Tech flashback | Nokia 808 PureView

Image result for nokia 808 pureview phone
A legend!
Nokia had a beast of a phone, back in the days of the galaxy S3 and the iPhone 4s. It was the great Nokia 808, with a PureView 41 mp camera sensor!

Even though it was later followed up by the Nokia 1020, this was the original phone with that mammoth camera sensor.

In this age of amazing camera phones and 'selfie experts', I still think that this phone's camera quality is yet to be beaten. This deserves a flashback at least! So let's get to it.

The phone's hardware is undoubtedly obsolete and is out of the option of being used as a daily phone in this day and age. But that's not to say that it can't go as a trophy camera phone in your pockets.
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Pretty dope, huh!


Let's get the boring stuff out of the way, for the sake of it. These are the specs:
  • A 1.3 GHz single core ARM11 processor
  • 512 MB RAM
  • 16 GB internal storage, expandable (not bad!)
  • 1400 mAh battery
  • 4 inch AMOLED display
  • 14 Mbps HSDPA support
  • Micro HDMI available
  • Symbian OS: Belle
You know what I feel? Other than the RAM and the CPU, this thing has exactly the same specs as the iPhone 6樂!

16 gig base model and same battery size. But this has expandability and the iPhone doesn't. Okay, I'm gonna move on..! 
Image result for nokia 808 41 mp camera phone
Bottom
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MicroUSB and HDMI

Let's get to dat camera bruh! A beastly sensor with xenon flash and Carl Zeiss lens on it. And the interface is just way too dope for it's time!

It has a full on manual mode, which most of the modern flaships lack. There's a dedicated 2 stage camera button, which everyone loves邏. You can launch the camera at any time by pressing on it, even from standby.


Camera interface


Of course, the maximum resolution that you get out of this isn't 41 mp. It's more like 38 mp but hey, tell me one other phone with such a huge pixel count.

The camera interface has three modes: Automatic, Scenes and Creative. Auto mode is just your regular point and shoot mode, where the camera only operates at 5 mp. Autofocus and shutter speeds are surprisingly snappy for such an old device.

There are 3 custom settings, C1, C2, C3. Each custom settings remembers the last thing you did, so you can have 3 presets of your choice and switch between them at any time.

Image result for nokia 808 camera interface
Simple, yet powerful!

For zoom, Nokia uses something called pixel oversampling, where the phone makes use of those excess pixels and combines then into forming a big pixel. Hence, you won't lose a lot of real data while zooming in.

This isn't super effective, but is still better than that horrible digital zoom that we have in our phones. You can zoom in by swiping across the screen, by using the volume keys.

In 'scenes' mode, you can toggle the usual settings. Things like portrait mode, sports, night mode, macro. The macro isn't a strong point on this phone, as you can't really physically get super close to an object, as intended. But the 3X zoom works great, so I'm not complaining.


mage result for nokia 808 41 mp camera
Creative full res mode!


To access the full 38 mp resolution of your sensor and have total manual control, you need to use the Creative mode. Here you can change the aspect ratio, change white balance, saturation, ISO and other stuff. If you switch to 16:9 aspect ratio, you'll get 34 mp as full resolution.

There's options for just about everything under here. You can even switch on bracketing, which takes multiple shots and different exposure levels. Yeah, it's HDR, but weirdly, there is no HDR mode. You have to combine these images using an app, yourself. A bit too much 'manual' stuff here, huh?!

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Crazy image quality!

When it comes to video, you can record 1080p video at 30 fps with software stabilization. It uses Nokia's own high quality audio recording, upto 140 DB which is pretty loud. So you'll get a richer, full quality audio captured in each of your videos. Awesome, right?!

If you turn down the quality from 1080p to 720p, you'll get 6X zoom and if you still go down to 360p, you'll get a whopping 12X zoom here. Nokia's zoom is still much better than regular digital zoom solutions.

Speaking about other things in this phone, the interface is, well, dead! Symbian Belle, though extinct, is running at a decent speed. There are a few Microsoft services built in. 
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good old Symbian!
The gallery has a built in photo editor, which is really good. You can fix red eyes, change effects, add clip art to it, put on frames and other stuff. There's also a full fledged video player on board, which can handle almost all popular formats out there.

The speakers are superbly loud and clear. It's like a mini boom box. There's Dolby surround sound support, when you plug in a headphone. The display is AMOLED, which will give you quote decent color reproduction as compared to an LCD of the time. Overall this phone runs pretty fine, even with that single core processor.

Okay then, let's wrap up here. What should you do if you come across this guy somewhere, on sale. Well you know, BUY IT!
Iamage result for nokia 808 design
Not the slimmest phone, but classic Nokia!

This phone is absolutely amazing, even today. Like I said earlier, I have trouble finding a suitable replacement for it, even in this day and age. The picture quality is just insane, which is quite apparent, when you pull it out on a bigger display, like a PC or a TV. So, get it if you can. It'll be an excellent camera, with voice call features on it!

Hope you got a chance to appreciate this legend, once again. If you like mobile tech like I do, visit my website for more such reviews and updates.

My twitter: @thehopelessgeek

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