Hands-on with the Nokia 808 PureView

11 Apr, 2012, 5:59 pm IST

Nokia is still going strong with their Belle devices and with their new 808 PureView they’re

aiming to set a ...

Nokia is still going strong with their Belle devices and with their new 808 PureView they’re

aiming to set a new benchmark for smartphones in the imaging genre. At the recently

concluded Nokia PureView event, we managed to get our hands on the eagerly anticipated

Nokia 808 PureView. This smartphone is going to be officially released in a couple of weeks

from now and will be priced close to Rs.34,000. Does this mean Belle is back? Does the

PureView usher in a new era in smartphone cameras. Read on to find out what we think.

Before we start, for those of you’ll who have forgotten, here’s the spec sheet for the 808

PureView once again:

4.0-inch AMOLED ClearBlack display with a 360 x 640 pixel resolution

1.3 GHz ARM 11 processor, 512 MB of RAM

Nokia Belle OS

16GB internal storage

3G, EDGE/GPRS, Wi-Fi

GPS with A-GPS support

Bluetooth 3.0 with A2DP, USB 2.0

41 megapixel camera with Xenon flash, 1080p@30fps video recording

Stereo FM radio with RDS

Memory expandable up to 32 GB via microSD card

3.5 mm handsfree socket

1400 mAh Lithium - ion battery

The Nokia 808 PureView boasts of a never seen before 41 megapixel camera on a

smartphone, along with some crazy optics. The 808 is by no means a thin device. The sensor,

itself was so massive that there was no other option, but to have that bump on the rear of the

phone... At 169 grams, the phone was quite heavy as well, but it’s got the curves and smooth

form factor that we’re used to seeing from Nokia. To be honest, the PureView does a fairly

good job at bringing sexy back to ‘fatter’ devices. The front has a 4-inch AMOLED display

and colours looked extremely sharp and vivid on it and from our brief hands-on of the

prototype model, Belle was super slick and smooth to use. Next up, the main section – the

camera.

A 41 megapixel sensor in a phone made the world sit up and take notice of what’s going on at

Nokia’s end and in a nutshell, they’ve managed to wow us all. The camera and the optics on

the PureView are nothing that you will find on your existing smartphone. In a time gap of

0.09 seconds between two snaps, the dedicated GPU was working like a charm behind the

scenes.

Nokia has managed to simplify the camera interface as well with the bare necessities and if

needed, additional customizations can be enabled as well, making it quite appealing to

beginners and professionals, alike. There’s 1080p at 30fps, time interval shooting (for

timelapse videos), instant sharing to Facebook, 38 megapixel shots and an option to choose

between 16:9 and 4:3 aspect ratios. With the PureView, Nokia has also introduced lossless

digital zoom and it worked like a charm on the phone. The viewfinder doesn’t exactly zoom

into the image, but shows a cropping rectangle on a smaller section, allowing you to go to

different levels of zoom based on the megapixel shot you have chosen. Zoomed in shots had

such an immense amount of detail that we had to try it for ourselves to see if it actually

worked as shown. And boy oh boy, were we impressed with the 808! And mind you, this was

just the prototype. So, if it does, it's only going to get better.

While shooting images, we noticed that the depth of field wasn’t just restricted to macro

shots. Even interview or portrait shots had a substantial amount of blur to the surrounding

with the subject appearing crisp as ever. Detail and colour capturing was simply outstanding

and to reiterate, nothing compared to what we have seen in the current generation of cameras.

The PureView 808 will soon grab the title of the best camera phone in the world, when it

launches. But, the operating system? Well, for starters, you could check out our Nokia 603

review, because we definitely weren’t disappointed with it.

Back to the images part, here are a couple of things we managed to grab. An ant in motion, a

flower tinier than our thumb, macro shots of rust on a battery and a couple of leaves with

sunlight in the background. The detail, colour capturing, ability to focus, depth of field was

second to none. After fully zooming into the images, we noticed there was little to zero noise

capture in the dark areas. Overall, this easily surpasses all the other camera phones in the

market right now, including the Xperia S we reviewed earlier.

With the Nokia 808 PureView, the camera megapixel race is officially over. Or has it just

begun?

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