Nokia 808 PureView: First Impressions

The 41-megapixel monster is finally here! Nokia announced that the 808 PureView would be available in stores from today.

At the launch event in New Delhi, we managed to check out the Nokia 808 PureView. Here is what we understood about what Nokia calls “the world’s best camera phone”.

The Nokia 808 PureView will be available in two colours – black and white. No confirmation about when (and if at all) the red version of the PureView will arrive in India.

• I got my hands on the white version of the 808 PureView, and immediately, the build quality and sheer premium feel of the phone impressed me.
• The white colour does seem slightly purer in terms of the final colour, than, let us say, the HTC One X. Not that it may really matter, but just an observation.
• With a 4-inch display, the PureView is trying to balance the needs to those who want a big display, and equally of those who don’t. It fits well in the hand, but usability will be comfortable (assuming you are using it with the hand that holds it) only for people with long fingers. Even for someone like me, my fingers were just about managing to reach the other edge of the display.
• The Nokia 808 PureView showed absolutely delightful display quality, sporting a a resolution of 640 x 360 pixels, with the Gorilla Glass treatment. More importantly, the ClearBlack technology means the vividness of most colours becomes amplified, and for videos, the detailing is incredible. We will test this phone thoroughly with our own content to rate the display of this phone during the review.
• The 808 PureView isn’t the slimmest phone around. That said, it isn’t uncomfortably thick either. We have to give points for the fact that Nokia has crammed in a 41MP sensor in the phone, without making it ungainly.
• No fault of the phone, but we have said this time and again that Symbian doesn’t match up to the UI fluidity of an Android or an iOS device. The Belle FP2 preloaded on this phone walks the same path. For those who are considering this phone just for the camera, they shouldn’t be bothered too much about the UI. Anyone else, please consider that Symbian’s UI is well and truly dated.
• Nokia, at the event, confirmed that the PureView technology will be arriving on Windows based smartphones “down the road”. No confirmation on the timelines though.
• We took a few test shots there, and even for the ones in low light, the quality was indeed very good. Nokia insists that with the PureView, you click first and zoom later. That does hold true, considering you can double tap on any image to zoom in quite a bit. The dedicated graphics processor ensures that there isn’t any loss of detail, for the most part. Various free apps on the Store that will allow you to edit the images on the device, like probably zooming into an image, cropping a part of it, and creating a completely new image! We will reserve our verdict on the quality of the camera, till the time we actually review the phone and use the camera in our test scenes.

We will be doing a detailed review of this smartphone soon. Till then, here are some pictures of the phone that you can check out:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Visit page two, to check out more images of the Nokia 808 PureView….

Check out more images of the Nokia 808 PureView, further below: