Nokia 808 - Picture Perfection?

It takes a lot to satify a tech fan like Andy Hagon, but here he reports on a couple of months with the rare lesser-spotted red Nokia 808 PureView. Superlatives are scattered aplenty, there are some gorgeous photo examples of what the 808 can do, plus the one rant that Andy had was thankfully averted through a little intervention of my own. Phew!

Here's a bit from Andy's 808 experience:

This is about a device that has an asset that you can truly appreciate and utilise for your own enjoyment and satisfaction. The 41MP sensor on the Nokia 808 PureView, along with all of the PureView technology inside the beast, is something to shout about. Still. Yes, even in May 2013. Because Nokia have yet to release this awesome camera power on another device. So even in May 2013, the best camera phone to trump all of the Ones, the S4s and the 5s is still, yes I know this sounds weird, is still, the Symbian-running Nokia....

 

OK, so what am I banging on about? Well to put it simply and in all-caps: I AM NOT A PHOTOGRAPHER. I have never even had one lesson in the art of photography. In fact, the only teaching I have ever had was from my dad when he said to me, “Son, you’re holding the camera the wrong way around. Keep it like that and you’ll end up taking a picture of yourself.” Pictures of ourselves??! Ha! What a crazy notion, to think that we would ever actually take a picture, with a camera, of ourselves! Hahaha! Oh man, this world is just crazy. 

But no, I am not trained in photography at all. And yet, when I go out into the busy streets of New York City, or the calm of its Central Park, or on a road trip to somewhere less hectic but just as American, I find myself lost without my red Nokia 808 PureView. Because when I remember to bring it with me, I can take some really great photos.

The strange thing about the 808 PureView is that it makes you think you are a good photographer. I know it sounds bizarre, but when I’m out and about with it in my pocket, I can’t help but frame scenes with my eyes and think, that’ll look good on Twitter or Flickr, and one, two, I’ve taken a snap with the 808, edited the picture on the screen a little, cropped it, saved it, uploaded it and moved on. I admit that I am a fan of doing all the above with my N9 as well, but it’s with the 808 PureView that I really bother to think about a photographic composition and then snap it.

 

Some lovely shots are embedded in the article, note that they, and others, are all available on Andy's Flickr stream.

Andy seemed particular amazed by the zoom capabilities of the 808, going from a 38MP original to look at some extreme detail here:

This one is my favourite. Could you make out the name of the restaurant on the dock from another phone’s zoom? I doubt it! I’m pretty sure no one could get “MARINERS” from another phone’s zoom!

Symbian Belle FP2 has really grown on me, that is, it has regrown on me, as I have been a fan of Symbian for a long time, but this is the first time in a while since I have purchased an expensive Symbian phone and used it as my main device for an extended period of time. The OS is just fine, y’know, and I’m happy to tweak it with superb apps like ‘Belle Extra Buttons/StartMenu’ and ‘Tactile Calls’ to make it more Meego-y and less S^3-y. It is plenty fast and zippy and the fact that the screen is 360 x 640 only bothers me when I’m looking at a particularly good shot I’ve taken, only because I’m thinking to myself, wow, I bet this would look great on my Mac’s screen, or the HD TV. But usually, knowing that it is a great shot is enough, and I really am not bothered about the relatively low PPI and 4-inch screen. I’m very happy with it because, basically, I can use it one-handed and not look like a total numpty when in a call, because it doesn’t look like I’m holding a Kindle to my ear.

Great stuff, and a nice balanced verdict, you can read on in the full article here.

Andy did have one issue, which he detailed like this:

I thought I was connected to wifi (because I just connected to the wifi)  and then while I was in the middle of Tweetian and wanted to send a tweet (which makes sense) the spinning circle never stopped spinning. It would seem that the wifi has disconnected itself and I would have to reconnect it. Very annoying.

BUT HERE’S A HAPPY UPDATE! After a little fiddling with one of the settings for wifi, I switched ‘Power Saving’ to ‘On’. Previously I had it set of ‘Off’ thinking that power saving meant it would disconnect if I wasn’t using it (which I didn’t want it to do). However, I was totally wrong. Thanks to the Symbian Master himself,Steve Litchfield, I was encouraged to ignore my own misconstrued logic and switch that to ‘On’. I also enabled ‘Advanced Power Saving’ and my wifi has been rock solid all day. ALL DAY! Fantastic! 

Glad to help! His issues with Wi-fi were unusual, in that most people don't fiddle with the defaults, though I'll freely admit that the wording in the WLAN Settings is misleading. 'Power saving' actually refers to whether the Wifi radio in the phone should ramp down its transmission power when data's not actually flowing, and is nothing to do with perhaps saving more power by disconnecting altogether. I'd speculate that by setting 'Power saving' as 'Disabled', the Wi-fi radio runs at full power all the time and the OS then has to apply drastic action, such as disconnecting it, whenever there's any kind of lull in the data stream.

Make sense? Can you shed any more light on Andy's (thankfully now solved) issue?