After a long time,a Nokia phone has evoked a response from people. The Nokia 808 PureView with its 41-megapixel sensor is a camera,a phone and a music player at 170 grams. It feels sturdy,is slightly heavy with a largely plastic surface. Yet,it has a unique appearance with the front similar to a Nokia N8. The back has an elegant bump,which houses the flash,the 41-megapixel sensor,and great-sounding Dolby speakers. The AMOLED display (active-matrix OLED) of the phone is made of tough Gorilla Glass. The screen resolution is awfully low at 640x360 pixels but it manages to make pictures and videos look good. Though it has an old operating system (Symbian Belle),there were no problems with the OS. The phone has the usual connectivity options,WiFi,3G,Bluetooth and NFC (near-field communication) and none of these presented any problems. Call clarity was good. Typing text messages was a bit of a bother as the keypad is less responsive than an Android phone. The browser is not that good,but thankfully,alternatives which work well are available for this phone. Listening to music is a great experience. The music player lacks common options like being able to sort music albums,which is disappointing. The headset works well for both music and calls. This also makes watching videos a good experience as the screen reproduces colours very well. But non-Nokia headsets dont seem to work on it. On medium use,the battery lasts for a day and a half. The picture quality is good. Pressing the camera button opens the camera even if the phone is locked. The camera has a full-resolution mode,which allows you to click pictures at 34 megapixels,enough to spot minute details. There is a PureView mode which lets you click eight megapixels pictures. Apart from this,there are several camera options. You can bump up ISO image up to 800 and not lose picture quality. Above that,pictures become grainy. The camera has a good macro mode,which works as long as your subject is within 15 cm from the 808 PureView. Other modes,such as landscape,portrait and night,function well. Zooming is a little difficult as the slider is at the corner of the screen without any indicators. This technology is only going to improve,so refinements can be expected in future models. Very few cameras manage good video recording along with still pictures. PureView is one of them. Both video and audio recordings were above par,worked well in low light and noisy outdoor environments. Nokia has not tried any gimmicks. Overall,this is a great product. Since it has been developed over five years,old software was expected. But,its internet-related features are way ahead of the competition. At Rs 33,899,the phone is good value for money.
