The Nokia 808 Pureview continues to impress photographically

Ian · #1 10-08-12

I was out this afternoon with the Nokia 808 Pureview smartphone that packs a 41 megapixel camera and Carl Zeiss lens. Here's one of my shots from today:

This was processed in Lightroom 4.1 from an 8MP JPEG, so one of the modes that combines several sensor pixels to make one better quality image pixel. I added some clarity to bring up the cloud definition and also added some vignette.

Just to underline how sharp the camera is on the 808 Pureview here is a zoomed in view of some tree branches:

Ian

Graham_of_Rainham · #2 10-08-12

I've read a few reports on the 808 and they all seem to be saying that the camera is very good.

BUT!

The rest of the "Smart Phone" is well behind the rivals.

What are your thoughts

Ian · #3 11-08-12

Nokia has really improved its Symbian OS with the latest release version called 'Belle', which the 808 Pureview uses. Its main weakness is a lack of range of apps compared to iPhone and Android devices and limited prospect of rich support in the future because of Nokia's emphasis on the Windows Phone platform from now on.

The hardware is very high quality - an excellent OLED touch screen with smooth and damage-resistant Gorilla Glass and the build quality is very good. It's quite a thick phone by today's standards because of the camera but overall I think it's an attractive, solid, and well made smartphone.

If you value camera image quality and aren't too bothered about fancy apps, then the Nokia 808 Pureview will do you proud.

Ian

OlyPaul · #4 11-08-12

I read a article in a Photomag about it and they had nothing but praise for the image quality. It will probably sound the deathnel for compact point and shoot's.

Ian · #5 11-08-12

Nokia must surely be transplanting the camera section into a Windows Phone handset.

I agree that advances like this in smartphones adds pressure to run of the mill compacts, although they still have the advantage of optical zoom and I see more features in compacts, like scene modes and special effects. However, how many compacts have wifi and bluetooth and gps geotagging as standard?

Ian