An eloquent defense of the Nokia 808 PureView

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I was pointed towards an eloquent piece here about the position of the Nokia 808 PureView and Symbian in today's smartphone world. The writer rightly highlights some of the ways in which the 808 is still unique in the smartphone world before going on to highlight the vibrant community work going on in terms of mods and custom firmware, a scene which we've only touched on briefly here on AAS.

Here are a couple of salient quotes from the article, by Jonathan, a.k.a. 'MASMedia':

Photography is my passion, (the reason for unlocking my HTC One X was purely to allow men to install and test the camera mods available), so when the Nokia 808 PV was launched my 'interest' was immediately piqued, and after a few reviews (which lauded the camera as simply incredible) I thought 'I got to get one'.

In all honestly I was worried about the lack of apps, the screen resolution, and the 'clunkiness' of the OS. However, in terms of the hardware side of things one really has to look close to see that difference in resolution (helped by the fact that the Nokia 808 PV has a smaller screen than the HTC One X), and yes, app wise one hasn't got the selection, true, but in almost each category there is an app that works well, and the 'clunkiness' of the OS has been nullified to some extent by the custom ROMs available, which have tweaked, polished and refined the OS to the point where it may not be as hip and funky as the iOS or Androids' but it's by no means a chore to work with as it used to be. And on top of that the Nokia has a few novel built in apps and abilities which one doesn't see on other devices using competing OS', like play via radio (radio transmitter), direct micro HDMI plug (no need for adapters etc.), it only has a single core 1.3 Ghz processor but that is plenty strong enough for Symbian and compared to my HTC One X, the difference is negligible in most cases, of course hard core gamers will appreciated the extra oomph in the HTC no doubt, but if gaming isn't your thing (although Angry Birds and a few others work great on the 808) you may not 'hate' the 808 as much as you'd think. Another plus is of course the great battery life of the 808, my HTC normally lasted about 30 odd hours (sometimes more sometimes less, depending on what you were using it for), the 808 lasts about 60 odd hours, which is great.

And then of course there is the camera, the raison d'etre for the 808, Nokia developed the sensor in collaboration with Toshiba, the development took over 3 years, so they (Nokia) were very serious about the imaging abilities of the phone. As mentioned my HTC One X has a camera mod that allowed photos to be taken without any compression (which improves general IQ by about 20% I reckon compared to the standard camera IQ), and comparing the modded HTC One X's photo IQ to the S3 and iPhone I think the HTC definitely had the edge in the detail and low light department.

So naturally I compared the IQ from my HTC One X to that from the 808, and the difference is vast, and that 'vastness' only increases when looking at photos taken with flash (no smartphone manufacturer is serious about the imaging abilities of its devices if it uses a LED flash instead of Xenon).

I've included a few 100% crops (Nokia 808 on the left in all instances).

Well said, and all reasons why I too find myself more often than not with the Nokia 808 in hand.

The writer then goes on to (rightly) praise the enthusiastic programmers and modders in the Symbian community, all looking to extend Nokia's Symbian hardware beyond where the official firmwares would take them, before confirming what I've said before, that Feb 11th, 2011 wasn't an 'immediate death blow' to Symbian, at least in the hearts and minds of fans of the Nokia N8 and then 808...

I'm not suggesting at all that Symbian will catch up to the 'big names', or be revived as an operating system but I am saying that its forced demise pushed through by Nokia was not the immediate death blow we expected, and indeed, at least in the short term the devices utilizing the OS are in good shape, better shape actually than one would believe, with a level of ownership and commitment from the developers and users that I haven't experienced in the Android realm.

Again, well said that man.... 

Read on in his full post.

Source / Credit: Daily Mobile