Nokia 808 PureView beats all in GSM Arena’s blind camera test by huge margin of votes
The contenders were revealed a few hours ago but it was not yet clear who the mass public preferred, based simply on the quality of the photos.
http://mynokiablog.com/2012/06/17/gsm-arena-blind-test-revealed/
By a huge margin of votes, the Nokia 808 PureView wins. GSM Arena previously stated that some people found it difficult to distinguish between the Nokia 808 PureView smartphone and the micro-four-thirds, Olympus.
Now in this test, the blind nature means people were choosing the best picture, as opposed to merely voting for their favourite phone out of bias. Without knowing what camera took what picture (for definite) people were choosing based on which camera performed the best and produced the best photo for them. Thus the voting is not like all the other times we might have asked to to go vote for a Nokia, just because it’s Nokia. This was voted based on quality and performance – no ties to any brand.
As I noted before, I liked E the best as it was the clearest and most natural looking to me but I did think at one point that it was the dedicated micro-four-thirds and not the phone, 808 because I was expecting the micro-four-thirds dedicated advanced compact to be the clear winner.
It isn’t the case.
The numbers are quite clear – Nokia has really managed to create something special with the 808 PureView. Matching the Micro Four Thirds camera in terms of image quality would have been impressive enough, but beating it is simply stunning.
We did expect the Nokia 808 PureView to trump its smartphone competition quite easily, but the fact that it was voted best performer by more than twice the number of people that chose the the E-PL2 was a bit surprising even to us.
Anyway, we are busy putting the monster cameraphone through its paces and we are still on track to giving you its full review some time this week. Stay tuned!
http://www.gsmarena.com/pureview_blind_test-review-773p3.php
Let me add Damian’s reaction tweet again:
N8 coming just above the OneX is a surprise. Perhaps it’s because the N8′s pics were down sampled to 8MP.
(Update: Ah, it appears they just counted pictures of number 1 preference, hence why quite rightly N8 did not get as much votes as 808 or E-PL2. But it doesn’t make sense why folks had voted the clearly worse pictures at the top :/)
Cheers Aymen for the tip!
Category: Nokia
About the Author (Author Profile)
Hey, thanks for reading my post. My name is Jay and I'm a medical student at the University of Manchester. When I can, I blog here at mynokiablog.com and tweet now and again @jaymontano. We also have a twitter and facebook accounts @mynokiablog and Facebook.com/mynokiablog. Check out the tips, guides and rules for commenting >>click<< Contact us at tips(@)mynokiablog.com or email me directly on jay[at]mynokiablog.comSubscribe
If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to receive more just like it.
The only surprise here is the HTC One X.. pretty bad.
Potato > HTC One X
true story
take that GSMA
Quick, someone ship Olympus a box of roasted Crow with a side of humble pie.
I think that goes for all P&S manufacturers. Just imagine if the iPhone was capable of such imaging.. with the amount of sales they get, the P&S industry is DONE.
They are lucky that people don’t like Nokia, and Nokia doesn’t really want to sell the thing that bad.
Don’t think for a moment that Apple ain’t aware of that and that they’ll do whatever it takes to ascend to the 808PV levels, or as far as they can go without compromising their minimalism design, and take out P&S industry, just as they did with the portable CD players a decade ago.
Nokia could do it as well, but if we learned something from history, it is that Nokia never misses the opportunity to miss an opportunity.
Well they still haven’t missed it completely, but they are about to.. I would say they have about 12-16 months until the rest catch up to comparable levels, they don’t really have to beat the 808, they just need to come close enough.. kind of like what apple did to the N8 witht the 4s.
So.. a cheap flagship “pureview” model with WP8 is needed. It needs to be pushed very hard on the carrier level, especially in the USofA.
As far as the P&S industry.. that one has an interesting dynamic. Sony and Samsung are playing a balancing act between their smartphone cameras, and their compact.. as soon as they put their efforts into the smartphone imaging game, Canon and Nikon are in big trouble.. and then.. they might have to partner up with a smartphone manufacturer to put their name on some smartphones.. maybe HTC, ZTE.. who knows.
Apple and Nokia don’t care about any of it, and they can push as much as they can.. which is exactly what Nokia is doing..
So.. You’re saying that Nokia’s masterpiece 5 years work of PureView would’ve been caught up by the rest in one or one and half year..
Is the PureView achievment really that easy to follow by other? :O
I’m asking honestly
Well, it’s not like others did nothing during those years… Nokia is unlikely five years ahead of the others.
That makes sense. It’s also possible that it just never occurred to the other manufacturers to try putting such a large sensor in.
There’s more to camera than just a sensor, and there are many ways to skin the proverbial cat, so the competition might have taken some other path.
I do believe that the tech we see in the 808PV is a good number of years ahead of the competition, but let’s not forget that you don’t really have to be the best on the tech side to win the war. You only need to be good enough, with acceptable number of compromises, and hell-of-a-marketing to push out even the tech that is vastly superior.
PureView or not, it’s self evident that the P&S industry is a dying breed. Who’ll strike the final blow depends to be seen – Nokia is in position to do that, but will they for once execute on their strengths before the competition catches up – now that’s a ~5 billion dollars question.
The competition can create the PureView effect for images by using a software solution. That’s how they can achieve the same result with using a large sensor.
Tre real question is how important the competition considers the PureView effect really is? Is it something that helps them to make more sales?`
Some compacts are already using the supersampling technology similar to the PureView. Not with the same pixel count but the supersampling tech.
be prepared..
Just like siri voice to s-voice…
A copy of Pureview is coming… Soon!
And its gonna be called… S-VIEW!!
p&s have been done for awhile… they’re sales are plummeting its almost a niche market for p&s mainly of ignorant ppl
the premium enthusiast p&s still have a market like the canon s100 as it still takes awesome pictures + it provides raw mode
camera companies dont seem to care though which is odd… they’re almost like how Nokia was initially ignoring the iphone sure they’ve introduced micro 4/3s but they havent really increased the quality of their compacts
Sonys starting to make chages by including pixel binning in their 4/3s line up but meh not enough especially when looking at what the 808 provides in terms of sensor size etc
That’s a pretty arrogant comment!
“ignorant people”…
Did it occur to you that many prefer the hassle-free world of a simple phone and a simple camera in two separate boxes?
Me, I love camera-phones, but who are we to judge other peoples preferences?
“Did it occur to you that many prefer the hassle-free world of a simple phone and a simple camera in two separate boxes?” Maybe in the beginning, but humans function more or less the same, and anyone prefers to have just one thing instead of two, if you can do the same things of course.
DON’T ever underestimate Apple! They have money to throw in R&D. Remember that fateful day when they raided Xerox PARC.
apple just buys/steals everything they want to incorporate into ios they dont research jack :/
siri, maps, apps, radios
, etc
I’m surprised the iphone and S3 got more votes that the N8. I guess more people chose them as the best pic than the N8. However in going through the responses, I found many people matched my judgment of E,F and A being far better than the rest. This seemed to be the majority opinion. There really was a clear gap between these three and the others, so I’m surprised the iphone and S3 would have so many first place votes.
I for one never voted on which is best; I just took them alphabetically, and named which camera I though was used for each picture – got them all right, too! B)
I’m pretty sure a lot of others did this as well. If nobody picked up on this, the results might be a bit skewed…
You don’t think the 808 is going to make it into every imaging rag worldwide? Pure View with Belle will ring differently than N8 with S^3.
they only counted peoples #1 preferred i see
or else the iphone i imagine would have been last i am surprised to see 56 ppl felt the iphone had the best picture though oO
and amused no1 felt the OneX was the best lol
I feel these tests are slightly unfair.
Yes, obviously the Pureview will win, have you seen how thick the thing is? It’s basically a point and shoot.
I’m also confident that the Pureview would do rather well against point and shoot, but it would at least be a fair right.
Now if the Pureview was as thing as those other phones, then the fight would be fair.
(I have no idea why I wrote “thin” and “thing” like 2 times, sorry)
I have no idea why you wrote at all, as your message was rubbish. You haven’t seen 808 because its not as thick a it seems.
The 808PV did rather well against a Micro 4/3 camera FFS, and the 808PV has beaten it almost 2:1 in the blind test mentioned in the above post. All that while being an inch thinner than the camera in question.
What’s so thick about the 808PV anyway, at the camera hump it’s as thick as my N900 (otherwise just a millimeter thicker than my N9), and while I wouldn’t call my N900 a thin phone, I certainly don’t see what’s so thick about that. After all, many competing devices have a camera hump as well where they get in the thick realm as well, and I haven’t seen people calling them thick. Does every device have to fit in your wallet just to be of acceptable thickness?
The 808 should be viewed as a ratio between portability vs. function. It weighs 170 grams, and would fit in most pockets. The olympus e-pl2 weighs about 360 grams, and it won’t fit in most pockets. The difference in functionality and results between the two is much smaller, than the difference in size and functionality. You see.. the 808 is a perfectly capable smartphone on top of that camera as well, which is a huge +.
However you want to spin this: 808 = WIN.
You obviously haven’t see, use, and try the 808 yourself. It’s a phone size, i can guarantee you.
It doesn’t look as thick as in the picture, video, and whatever the spec sheet told us.
I’m surprised my self when trying the demo unit in local Nokia store. Damn, it is PureFect!
thick oO aside from the hump its the same as the n8
its thicker than a small margin. I own both but since they are almost the same size i dont have a problem putting it in my pocket with another phone x1-01 and car keys. its bigger than n8 but not really noticable imo.
Why is it unfair? It’s a test to objectively determine if the 808 is as good as it’s cracked up to be, even against a dedicated camera…
As an added bonus we get a reasonable comparison of the S3, One X, N8 and 4S as well…
The camera is the 808′s great strength; would it also be unfair to compare the browsing capabilities of the 808 with those of the S3? For people who value a fast browser slightly higher than a great camera, such a test would be very useful in determining their next phone.
Proud and happy for Damian Dinning’s team. They really made something revolutionarh withe the 808! More innovations to come.
Shocking I actually picked the iphone over the N8! I guess it’s fair because I never liked the default camera settings on my phone, but after some tweaking it would be nice.
My preference was, in order, F for best overall, E 2nd because of the cool colour temperature, and D for being a poor version of F.
I’m a “Nikonian” in the first place because I liked that warm colour out of the box.
I am a happy N9 user and do not feel attracted by any Lumia phone. But the 808 is very attempting. Taking photos has become an important part of a smartphone’s job and Nokia is now the undeniable leader in this department.
Can it be that the 808 will beat Lumia sales soon?
Impossible without strong carrier support in Europe, and the US. Reality is.. there is some within the EU, and absolutely non in the US.
No, it won’t. Because here in APAC region 808 is extremely limited and priced highly. Probably same with the other too.
Idk is it because of the difficulty in manifacturing or just plainly Elop strategy, that 808 availabilty is limited (and expensive)
Another potential winner killed? Not pushed in the US? I can’t believe it. This is really a Nokia speciality, which could be successful there as well.
What do you mean by limited availability in APAC? Not marketed at all, or backorders? As far as I know it hasn’t been launched widely yet.
Same story here. Limited supplies, not marketed well, backordered, no marketing collateral, no posters, no display unit, no promotional video, no flyers, no leaflets, no mention, boxed and hidden behind the counter, salesperson has no knowledge of the product, no accessories, no ETA for supply and resupply, etc.,
So what we need now is a software that make 808 able to do manual mode (eg. shutter speed, extensive iso setting, apperture is not possible but at least advance exposure compensation) and it will be awesome!
I will definitely buy a Nokia camera if they have one!
Not only it won , but it also became the most popular phone now on GSMA.
I’ve voted E.
E is PureView.
F did pretty well.
I like super camera in a super phone like N8, and it is 808.
First nokia will made dedicated satnavs obsolete
now p&s cameras (and some even more advanced / expensive) will soon be gone
funny how an “outdated” system does that
It’s very unlikely Nokia will be able to make p&s cameras obsolete with this tech. The first problem is the price. If you want a camera with a zoom you can get a compact with a fraction of the price. That will come with a real optical zoom. Sure, the quality is not on par with the 808 if you get an 100$ camera. However if that’s all you can afford then it’s your choise.
The second problem is the zoom. If you use the full zoom you still get only 3x and the PureView effect is gone.
It took 5 years for Nokia to bring the PureView effect for the Symbian. It’s probable it won’t take that long to bring this tech for Lumia. However it’s most likely the PureView effect is not a priority. Most people consider current cameras good enough.
Hey, why don’t you try something new for once trying to spin 808 to something worse. You clearly have an agenda against symbian.
It’s strange why some of you want to trash Symbian’s reputation.
Do you understand what happens if the promoted feature does not work properly?
It’s obvious the 808 just can’t make compacts obsolete. Claiming the opposite will make people to hate Nokia. Do you want that to happen? Really?
waiting for review on 808 from dpreview…
Wht the hell… How can sgs3 and ip4s be better than N8…. This is outrageous….Whoever said hte voting was biased….X( :’(. I dont even mind ip4s, but samsung!!!!Nokia feature phones have better cam than their smartphones…