Nokia 808 PureView

“As a phone, the Nokia 808 PureView could be the swan song of a platform worth many glorious chapters in smartphone history. There may be still a few more Symbians to come, but who will remember them over this unique gadget? As a sign of things to come, the 808 PureView signals something brighter. PureView, combined with the purchase of Scalado's impressive camera technologies, point to a Nokia that will continue to dominate the phone photography field. Couple that with Nokia's knack for sturdy, well-designed hardware and the exciting Windows Phone 8, and the company suddenly looks a lot more likely to claw its way out of the slump.”

“The Nokia 808 PureView is not for everyone, mainly due to its high SIM free price and lack of availability through UK operators. We liked the 41MP camera, giving the ability to zoom in and still get high resolution 8MP images and 4-inch Gorilla Glass display providing a nice screen size for picture and video playback. The Nokia 808 PureView feels like the development of previous Nokia media phones with its expansion on the functionality provided by the Nokia N8 a couple of years ago, including more internal storage making the phone feel more capable of supporting software updates. For those of you out there that loved your Nokia N8s with its 12MP camera you'll love the Nokia 808 PureView with its 41MP camera and increased display and storage capacity.”

“The Nokia 808 PureView is the best cameraphone out there, but you'll have to be willing to forgo the simplicity, function and comfort of competing smartphones if you intend to own it. You also have to be seriously imaging-obsessed to handle this as your daily driver. While Nokia has made some effort to make image sharing painless, these features are still limited, with constrained options and an OS that often collapses under the weight of even moderate demands. In general, you might hear reviewers toss around clichés like setting new benchmarks and peerless results, but in this case, all these platitudes ring true. The 808's low-noise shots, even in dim light, and its loss-less digital zoom features roar. Throw in the superb video and audio recording performance and you have have a clear cameraphone champion. The problem is, it's one that demands a more capable and (future-facing) operating system.”

“The short and bittersweet conclusion is this: Nokia has produced the greatest cameraphone ever and saddled it with the most antiquated and frustrating OS it could find. You’ll be as astonished by the 808 PureView’s image quality as you will be by Nokia’s audacity in shipping a phone with a dead end operating system that should have been retired from duty years ago.”