Another week, another comparison of the Nokia 808 PureView's camera and camcorder functions against the competition. This one's a little unusual though, in that it's both extremely detailed and published by an Android web site. It's also written in Italian, but that and the site's emphasis notwithstanding, the conclusion rings true and there are plenty of positives put forward for the Symbian imaging flagship. Some (translated) quotes below. I was also impressed that examples with people were included - privacy concerns often preclude these being used in my (and other) comparison pieces.

Here's the original article in Italian, with my quotes below from Google Translate(!):

From the intro:

This article is the result of long work of Francesco, who has analyzed in great detail Nokia 808 with 41 megapixel camera. The smartphone is not Android, but was taken as a reference point for photography from smartphones and compared with the top of the range Android. It 'easy to see how this relates to their review of this device, due to its role as a leader in an area where Android is trying to compete. The choice of smartphones to compare was primarily logistics and it is missing at least the top of the range HTC.  Reading is long, but definitely worth deal, especially if you are fond of photography.

The main comparison photos are then included, with some analysis along the way and some very telling examples. Francesco's conclusion is insightful and worth quoting from (with the usual Google Translate caveats):

Technology PureView Nokia 808 has proved very effective and not "fluff" marketing... Do we really need this ability to zoom in? In my opinion yes. The real limits of mobile photography to date has been its inability to use the zoom without losing quality. At the bottom of any compact camera with zoom is natural, and is what we are so unaccustomed in mobile - using Nokia 808 - it takes time to understand how each shot has to gain from that highlight a detail or crop more precisely a subject. Once you are familiar with Nokia 808 there will now be pictures on which there will be fun and convenient to use the zoom. 

Francesco then gives a delighful example of a use case for the PureView zoom, showing this fairly standard photo of a girl taken as-is and then again zoomed in again by around 4x on the Nokia 808. Note that the second shot isn't a 'crop', it's a full 3 megapixel image with no artefacts - a stunning example of PureView zoom at work:

Francesco then goes on to add:

Zoom and oversampling, however, are just two of the features that put Nokia 808 at the top imaging, in this test have not spoken audio recording that reaches levels far above the competition and sensitivity to very high ISO values ​​that allow you to take pictures even without flash (at night or in dim light) with very little digital noise problem which is rather typical of the shots with high ISO values.

With his final words:

Nokia 808 is a photo / video camera that can connect to the Internet, phone, post on Twitter, Facebook and texting. If you see it in this light, the other features of the terminal will go into the background and you will be able to enjoy it fully. But Nokia 808 is (and remains) a niche device. The ambassador of a new technology that Nokia will deploy altogether. 

With my AAS hat on, I can point out rather strenuously that you can do a heck of a lot more than this with Symbian, but from an Android perspective I can see where Francesco is coming from. Nice work, anyway.