Nokia’s astonishing 41-megapixel Nokia 808 PureView smartphone is heading to the UK, with the company announcing that it is now available for pre-order through Amazon UK.
It has to be said that it’s not a pretty phone, and the 4-inch screen isn’t all that either, mustering just 360×640 pixels of resolution, and a below average 184ppi pixel density.
With the body having to accommodate that monstrous 1/1.2-inch sensor, the Nokia 808 PureView makes for a strange-looking creation, with an almighty hump at the back housing a silver elliptic plate containing the Carl Zeiss optics and Xenon flash.
Running the unfashionable and soon-to-be-obsolete Symbian OS, the phone’s only saving grace is its 41 megapixel, high-resolution sensor, and what a beauty it is.
Online reviews have frothed about its abilities – PhoneArena declared themselves ‘mesmerised’ by it, while The Verge couldn’t hold back the love, saying that it was “astounding, breathtaking, stupefying:”
Not only does this phone have the best image quality at 5 megapixels, it can even produce good results at 38 megapixels. You won’t understand the thrill of exploring such enormously detailed pictures until you’ve tried it out for yourself.
Great camera, crap screen
Quite why Nokia have fitted the world’s highest resolution camera on a smartphone with one of the lower resolution screens around remains totally baffling to us.
Jo Harlow, head of smart devices at Nokia said: “PureView has completely raised the bar on imaging performance for the whole smartphone industry – and Nokia is not stopping here,”
“We’re going to carry on developing PureView for our future smartphones in ways that will again revolutionise the imaging experience.”
Consumers in the market for an incredible camera with a deeply average phone that barely scrapes ‘smartphone’ status should give the Nokia a look. As for us, we’ll be more interested in looking forward to their future Windows Phone collaborations.
The Nokia 808 PureView will be released on 30th June in the UK, priced at £499.98 (unlocked).
Amazon listing:
Nokia 808 PureView Sim Free Mobile Phone – Black
Nokia 808 PureView Sim Free Mobile Phone – White
Nokia Press Release
Pure quality: The Nokia 808 PureView hits the shelves at Amazon UK
The next breakthrough in photography will be shipping end of June
London, 26 June 2012 – Nokia is delighted to announce that the incredible Nokia 808 PureView is now available to pre-order from Amazon and will be shipping at the end of June. The Nokia 808 PureView boasts an impressive 41 megapixel sensor and Carl Zeiss optics and is the first smartphone to feature Nokia’s award-winning PureView technology, which represents not only Nokia’s but the industry’s highest level smartphone imaging experience.
The Nokia 808 PureView brings together high-performance sensors, exclusive Carl Zeiss optics and Nokia design to provide users with a truly outstanding camera phone experience.
Since it was announced in February, the Nokia 808 PureView has received multiple awards, including Best Mobile Device at Mobile World Congress 2012, as well as an award for Best Imaging Innovation for 2012 from the Technical Image Press Association (TIPA).
“PureView has completely raised the bar on imaging performance for the whole smartphone industry – and Nokia is not stopping here,” said Jo Harlow, Head of Smart Devices at Nokia. “We’re going to carry on developing PureView for our future smartphones in ways that will again revolutionise the imaging experience.”
The Nokia 808 PureView features a large, high-resolution 41 megapixel sensor with high-performance Carl Zeiss optics and new pixel oversampling technology. At standard resolutions (2/3, 5 and 8 megapixels) this means the ability to zoom without loss of clarity and capture seven pixels of information, condensing into one pixel for the sharpest images imaginable.
At high-resolution the Nokia 808 has the ability to capture an image, then zoom, reframe, crop and resize afterwards to expose previously unseen levels of detail. With superior low-light performance and the ability to save in compact file sizes for sharing in email, MMS, and on social networks, the Nokia 808 PureView makes it possible for anyone to capture professional looking images in any conditions.
In addition to superior still imaging technology, the Nokia 808 PureView also includes full HD 1080p video recording and playback with 4X lossless zoom and the world’s first use of Nokia Rich Recording. Rich Recording enables audio recording at CD-like levels of quality, previously only possible with external microphones.
The Nokia 808 PureView also features exclusive Dolby Headphone technology, transforming stereo content into a personal surround sound experience over any headphones and Dolby Digital Plus for 5.1 channel surround sound playback.
