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Criteria
Comments
Rating
- Reception and call quality In typical Nokia fashion, the reception is excellent and call quality is excellent.
- Display A 360x640 display in this day and age, is simply pathetic. How am I suppose to see my pictures if the screen sucks?
- Battery life I can run this for a few days on one charge. I don't see this happen very often these days.
- Camera Seeing this is the selling point of this phone, this is expected. Excellent camera.
- Ease of use I'm very much used to the UI and the interface is definitely fluid and easy to use. Symbian was written with lower specs in mind, so I guess that helps.
- Design and form factor Easy to hold in the hand. Screen interface is large and visible. Hardware buttons are always appreciated.
- Portability (size / weight) It's got an enormous camera assembly, so it's very thick and quite hefty. It does however feel great in the hand.
- Media support It supports 64GB SDXC cards, but otherwise it isn't going to play many media formats.
- Durability It's a Nokia!
- Ecosystem (apps, accessories, etc.) It's Symbian, so either the apps are old or they will suck. Major app developers will not really be making new apps for this OS.
Detailed review
The 808 Pureview:
In typical Nokia style of these days, it's excellent quality. Design is excellent and ergonomics is excellent. Call quality is impeccable and so is cellular reception. The major selling point, the 41MP camera, is quite unmatched compared to all other camera phones. I think due to fact that Symbian was optimized for really crappy hardware (slow processors and lack of RAM), the fact that the 808 Pureview has half a gigabyte of RAM and a snappy processor is much an improvement, meaning the OS is quite fluid. However I'm afraid that's really it. A great camera on a good phone.'
If you want to start talking about an app ecosystem, there isn't really one. Back in the day when Symbian was king, there were tons of up-to-date apps and just about anything you needed. Now it's mostly dominated by junk and a lot of out-of-date apps. Either they are not optimized for the touch interface or they are a waste of time.
Next is the really disappointing screen. I know Symbian was designed for a low resolution displays because there wasn't really much back then, but in the day with "Retina" panels and 720p displays, this nHD is a joke. How am I suppose to view my high quality pictures and show them off to a friend if they look worse than the ones I take on my iPhone? Sure the pictures look great on the computer, but I review and show off a lot of what I take on a camera phone via the device itself. In this respect, this is phone is less than stellar.
Price is too damn high! With a $699 price tag, I expected quite a lot more. The screen I mentioned earlier should have been improved and Symbian updated along with it. I mean how hard can it be to simply double the resolution of everything? Hell, I'm not even that good of a developer and I know how to use use higher resolution images!
Overall, I love this phone, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. It's a niche market device. Think of it as a Leica of camera phones. Where the Leica represents a specialize tools for a unique market, the Nokia 808 Pureview is a unique camera phone for a small market.
In typical Nokia style of these days, it's excellent quality. Design is excellent and ergonomics is excellent. Call quality is impeccable and so is cellular reception. The major selling point, the 41MP camera, is quite unmatched compared to all other camera phones. I think due to fact that Symbian was optimized for really crappy hardware (slow processors and lack of RAM), the fact that the 808 Pureview has half a gigabyte of RAM and a snappy processor is much an improvement, meaning the OS is quite fluid. However I'm afraid that's really it. A great camera on a good phone.'
If you want to start talking about an app ecosystem, there isn't really one. Back in the day when Symbian was king, there were tons of up-to-date apps and just about anything you needed. Now it's mostly dominated by junk and a lot of out-of-date apps. Either they are not optimized for the touch interface or they are a waste of time.
Next is the really disappointing screen. I know Symbian was designed for a low resolution displays because there wasn't really much back then, but in the day with "Retina" panels and 720p displays, this nHD is a joke. How am I suppose to view my high quality pictures and show them off to a friend if they look worse than the ones I take on my iPhone? Sure the pictures look great on the computer, but I review and show off a lot of what I take on a camera phone via the device itself. In this respect, this is phone is less than stellar.
Price is too damn high! With a $699 price tag, I expected quite a lot more. The screen I mentioned earlier should have been improved and Symbian updated along with it. I mean how hard can it be to simply double the resolution of everything? Hell, I'm not even that good of a developer and I know how to use use higher resolution images!
Overall, I love this phone, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. It's a niche market device. Think of it as a Leica of camera phones. Where the Leica represents a specialize tools for a unique market, the Nokia 808 Pureview is a unique camera phone for a small market.
good review!
1 person found this review helpful
review history
- 2012-09-07
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Updated detailed review