Finally found a phone worthy of replacing my N8 and that is the… *tada*… Nokia 808 Pureview.  For the uninitiated, the 808 won the ‘Best New Mobile Handset, Device or Tablet’ at Mobile World Congress 2012 as well as ‘BEST IMAGING INNOVATION’ in the TIPA AWARDS 2012.  If you want to read more about its fantastic camera capabilities and how an amazing 41MP is condensed to give you the best ever 5MP photo, please take a look here: http://conversations.nokia.com/2012/02/27/nokia-808-pureview-%E2%80%93-revolutionary-camera-technology-great-smartphone/

As you may know by now, I’m not impressed by pure specs – dual core, quad core, tons of RAM, etc, don’t impress me.  What good is reciting all these numbers if at the end of the day, my supposedly lower specs phone produces the same results as someone else’s dual core device?  That just means that my phone is more efficient because it took less to achieve the same results!

For critics of the Symbian OS, I think it’s a little sad because they are still stuck at Symbian S60v5 which was definitely not conducive for touch screen phones.  Since then, Symbian has pushed out S^3, Symbian Anna, Nokia Belle & Nokia Belle FP1 (which is what the 808 comes with).  It’s a pity that Nokia only made these advancements in the last 1.5 years.  If it brought these OSes to the market earlier, I’m quite confident that Nokia would not be in the pits it is today.  Sadly, Symbian users who have left the platform have decided not to give Symbian another chance despite:

Symbian is still the best multitasking OS around – don’t give me crap about how the iOS saves apps in a suspended mode in the background when you switch out of the app & how you can come back & the app is exactly the way you left it.  That’s bullshit ok?  That is NOT multitasking.  My Nokia continues to download & run apps in the background while I move on to do something in another app.  Gosh!  Even my mom’s “dumbphone” Asha 303 can save apps in the background when she moves on to another app & return to the app that was frozen in the background.

I heard from a friend who recently switched to the Samsung S3 running the ice cream sandwich (ICS) OS that the ICS doesn’t multitask either!  It randomly closes apps that have been pushed to the background.  Tsk.

Nokia Maps (aka Nokia Drive) is still to date the only FREE phone GPS software that gives you turn by turn navigation in a myriad of languages and has OFFLINE maps.  Now that’s really important if you don’t want to rack up a humongous data roaming phone bill when using the GPS nav software overseas.  Nokia Maps have close to 100 maps of different countries for you to download free.

iOS 6 is supposed to have turn by turn software too – powered by TomTom but I’m still waiting to see it will charge for the maps & if the GPS can work in offline mode.

And now… for some photos of my new phone!  Hehe.  The 808’s photos were taken with my N8.  Sorry if the screen of the handphones have a bit of reflection on them – my house is fitted with downlights so it’s hard to avoid the reflections in any convenient manner.

2012-06-17-188_12012-06-17-190_1

The above are the front & back shots of my 808.  I’ve ordered some phone covers for it from taobao.com but they’ve yet to arrive.

The photo of Horlicks & Pinky is actually my screensaver.  It looks a little pixelated because the pic was “downsized” in pixels so it isn’t too bright as that would not be very battery friendly for a screensaver.  If you’re keen to get this on your phone too, do download the app Sleeping Screen from the Nokia ovi store.

The main differences I spotted between using the 808 (running on Belle FP1) and my N8 (running on Belle) was:

1) The Gallery has totally changed!!  The 808’s gallery app doesn’t contain any videos in it .  There’s another app that hosts all the videos detected on the phone.  The N8’s Gallery on the other hand, contained both photos & videos.  (Update: My mistake.  The Gallery does contain videos and there is also another Videos app on the 808.)

What I don’t like about the 808’s Gallery is that it doesn’t allow users to mark & delete multiple photos.  I think this is dumb as Symbian has always allowed users to download multiple photos!!

2) The camera’s UI has also changed dramatically to take into account the Pureview technology.

3) The Gmail setup in the 808 is improved.  In my N8, there was no option to set Gmail to “sync manually” (though Exchange mail had this option).  On the 808, this is now available – great!

4) The 808’s speakers are softer than the N8’s… but so far I’ve still been able to hear my phone when outdoors so I guess it’s not all bad.  Actually, it’s more accurate to say that the N8’s speakers were super duper loud.  Heh.  I also noted that when I set my ringtone to the loudest volume, it no longer gives the warning that it’s extremely loud.  Haha.

(Update) 5) There are a few new widgets available for Belle FP1 such as weather widgets (love this!) and a toggle for convenient turning 3G on/ off.

(Update) 6) This doesn’t relate the OS per se but the accessories that come with the phones.  The N8 came with earphones that had player controls on them as well as a HDMI cable.  The 808’s default earphones does not have player controls – so I’m using my N8’s earphones instead.  No mini-HDMI cable either.

Really loving my latest hp!!

0 Responses to “Nokia 808 Pureview (Updated – 21 Jun 2012)”


  1. No Comments

Leave a Reply




June 2012
M T W T F S S
 123
45678910
11121314151617
18192021222324
252627282930  

Archives