From the review of the Nokia 808 Pureview by Catherine:
What this means is that while the 808 is capable of shooting images at full resolution – 38Mp effective – it is only really meant to produce distilled images at its 8Mp, 5Mp or 3Mp PureView modes. The difference being these images deliver unprecedented quality by camera phone standards.
I wasn’t sure what to expect from the 808 PureView camera, as like many, I'd initially been drawn to the headline grabbing hype surrounding its astonishing pixel count, which rather eclipsed the technology behind this concept. Yet, true to its word, Nokia has produced a phone capable of incredibly detailed, sharp, nuanced and balanced pictures. As soon as I saw the results I was really and truly impressed.
Indeed, the idea of merging seven small pixels into one giant pixel, as Nokia puts it, seems to have achieved not only a new photographic benchmark but the upshot of it all is that the 808 PureView could hold its own with most advanced compacts currently on the market.
Looking at the PureView images – at 3, 5 and 8Mp – the level of noise is impressively low at all ISO sensitivities, with an almost complete lack of artifacts. Colours are accurate and natural across the range too, and images reveal an exceptionally broad dynamic range. White balance could be improved though, since it behaves somewhat erratically.
Catherine seemed to cope with Symbian Nokia Belle pretty well too, with the main hold ups being that her network operator hadn't heard of the 808 and so couldn't supply the appropriate APN details to get the 808 online, plus she missed Instagram. The latter surprised me - do professional photographers really use the ultimate quicksnap system for newbies?
Still, a big thumbs up from this 'pro' overall and another vote of confidence in Nokia's PureView technology overall....
Here's my favourite from her sample images (click for full 5MP version):
