Nokia 808 PureView along with other smartphones: Samsung Galaxy S III, Nokia Lumia 800, and Nokia Lumia 900. Even it has a 4-inch screen, it still appears to be smaller than even the Lumia 800.
There are also a few accessories available for the phone like the hard case which has a cover for the camera bulge, an HDMI cable, and a tripod mount if you really want to do some serious photography with the phone.
There you have it, our brief and quick hands-on with the Nokia 808 PureView. If you’re looking forward to get this, then here’s the good news. It is now available at select Nokia Stores nationwide since last week. Bad news, the stocks are very limited and it’s now sold-out at some stores. There will be new stocks arriving by July and if I remember correctly you can reserve a unit by visiting a Nokia Store. SRP is P26,550.
Nokia 808 PureView Specs: |
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41 megapixel camera sensor with Nokia Pureview Pro imaging technology |
Carl Zeiss optics |
f2.4 aperture |
1.3 GHz single-core processor |
Symbian Belle Feature Pack 1 |
4-inch AMOLED ClearBlack screen with 640×360 (nHD) resolution |
Gorilla Glass |
512 MB RAM |
16 GB internal memory |
Full HD 1080p video recording @ 30fps |
HDMI, DLNA, USB On-The-Go, NFC |
FM Transmitter |
SRP: Php26,550 |