Nokia PureView 808 previewed in China, lots of sample photos published

Florin  By on 02 Apr 12

Back in February, at MWC 2012, when Nokia officially announced the PureView 808 smartphone, I literally let out a “what the F?” when the handset’s 41MP Carl Zeiss camera was presented. For a second there, I thought 41MP was just a typo. But of course it was not.

PureView is Nokia’s latest imaging technology – “the result of many years of research and development”. It provides 3X lossless zoom for still images, and 4X lossless zoom for 1080p video, using pixel oversampling and combining lots of pixels to create a single perfect one – hence high-quality images should result. You can read more about it here.

While the 808 will only be released starting May, the handset has been previewed in China recently by IT168. The Chinese website doesn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know (like the fact that the 640 x 380 resolution is rather low for a 4 inch display), but they do provide lots of sample photos taken with the PureView.

The photos are really impressive. Even at high resolutions the quality and image detail is stunning. You can check out all the sample photos here (there’s an expand button in the upper right corner of each image to see it larger). The website notes that, because the photos at maximum resolution have in average more than 14MB, they had to scale them down. Anyway, the reviewer’s conclusion is that the 808’s camera is “absolutely worthy of recognition.” Most probably, this is the best camera a smartphone has ever had.

Of course, what many may not like about the PureView 808 is that it runs Symbian Nokia Belle, an OS which will not be around anymore in a few years. But the good news is that Nokia said it plans to bring its PureView technology to Windows Phone. It remains to be seen exactly when this will happen.

As mentioned above, the Nokia 808 PureView should be launched starting May (likely only in Europe and Asia). Its suggested retail price, before taxes and subsidies, is of €450 (about $600). I don’t think the 41MP camera is enough to make the Nokia 808 PureView a hot seller, but… we’ll see, right?

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  • http://www.omreddy.com/ Mahesh

    Got any idea about When is it releasing in india?? 

  • Anonymous

    The endless criticism of Nokia/Symbian Belle running on the 808 really is getting rather boring. 

    I’m a mobile industry analyst and mobile software developer. I can tell you for a fact that Symbian is the best mobile OS out there, by quite some way. It is WAY more efficient, flexible and powerful than iPhone or Android. That’s a simple, easily provable fact. Windows Phone is like a featurephone OS compared to Symbian. It really is. There is actually a reason what most Symbian fans are in protest against Nokia’s decision to go to Windows Phone. It’s because it’s a HUGE step backwards.

    Furthermore, criticisms of Symbian centred largely around the user experience. Belle (and especially Belle FP 1 as seen in the 808) MORE than resolve this issue, and easily put Belle on a par with iPhone or Android – different, yes, but still easily on par in the user interface and experience. Then take that user experience and put it on the world’s best mobile OS running underneath (Symbian, by a long way) and then stick all that on the world’s best smartphone hardware by a long way (the 808 PureView) and you have the world’s best phone, full stop, no hold’s barred, no question. Not that everyone will like it or want one of course and that’s fine. But that’s the facts. Anyone criticising any aspect of the hardware (e.g. screen res. or processor speed) REALLY does not know what they’re talking about. Symbian uses the GPU heavily and the CPU is more than good enough for everything. A higher screen res would also be utterly pointless because you can’t see the pixels on a 640 X 480 screen anyway unless you hold the phone 2 inches from your nose. Text may be fractionally sharper on higher res, but screen QUALITY more than makes up for it – Nokia’s AMOLED ClearBlackDisplay is the best in the business. Also smaller text doesn’t count as you can’t read it so it has to be enlarged, thus defeating the point of higher res.

    Also people need to re-calibrate their comparisons where the 808 camera is concerned. Of course it’s a million miles better than any other phone camera ever produced (or in any competitor’s labs I’d be willing to bet). Proper photographers have already started comparing the 808 camera to stand alone digital cameras and concluded it beats everything on the market. Probably most video cams too. The 808 needs to be compared to high end pro equipment to start seeing challengers – e.g. DSLRs (the quality of which it already looks like the 808 will beat in some cases) and pro video cams. Seriously, it’s that good.

    People writing about or commenting on the 808 REALLY need to start PROPERLY understanding what they’re talking about, PLEASE.

  • http://twitter.com/thezymo zymo

    +1 

  • IWantMyPureView

    Please don’t put 41 megapixels lens on a windows phone, like iOS and Android, it will crash the OS!

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  • http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20120321232656AAMK0KI HP Coupon Code

    I think it’s a great choice..it definetely nokia N8 successor, share much similarities in spec but much much better. It have 4 times better power, camera, speed than N8.. 

  • http://www.omreddy.com/ Maheshwara Reddy

    +1 .. superb details.. 

  • Mandouh

    Very well stated. I’m, of course Symbian though I tried Andoid and would fully agree to all your points. Thanks

  • http://twitter.com/hmmJD1 JD!

     I hope people will understand what you are saying… Most are just blinded by the cores and crazy resolutions now a days!

    Wish Nokia will not kill Symbian *sigh*

  • http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20111014020803AAd1GAC Emergency Food Supply

    I think it’s a great choice..it definetely nokia N8
    successor, share much similarities in spec but much much better. It
    have 4 times better power, camera, speed than N8.. There’s also many of
    new specs in this phone like professional pureview imaging tecnology,

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