Nokia 808 PureView
- R
- Robert D.
- mAP
- 09 Jul 2012
"============
Connectivity
============
Symbian has always been ahead with regards to connectivity options. For instance, as previously mentioned, it supports TV connectivity via HDMI, DNLA or plain old TV-out. It also has the most complete Bluetooth stack found anywhere:
* When playing music to your car stereo, track information is also shown (if supported by your stereo)
* Bluetooth HID for keyboard and mouse support since the N95.
* As soon as you pair with your computer, you can instantly browse the phone's filesystem just like any other storage volume.
That said, the 808 brings with it a couple of disappointments compared to previous Nokia phones:
* Dwindling Mac support: Since Apple have removed the iSync application from Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion), Nokia no longer builds iSync plugins for their phones (even for those of us who run older versions of OS X). Also, Nokia Multimedia Transfer does not seem to receive updates anymore, and so does not recognize this phone. This means that synchronizing your phone with the Mac Address Book, Calendar, iTunes and iPhoto is a bit more cumbersome than before. Workarounds exist, but they are a bit klunky - similar to how you would do it on an Android device.
* WebDAV support has been removed from the File Manager. This means that you need 3rd party software (e.g. PaderSync FM, myExplorer, or Davi) to access remote file shares.
=============
Stuck in Time
=============
Since Nokia are putting less effort into Symbian these days, we cannot expect to see much in the way of new features in the OS. For instance:
* No 4G (LTE) network support. In fact, this phone only supports speeds up to 14.4 Mbps (HSDPA), not even the 22 Mbps HSPA+ technology that T-Mobile USA (misleadingly) labels "4G". Then again, everything about this phone is less data intensive than on Android: Offline maps/navigation, map data stored as vector data and not images, no automatic (and unwilling?) synchronization of photos with Google+, etc.
* No multi-core CPU support. However, Symbian is very lightweight when it comes to resource use, and unlike Android, does not really NEED any more CPU cores to be usable. Certain tasks, such as video recording, are aided via a dedicated DSP.
* Screen resolution is WVGA (640x360 pixels). Most people won't notice, but it does not look good on phone reviews where the reviewer (literally!) puts the screen under a magnifying glass.
* The standard web browser is getting a bit long in the tooth, and not really performing by today's standards. You can get some speed boost by installing Opera Mobile or Opera Mini, but in that case you loose support for Adobe Flash.
That said, the UI has undergone quite a bit of polish leading up to Nokia Belle (the version of Symbian that's included here). Similar to Nokia's own Maemo/MeeGo OSes as well as Android, home screen widgets are now resizable; a notification panel can be dragged down from the top, etc."
To be continued with part 4.
- R
- Robert D.
- mAP
- 09 Jul 2012
============================
The perfect travel companion
============================
If you are traveling, this is really the one gadget you want to bring with you! Some reasons:
* The camera - obviously! You can safely leave your dedicated camera or camcorder at home.
* Nokia Maps. Free navigation, phenomenal map/POI coverage. Unlike Google Maps, map data is stored in vector format, so it is much less data intensive (both for download and storage). In fact, data can be stored offline beforehand, so you don't need any data connection at all to use it.
* Other preinstalled Nokia applications, such as Nokia Guides (city guides, restaurant guides, etc) and Nokia Public Transport (very nice and useful if looking for public transit options near you).
* Worldwide 3G coverage. This is one of very few phones, like the N8 before it, that has penta-band UMTS network support, meaning it works on any GSM carrier's 3G network worldwide (including both AT&T and T-Mobile USA).
* Multiple tethering options. You can share your phone's internet connection with a laptop or tablet over USB, Bluetooth or WiFi (ordered from most to least power efficient).
* Multiple ways to connect to TV sets to share photos, videos, etc, including HMDI, DNLA, and plain old RGB output for analogue TVs. A dedicated "Nokia Big Screen" application provides a nice media centric interface, and can be paired with and controlled by Wii or PlayStation remote control.
====================================
Symbian is Dead - Long Live Symbian!
====================================
In 2010, Nokia's Board of Directors hired Microsoft puppet Stephen Elop in order to kill Symbian, and turn Nokia into little more than a tool in Microsoft's own last-ditch effort to make their own Windows platform again relevant on mobile phones. So why, then, did they now resurrect Symbian from the grave, only to release their newest flagship phone on it!? This seems utterly confusing, even considering Nokia's typical schizophrenic personality.
The bottom line is that Symbian was their only OS that could handle the massive amount of processing required for decent camera and especially video recording performance. They have spent 5 years on developing PureView, exploiting every advantage that the lightweight Symbian OS offers; it is not trivial to get this working on other platforms, let alone Windows Phone.
Now, they have in fact indicated that while they WILL eventually relase the PureView technology on their Windows Lumia phones - however these will initially NOT have the same pixel resolution and optical performance as the 808. Until processor speeds catch up a bit more, this is likely to remain the case.
So much the better for us Symbian fans. In fact, I'll stick my neck out a little: Symbian is the greatest (mainstream) mobile operating system created so far!
Part of the reason is technical, as described below. But just as important, all of its main rivals (Android, iOS, Windows Phone, even BlackBerry) carry with them somewhat uncomfortable tie-ins to their vendor, whether it be:
* excessive coercion and control of what you can and cannot do with your phone (looking at you, Apple!)
* excessive dependency on vendor-controlled services to transmit and store your personal data. Are you comfortable with the way that Android leads to you to use Google services for contact synchronization, emails, and even implicit uploading of photos (often without your explicit knowledge or consent), especially given Google's ever-more aggressive marketing focus?
Among these, Symbian remains the most open system, where you, the user, remain in control of your device and the data on it. To me, this is just as important as any technical reason."
To be continued with part 3.
- R
- Robert D.
- mAP
- 09 Jul 2012
To all Nokia/Symbian haters:
This is a review by the American Tor Slettnes. Just read, think and deliberate/reason.
"This phone is nothing short of a dream come true for any remaining Symbian fans -- all 3 of us! As soon as it was announced at MWC last February, I started drooling, and have not stopped since. Every time I came across a picture, promo or review, my computer screen would literally get wet. So, I simply could not wait for the official US release of the black version here on Amazon, and instead purchased it from an importer - warranty be damned!
Of course, more sane individuals will want to get the US version here instead. :)
=================
Camera, Camera, Camera!
=================
The camera is obviously the main attraction, and is in itself is worth the money! It is as simple as that. If the 808 were sold as a standalone camera, it would handily beat just about every point-and-shoot camera in nearly every way. Even when shooting at 5MP or 8MP, it easily outclasses even more "pro" compacts such as the Canon G12.
The one seeming deficiency that the 808 PureView would have when compared to those dedicated camera is a lack of optical zoom. This, clearly, has to do with size - there is no way to fit in the optics required, especially when considering the sheer size of the photo sensor included with this phone. To give you an idea, the sensor is twice the size of the G12, whose 5x optical zoom already gives it a 2-inch thick body when retracted. And compared to most "ultra-zoom" cameras (such as the Canon SX IS series), the sensor in the 808 is 3-4 times as large!
Enter the genius of Nokia's "PureView" technology. This gives you, among other things, "Lossless" digital zoom. (Yeah there are quotes, I'll get back to why).
At full resolution, pictures taken with this phone consist of 34 or 38 megapixels (in 16:9 and 4:3 aspect ratios, respectively). At that resolution, the size of each pixel is equivalent to that of recent 8MP smart phones such as the iPhone 4S or the Samsung Galaxy series. Obviously, photos from those phones can be a bit... meeh... especially in low light conditions. So yeah, scaling up from 8MP of random noise to 38MP of random noise is not really the value proposition Nokia was going for here.
Instead, in "PureView" mode, you will be capturing 8MP, 5MP or even 3MP photos - and you will be amazed! Amazed at how much information is available despite the lower resolution, at the color "depth" that comes with a much wider dynamic range, and amazed at why the world still thinks more MP == better. You'll truly appreciate how it's not the pixel count that matters, but how you use them.
The idea is that by "binning" several pixels (photo cells) together into larger "super-pixels", each resulting pixel receives more light (signal), whereas most of the noise associated with shifting and reading the signal from the CCD remains constant. In turn, this means less noise per pixel, shorter exposure times, less blur. Less noise also means more efficient compression, resulting in even smaller file sizes (despite the cleaner picture!).
So why not simply use a cheaper 5MP or 8MP sensor then? So long as the total sensor area is the same, wouldn't you get the same benefits?
There are at least two reasons for this. First, would you even be looking at this phone it it was marketed with a "5 Megapixel Camera"? For all that we decry the marketing race for higher megapixel numbers despite the resulting deterioration in image quality, we are still allowing ourselves to be fooled by it. By placing a "41 Megapixel" label on this thing, Nokia is essentially using metrics that give you a faily accurate representation of its camera performance vis a vis other smart phones in the market today.
The second reason is that this allows for the aforementioned "lossless" digital zoom. In other smart phones (with the exception of video recording modes on the Nokia N8, Sony Ericsson C905a, and a couple of others), once you start to zoom in, you are in effect "scaling up" an image from its native pixel resolution, just as you would if you enlarged a picture in an image editing program. You are not adding any detail, you are only blurring the original.
In contrast, the 808 digital zoom works by reducing the size of each "super-pixel", down all the way to its native resolution. So at the far end of the zoom range, you are essentially using only the center portion of the sensor, cropped such that 1 photo cell corresponds exactly to 1 pixel in the resulting image. In simplified terms, you could say that you reduce or eliminate the "oversampling" that PureView otherwise provides.
This, combined with the phone's aspheric lens design and other ingenious solutions, allows for optical performance way its physical size would normally indicate. In fact, in a side-by-side blind test conducted by GSMArena.com, it went on to score higher than the Olympus PEN E-PL2 DSLR camera with its humungous "four thirds" inch photo sensor (about 2.5x larger than that of the 808). Granted, these were mostly daytime/outdoor photos at the wide range etc etc -- but the fact that this can even happen speaks volumes!
One thing I have not yet mentioned is the awesome video and audio recording quality of this phone. Unless you have professional video recording equipment usually reserved for movie studios and broadcasters, there is nothing else no the market that matches the richness in both video and sound (frequency range, dynamic range) that this thing gives.
To be continued.
- P
- Problem
- tVt
- 09 Jul 2012
41 mp...@.@''
Nokia ROCKS!
- b
- basheer
- 2Z4
- 09 Jul 2012
best phone ever launched in the history
- D
- AnonD-5465
- fm4
- 09 Jul 2012
just tried the new opera mini browser version 7 and its really fast .., how did they do it !! its faster than ever browser ever seen ! loads 2x faster than my other S2 ..., i guess nokia developers should heir opera deve.
- D
- AnonD-5465
- fm4
- 09 Jul 2012
faiz, 09 Jul 2012don't buy this phone.buy samsung galaxy fit.because u can c... morei guess u mean samsung galaxy sh*t not fit
- D
- AnonD-57873
- fsV
- 09 Jul 2012
faiz, 09 Jul 2012don't buy this phone.buy samsung galaxy fit.because u can c... moreYou like galaxy,That's your choice. You don't have a good enough reason to tell me not to buy the 808. As a matter of fact, its because of the 41MP camera that I will buy it.
- S
- Sam
- P$u
- 09 Jul 2012
I am really confused whether to go for Nokia Pureview 808 or Sony Xperia S ... please help as I am big fan of Sony but 41mp camera really attracts me as I like photography
- A
- Anonymous
- iwt
- 09 Jul 2012
katie, 08 Jul 2012really confused between nokia 808 and samsung note. note's... moreHi Kattie, just buy 808 for fun, outdoors,and entertainment. You can get Nexus7 later on for a much cheaper price.
- A
- Anonymous
- iwt
- 09 Jul 2012
tusnok, 06 Jul 2012I had N8 and now i have this amazing 808. Phone rocks...its... moreFor PV 808 Nokia maybe offers an Off Line Map that is free for a life time. Nokia Map has a comprehensive voice guidances and street names.
- f
- faiz
- bJf
- 09 Jul 2012
don't buy this phone.buy samsung galaxy fit.because u can compare this phone with samsung galaxy fit both r smart phone,but nokia having 41mp but samsung galaxy fit having just 5mp.only these two r difference.so i decided to buy samsung galaxy fit .......
- D
- AnonD-38290
- s0%
- 09 Jul 2012
AnonD-38290, 09 Jul 2012people please don't buy this phone because if its turned hi... morebut I'm gonna buy it in red Haha
- D
- AnonD-38290
- s0%
- 09 Jul 2012
people please don't buy this phone because if its turned hit elop will abandon it like n9
- A
- Anonymous
- iwt
- 09 Jul 2012
katie, 08 Jul 2012really confused between nokia 808 and samsung note.
note's... moreNOKIA PV 808
Camera
- 41 MP, Carl Zeiss optics,and Xenon flash.
- 1/1.2'' sensor size, ND filter, and up to 4x lossless digital zoom.
Music
- Dolby Digital Plus.
- Dolby headphone enhancement.
Video
- lossless digital zoom, LED light
SAMSUNG Galaxy note
Display
- 800 x 1280 pixels, 5.3 inches (~285 ppi pixel density)
I think those are the main diffrences. The rest are so-so or more-less, in the sense that they both are capale of playing all smartphone functionalities
Galaxy Note runs on Ginger Bread/ICs.
Nokia PV 808 runs on Belle FP-1/FP-2
(don't worry about Symbian, Nokia store has more than enough apps needed, just check how the Belle OS performs on Youtube)
- s
- shut up haiters
- t7X
- 09 Jul 2012
AnonD-62290, 09 Jul 2012Nokia was king in mobile industry until samsung introduces ... morego away if u r happy in low pixel of camera! If u r galaxy user drive with your rocket and get out in this eirth! We are 808 user with good camera and we dont care if nokia to fail in smart gadgets industry! Like u saying!
- D
- AnonD-62290
- 3xA
- 09 Jul 2012
Nokia was king in mobile industry until samsung introduces Galaxy series smart phones. Now nokia is struggling to capture market in smart phones. but i think this 41 MP will not workkkkkkk!!! it's useless! what u will do with 41 MP camera? u can get even better pictures with 5 or 8 MP cameras and even u can get a good print quality. u can use ur mobile as SLR camera.u will not get that quality with just giving 41 MP. I m sure this will be prove Nokia's flop show...!!!
- ?
- Anonymous
- 3xA
- 09 Jul 2012
helloo
- C
- Caravan Senor
- t1$
- 09 Jul 2012
katie, 08 Jul 2012really confused between nokia 808 and samsung note.
note's... moreKatie just go for Nokia 808 .... Dont go by the Look.... Nokia till date is the best maintaining the Quality..... Nokia is only a cell fone making company nothing else....U can rely on Nokia....
- C
- Caravan Senor
- t1$
- 09 Jul 2012
I have asked to the Priority dealer about the camera which is 41 megapixel. They told me that camera is 8 megapixel but the sensor is 41 megapixel.... The Image quality is very nice but after all spec, quality , Price I would say It cannot come to be compared with N8....N8 is till date far better than ny fone in the market......No other fone uses Carl Zeiss which is 11 layers of lenses with xenon........