The Nokia 808 PureView has arrived in many countries (if not the UK, sniff....) over the last 24 hours, and we're getting a number of 'first impressions' pieces arriving on the Interwebs. Below are some quotes from Marc Wielaert from the 'PureView Club', along with a few snaps. Rest assured that the 808 will get its own moments of glory here on AAS in due course.

From Marc's piece:

First: although it may sound funny, I find the Nokia 808 PureView is smaller than I expected, and smaller than I remembered from my first acquaintance in Barcelona. There, during the Mobile World Congress, I was playing around with the white version a few times (just couldn’t leave the stand alone), so in some way I always had this color in mind.

I was – second first impression – surprised to see the black version has a silver casing for the lense, where the white and red version have a black one. It makes for a very charming contrast in the black version, which otherwise of course would of course have been completely black. I hope however this silver will prove to be scratch resistant enough…

Another surprise was that in the box I found the headset (in-ear, my favorite), battery, charger and USB cable (doh) and a leather wrist strap (nice!) – but not the short USB-on-the-go cable I expected, after finding it years ago in the package of the N8 and E7. It enables you to directly copy your pictures or video from your phone to a USB-stick – and the 808 PureView support USB-on-the-go as well.

...Believe it or not, I didn’t have a chance to make useful pictures with it yet! Yes! I know! But I need to dive into the menu first, see what the possibilities are, and last but not least, I need better light – and weather!

I’m writing this from The Netherlands as you probably know by now, and although the meteorological summer has started a few days ago, there is not much proof of that outside – on the contrary, I might add. It’s dark and it’s raining, and you wouldn’t risk your Nokia 808 PureView to wet conditions, would you?

...To conclude this first impression some technical details you might find interesting. This Nokia 808 PureView runs on Nokia Belle Feature Pack 1 and has softwareversion 112.020.0309. The date of this version is 2012-05-19. Product code is 059M952. Browser version is 8.2, Flash version 4.0, Java version 2.4.

We'll keep tabs on Marc over the next week or so, in addition to sourcing 808 hands-on from other correspondents. And it goes without saying that we can't wait to test a retail 808 PureView for ourselves.