Nokia 808 PureView Review from WP Eyes
Here’s a review of the Nokia 808 PureView from WP eyes, specifically over at WMPU.
The conclusion is not unlike most across the blogosphere. Excellent hardware, stunning camera but stumbles on software.
http://wmpoweruser.com/nokia-808-pureview-device-impressions/
Hardware – solid in hand, sturdy. Great additional storage, pentaband, battery.
Audio, loud clear,
Camera, sharpest images imaginable. Best that exists right now
Video: Great
Software: lag throughout UI, Slow unresponsive at times, keyboard one of the worst. Terrible browser. But great to see Nokia apps like Nokia maps, Nokia transit, Nokia Music.
(Input via keyboard and browsing the web – two key things that should have been done right. Shame as Belle FP1 is night and day vs S^3).
If you are a camera lover then go for the 808. A more balanced camera smartphone for the masses is the upcoming 920. Judging by the number of SIII’s in the UK, these peeps there at least don’t mind phones with large footprints/screens.
Cheers shallow ocean shoal for the tip!
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Obviously didnt try the FP2 fw update.. Lag my foot.. I compared my 808 against my sons ip5, and they were near neck in neck ..
They didn’t try the FP2 update as its not available, at least not officially available.
(and any news when its going to be officially released???)
FP2 keyboard is superb! I’ve challenged my android and iphone friends to speen and fewest taps to send texts and I’m beating them consistently.
speen=speed – See! If I’d been using my 808 to post that message the mistake would not have happened
lag my butt!!
symbian is awesome! android is laggy and freezy!!! i got no problem with symbian!!
the only terrible about symbian is nokia browser and the number of apps available!!!
but overall experience.. way better than android!!!
if they say symbian is laggy then they should tell the same thing to android! coz most of the symbian engineers are working with android!
There is a better browser in FP2.
Taking a pic with Camera from lock is same speed as ip5 too.. very fast..
Which is rather impressive when processing/accessing 41 mega pixels!
This Browser is plagued and will never see better days.
I remember the better browser soon statements. i had 5800XM then , and still
Keyboard and Browsers are somehow worse .
This Browser is plagued and will never see better days.
I remember the better browser soon statements. i had 5800XM then , and still
Keyboard and Browsers are somehow worse .
Agreed – not sure where they see the lag.
Agree with them about the keyboard, but I’m happily using (and loving) the Swipe beta, which is way better than any other touch screen keyboard I’ve ever used.
Last lines of the “review” show the typical bias “If you’re looking for a decent smartphone, please forget this”. Eh? WTF?????
For the moment, Symbian is by far and away the best of the smartphone platforms! So what if it doesn’t have hundreds of thousands of apps, it has enough to satisfy most normal people.
Agree KB is bad, but i just love Swype..I coudnt do without it.
If you’re coming from WP, everything is laggy.
^^This.
Yup! I was unable to see the lag in Symbian FP1 homescreen until I used a Lumia 800. But I’d have to say that gallery on 808 is faster than WP.
And camera UI is great too.
WP doesn’t have multiple home screens with wallpapers and widgets though. It spends most of the time drawing rectangular bitmaps and fonts.
Ah, so it’s a bug, not a feature.
Funny you mention fonts, to me it’s by far the most repulsive part of Android, and the most beautiful part of WP.
I was actually talking about Symbian homescreens and widgets, not Android. I still think Symbian is a better OS than WP because of the customization options.
In WP you’re kinda restricted to resizing tiles and solid colours.
“if youre looking for smartphone,please forget this?” ???? Is this ******* joke? I wont say “smartphone” to something that cant even do true multitasking,and symbian is best at this job..
Camera comparison 808 PureView vs. Sony Xperia T (recently released Sony flagship with 13MP camera )
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pureviewclub/8024383296/in/set-72157631623067855/
qwerty keyboard in FP2 is very easy to use, but the alphanumerik is not better than FP1 version
i hope, FP2 will come again with other nice update
Well FP isnt released yet, so wait and see.. But the beta is good apart from KB.. Honestly though, swype is awesome.
Coming as a windows phone power user I love the way I can’t use my mp3′s as ring tones, the lack of multi-tasking makes my phone go so quickly, I appreciate the feature that I can’t add expandable storage, I love having to load everything through the great zune desktop program, things like fm transmitter and hdmi out are just a complication I can’t get my head round!
ha,, good one..
Timple, you can keep your archaic and laggy UI, boring, low quality apps, and your archaic HDMI – 2012 and beyond is about DLNA, Airplay, Smartscreen; too bad you don’t have a modern vehicle – you know, the type of vehicle where you can stream your music via bluetooth or use a aux in line so that a FM Transmitter is not needed; expandable storage – apparently you’ve been living in a cave as WP supports this feature.
do people who post on a symbian blog not know what symbian can do? It can do all those you just mentioned with the added benefit of fm ir hdmi (which provides better quality and battery saving over dlna)
funny you mentioned bluetooth consiering wp cant transfer files
Of course – I have a N8. None of what Timple mentioned is of any meaningful benefit for my usage. I certainly don’t need to xfer files via bluetooth; and there is simply no need for me to be tethered to a HDMI cable in order to share capture moments on my phone; there are simply more convenient, and modern methods that I use.
The price is dropping rapidly on this phone. Just as fast as Nokia has dropped its promotion. What promotion you say? Exactly.. We cant even access online product support from Australia..Its not even listed..But the price has down to about $500au, so that makes it a bargain here.
£440 here, thats only an £80 drop since I bought mine ….
Paul,why should Nokia waste any more money to continue to promote the dead Symbian? Symbian is not the future, thus no need to waste their marketing dollars.
Laggy compared with what, colored tiles and text? Swiping tiles without lag is to be expected, but if it doesn’t then you definitely got software optimization issues, especially with the faster 1.4Ghz processor. On the other hand, Belle is smooth with just an older 1Ghz processor and swiping through widgets and backgrounds. Or did they open apps continuously while testing 808 thinking that its multitasking works like WP “multitasking”?
I leave my commonly used apps, browser camera etc active..Really fast to access them that way. Not sure how many you can multitask with, but i read over 40, somewhere.
I love my 808. In portrait mode I use T9 messaging, and in landscape I use Swype. I wish someone would combine T9 with Swype – it would be so fast……
Try this.
1) Place phone flat on table in portrait mode with T9 keypad. Type with two hands
2) Plug phone into computer, switch device to mass storage and defragment the mass memory and memory card.
Nokia needs to help us with community support for the apps that we do want for the 808. We might well be saved from the drivel of the android market with our few select apps, but what about when we need something….
Windows can defrag 808? really?
It’s just a FAT device. That is the problem with mass storage mode using FAT mounting, it is possible to do low level things like that, and it’s possible to screw it up as well. (You know how every app and picture on D: becomes unavailable when Symbian is plugged in in mass storage mode? It’s because you can’t share the block device safely at that low level). A more modern and safe approach is MTP or some kind of mediated virtual drive access, which unfortunately requires software support on the PC.
For that matter, Linux and OS X can defrag the 808 too, if they have a fat degrag utility.
What’s the point of defrag on flash disk? Fragmentation occurs, that’s true, but access time to obtain content of individual sectors is identical on fragmented or linearly organized FAT FLASH disk. De-fragmentation does matter on physical disk where motor and head needs to travel to get to another sector based on the FAT, but it does not apply on flash disks even if it has FAT filesystem…
Is that the same as a solid state drive? Because on my laptop System Mechanic has a utility for that
There is no point of defrag on flash, merely pointed out that yes, you can.
Can any Harmattan “users” who’ve also update to FP2 please comment on how they compare now?
All the main things; browsing, VKB, Swype etc…
Thank-you.
Harmattan = N9/950
No update available yet for 808. FB1 is not so good compared to N9. Actually it is bad. Comparing only camera it is a different story.
@Tomi,
I thought many users already had FP2 on their 808? (not officially of course).
Anyway can you go into more detail about how Belle FP1 on your 808 compares to Harmattan PR1.3?
Thank-you!
Can someone please go into detail about how FP2 compares to Harmattan PR1.3?
Any users who heavily use Harmattan & Belle FP2 on one of the newer Symbian phones?
Thank-you.
So ah, what is it with Belle FP1/2 users, surely there’s some who also use Harmattan?
Every time I’ve tried to get in-depth feedback about how they compare, I get nothing but the sound of crickets.
Is that a reflection of the unity/vibrancy/health of the Qt community nowadays?
There are several different browsers to use. Don’t just stick with one. I have Nokia browser as default, and Opera Mini, AND Opera Mobile, and UC Browser.
Waste of time having said “default browser”, as you can’t change it – despite the option being there on Symbian to change the application defaults, it doesn’t actually work.
It never worked on the N8, and doubt it’ll ever work on the 808.
1. No need to defrag flash storage; it’ll not increase any performance but only lower the flash memory longevity. Simply put, flash storage’s don’t like “writes”; more “writes” compared to “reads” will simply “kill” the storage much faster.
2. The reviewer is definitely biased. I’ve not noticed any lag on my 808 FP1, he’s simply showing his restricted mentality by simply trying to prove WP is better. He has not even covered the hardware features of 808 let aside some obvious software features. In fact, using my 808 as a mass storage device alone is a big feature.
3. One can power off the 808 and plug it in, and it’ll be detected as removable mass storage.
4. FP2 keyboard with suggestion is just as good as WP keyboard. The screen aspect makes it harder to type in portrait mode, and people like me simply use landscape for typing. The orientation animation and performance of the 808 is simply as good as any other phone in the market.
5. Browser was, is and will always be bad.
6. For most most daily task Gravity is darn good.
NOTE: my phone does not lag with 7-8 application like Gravity, Whatsapp, Tweetian, Music Player, Messaging etc. etc. running 24×7 in the background.
I wonder why a site like gsmarena would say that the 808 is so smooth that you wont even notice the phone is running on a single core cpu
Because GSMArena is the only site that will take pity on Symbian – a disservice really to the buying public. They should tell the truth, and not sugar coat it – Symbian is boring and there are simply better, exciting options out there for consumers.
Rubbish. GSM Arena are just being impartial, which is a rarety on any review these days.
Symbian – and its interface – isn’t boring (at least with Belle FP1). Well, if its boring, then so are Android and iOS. 99% of user interaction is starting applications, which is just a simple list of applications, which is pretty much identical with all 3.
What is more exiting – on the interface – on iOS and Android? I’ve got devices on the 3 platforms, and really fail to see whats so wonderful about the iOS and Android UX.
Dave, I say this with a dose of love – if you find Symbian exciting, then you’re boring!
Nothing.. I just got my iPhone 5 and I can tell you.. nothing has changed since 2010. I will be using along the 808.. so far, its got nothing major on it in terms of UX.
i have tried 33 apps and no lag, that wasent even d limit to the number of apps i could open. Symbian is so resourceful and fp1 did enhance the speed. I wish fp2 wil meet the remaining needs. Symbian belle on the newer devices is just ok. All os have their negativities
A lot of people here are trying to prove one OS is better than the other. It all depends what you need to get out of your device. Each OS has their strengths and weaknesses. It’s really about what you can live with or without. In most cases, there are decent workarounds for some shortcomings.
Point is, just choose the device that suits your needs best.
The 920 is more balanced from a certain perspective.. the 808 from another. I don’t think one can be more balanced than the other.
I had a lumia 900 and I used it along the 808 for over 2 weeks.. from my perspective, the 808 is the better smartphone.
I’m a symbian fan who’s also using a android tablet(samsung). Multitasking on android is a mess, symbian is a much better smartphone os. Wp&ios doesnt interest me at all.
Simple solution to ‘lag’: download QEffects from the store and banish the theme transitions
Thanks, great..
Reading these discussions about 808 tempt me so much to buy this Gem now rather waiting for price drop…:p