Nokia 808 PureView : Review of 41 megapixel Phone for Photography

Nokia 808 PureView is a 41 Megapixel Camera with effective working 38 megapixel compact Carl Zeiss Lens, intended for photography is on our table for review. A good competitor is Sony Xperia S, with we wrote a Full Review few weeks back. 41 megapixel of Nokia 808 PureView is the main attracting point for a newbie in the field of Digital Photography.

Unboxing Nokia 808 PureView

The quality of packaging of any mid range to high end Nokia Smartphones are always neat. Its difficult to find any economy grade plastic in the the box. Nokia 808 PureView keeps the pride of Nokia’s quality control.

In the box pack, there is Nokia 808 PureView, MicroUSB Charger, Charging and Data Cable, Nokia stereo Headset (read Sennheiser), Wrist Strap and the documents.

Review of Nokia 808 PureView

A few years ago, having a 8 megapixel phones was a sensation. iPhone as a digital camera of quite good quality but yet only considered as an additional feature, even when working with strong brands optics. The Nokia 808 PureView on the other hand is a pure camera phone with only one selling point – The best photo a smartphone can capture. This is it.

Nokia has done a huge research for the development of the 808 PureView with Carl Zeiss for five years. The resulting image processing technology PureView is really more than just a marketing term. The 41 megapixels is needed for “pixel oversampling” results are significantly sharper. At the highest zoom level, 38 megapixels are used by Nokia 808 PureView.

The data sheet from Nokia unfortunately has no information about the sensor size. The initial focal length is about 8 mm, without crop factor, that the information does not help much really. The mobile phone manufacturers has probably still need to learn what information is important for the photographers. The camera has a (continuous) autofocus and the ability of focusing by tapping. The classic face detection, red-eye reduction and geotagging are present on Nokia 808 PureView, there is also a Xenon flash that can be used in the filming as a video light. RAW image format is not supported, but that would be fit to say Nokia 808 PureView as Smartphone as Camera. In addition to JPEG, there are many other graphic formats, including TIFF, BMP or PNG, as well as a picture editor.

What the classical features for all Nokia Smartphones, Nokia 808 PureView is a smartphone with 4-inch touch-screen display. The operating system is Symbian, but does undergone some trimming.

Nokia has put everything on connectivity in Nokia 808 PureView, what customers will want from a high-end smartphone: HDMI port, DLNA, and the new NFC technology. Whether Nokia 808 PureView can convince the customer, remains questionable.

The only reason to buy Nokia 808 PureView can be the quality of hardware of Nokia not the camera.

Specification of Nokia 808 PureView

Dimensions of Nokia 808 PureView

Height : 123.9 mm
Width : 60.2 mm
Thickness : 13.9 mm
Weight : 169 g
Volume : 96 cm³

Display and User Interface of Nokia 808 PureView

Display size : 4 ”
Screen height : 360.0 Pixel(s)
Screen width : 640.0 Pixel(s)
Display technology : AMOLED, ClearBlack
Corning(r) Gorilla(r) Glass

Form factor of Nokia 808 PureView

Phone design : Touch

CPU Count : Single
Hardware CPU type : ARM 11
Hardware CPU clock rate : 1300 MHz

Total user memory of Nokia 808 PureView

16 GB mass memory, expandable with micro-SD card up to 48 GB (max 32 GB cards)

SDRAM memory : 512 MB

GPS features : GPS, A-GPS

Photography on Nokia 808 PureView

Main camera of Nokia 808 PureView

Camera sensor (main camera resolution) : 41.0 megapixels
Camera resolution height : 5368 pixels
Camera resolution width : 7728 pixels
Optics : Carl Zeiss
Camera focus type : Auto focus
Camera F number/aperture : 2.4
Camera minimum focus range : 15 cm
Camera focal length : 8.02 mm
Flash type : Xenon flash

Camera features of Nokia 808 PureView

Touch focus
Exposure compensation
Still image editor
Full screen viewfinder
Self timer
Red-eye reduction
Continuous Auto Focus
Carl Zeiss Optics
Auto Exposure
Auto focus
Video light
Geotagging
Xenon flash
Flash
Face Detection

Camera image formats : JPEG/Exif