Nokia 808 PureView

When the 808 PureView was first unveiled at the Mobile World Congress show back in February, there were audible gasps from journalists as details of the camera emerged. In squeezing a 41-megapixel sensor into a phone, Nokia had pulled off a staggering achievement: not only was this the highest resolution camera available in a smartphone today, but it also has a higher resolution than any professional SLR.

Now, let’s get one thing straight. The 808 PureView is in no way comparable to high-end SLRs in terms of the quality of pictures it produces – it doesn’t have the power, flexibility or lens quality. The size of its sensor is one limiting factor: it measures 1/1.2in across, smaller than the APS-C sensors in most consumer SLRs, let alone the FX format 35mm equivalent sensors of more expensive cameras.

Still, compared to any other smartphone (and consumer compacts), it’s a big sensor. Once you start loading pictures from it into your photo editor of choice, you’ll quickly find any worries over noise or quality start fading away.

In Full Resolution mode (which produces 38- or 34-megapixel images depending on aspect ratio) and in good light, the pictures produced by the 808 PureView are nothing short of astonishing. Despite the small lens, and photosites that are crammed onto the sensor like mackerel in a trawler hold, pictures are crisp and bursting with detail.

You might be tempted to stick with full resolution for the sheer hell of it, but the size of the images it produces will soon start to jam up the PureView’s 16GB of integrated storage. At the full 38 megapixels, the test JPEGs we shot ranged from 10MB to 16MB each.

For the full, 38-megapixel resolution version of this image, click here
To download a zip file with two extra full resolution images, click here

Practically, such huge images aren’t really necessary either, unless you plan on producing wall-sized enlargements on a regular basis, or like showing off on Flickr. That’s why there’s another mode, PureView, with three settings that produce 8-, 5- and 3-megapixel images. In this mode a technique called pixel oversampling is used, which gangs together groups of pixels in a bid to eradicate the grain and colour noise that afflicts most small-sensor smartphones and cameras.

It works, too: we snapped a few low-light pictures and were very impressed with the results. The lack of grain and colour speckles is something to behold, and you can adjust the ISO speed up to 1600 if you find your shots are too blurry. Shooting at lower resolution also enables the PureView’s other party trick – lossless digital zoom, controlled via the volume rocker. In 8-megapixel mode this gives a 3x zoom with no loss in resolution.

Take a step back and it’s clear that detail isn’t this device’s only strong suit. The phone captures vibrant colours, especially in PureView mode, and a wide aperture of f/2.4 and a focal length of 8.02mm produces shots that have a surprisingly shallow depth of field. Don’t expect the smooth blurred background of a proper SLR, but it’s still better than any smartphone around.

We’d be remiss in not mentioning the video quality. The 808 PureView produces smooth, sumptuous footage, with a continuous autofocus mode and the ability to zoom in 4x using lossless digital zoom in Full HD and 6x in 720p.

Only a couple of things give us cause for criticism: the autofocus isn’t always 100% reliable – we found we often had to use the touch focus to get things sharp, and there’s noticeable optical “moustache” distortion in full-resolution shots with lots of straight lines. Despite that, the 808 PureView’s camera is, quite simply, the best smartphone camera there is.

The phone

The big disappointment is the phone that Nokia has chosen to debut its staggering new technology in. For starters, this phone is no looker. It’s thick and chunky, measuring 18.4mm at its thickest point by the bulbous lens housing, and 14.7mm thick at the bottom end where you hold it. It weighs 172g, and although that doesn’t sound like much, it puts a noticeable sag in your pocket.

Hardware-wise, there isn’t much to shout about either. The processor is a 1.3GHz single-core ARM unit, there’s 512MB of RAM and it comes with 16GB of internal storage, with a microSD slot for adding a further 32GB. The 4in display is topped with scratch-resistant Gorilla Glass, and it’s bright and vibrant too. But the resolution is unthinkably low at 360 x 640, an astonishing decision given that this phone’s main purpose is to snap and view such high-resolution photos.

We could live with that if the 808 PureView was a pleasure to use, but it runs Nokia Belle (the operating system formerly known as Symbian), which its parent company has publicly condemned to the scrap heap. Technically speaking, Nokia Belle is a big improvement on what went before, with multiple Android-style desktops and widgets, and a simple, flat app launcher, also in the style of Android. We also like that Nokia has preloaded the handset with Microsoft Office Mobile, complete with a PowerPoint app that can view or edit files, and versions of Word and Excel that allow documents to be created as well as viewed and edited.

Nokia’s OS continues to be the very epitome of efficiency – after our 24-hour battery test, the 808 PureView had 80% left on the battery gauge, which is nothing short of remarkable. Keep away from demanding apps and this phone is capable of lasting longer than two days. Add your Twitter and Facebook accounts, take a few shots and videos and the gauge drops more quickly, but we found on average we were able to get over a day and half of use.

However, it’s easy to see why Nokia made the jump to Windows Phone, because this OS is far from the slick experience we’ve come to expect from modern smartphones. The default keyboard, for one, is the worst we’ve used in quite some time. It is possible to replace it with Swype, but even this has its problems on the PureView, getting in the way of how search fields autocomplete.

The OS is littered with annoying little inconsistencies. The Gallery app lets you upload photos to Facebook or Flickr, for instance, but if you want to upload to Twitter you have to do so via the separate Nokia Social app, which aggregates your Facebook and Twitter feeds – there appears to be no universal extensible sharing capability, as available in iOS and Android.

If you want to read your full Twitter feed from the widget, you have to tap a tweet or status update, then hit the Menu button and select the All Activity option. Adding a Gmail account using the standard method will only synchronise your mail – not your contacts or calendar – and doesn’t give you the option to have email delivered as it arrives. The shortest interval for updates is five minutes.

General performance, meanwhile, is distinctly below par. Running the SunSpider JavaScript test took 4,211ms, far slower than your average flagship Android handset. Panning around media-rich web pages felt sluggish and slow, and of the handful of games we downloaded from the understocked Nokia Store, only Angry Birds felt really smooth and polished to play.

Verdict

The final problem is price and availability. At the time of writing, no UK network had taken on the 808 PureView, and the SIM-free price is a hefty £520. That puts it in an awkward position. In smartphone terms, we’d hesitate to spend this much on a handset with such a low-resolution screen and a second-tier operating system. If it’s a great camera you’re after, you’re better off spending your money on an SLR, notwithstanding the innovative features and stunning quality.

In many ways we love the Nokia 808 PureView. It’s crazy, it’s completely different and it’s amazing in so many ways, and we have great respect for the way Nokia has splashed out on the technology and made it work so spectacularly well. But it’s so good it cannot be long before Nokia puts it in a “proper” smartphone – perhaps one of the first Windows Phone 8 handsets slated to appear some time at the end of this year – and when that happens, it won’t be such a tough sell.

Battery Life
Talk time, quoted	11hrs
Standby, quoted	22 days 12hrs
Physical
Dimensions	60 x 18.4 x 124mm (WDH)
Weight	172g
Touchscreen	yes
Primary keyboard	On-screen
Core Specifications
RAM capacity	512MB
Camera megapixel rating	38.0mp
Front-facing camera?	yes
Video capture?	yes
Display
Screen size	4.0in
Resolution	360 x 480
Landscape mode?	yes
Other wireless standards
Bluetooth support	yes
Integrated GPS	yes
Software
OS family	Other