While I can (and probably should) go over all the tech stuff and the geek details behind the new Nokia Pureview 808, I would just stick to a user’s point of view. And share with you why I think this phone is brilliant from a user viewpoint!
Beyond the obvious camera features, here are a list of features I love:
1. Nightlamp, bedtime clock: The phone features a clock display on the standby screen which is optimized such that battery utilization is negligible in the standby mode and yet provides sufficient illumination to double up the phone as a night lamp. Simply brilliant! No other phone has this technology (except the fabulous Nokia N9).
2. Just play music on the car sound system: NFC, Bluetooth, Wifi? Nahh, no jargon, nothing complicated here. Just long tap the songs and “play via radio”. And tune your car radio on the corresponding FM channel that you see on your phone. So easy, for everyone! Internal magic is via an FM transmitter, which non-Nokia phone users are unaware of.
3. Unlimited Nokia Music Store access for 1 year (this is a gift from Nokia India): Yes, no need to buy CDs or attempt downloading pirated music now. You have unlimited access to almost all songs you would like to hear. And yes, you can download them on your device and copy them on your computer to play them. Simply brilliant! Almost all English and Hindi songs I knew of are there on the Nokia Music Store.
4. Dolby Surround Sound: Okay, no jargon here. One liner, the sound experience is same as a movie theatre, even using your ordinary earphones! There is a sample video on the phone (“Dolby Channel Test”, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mnm6ZYw6oH0) that plays sound samples through 6 channels one after the other. The key difference between Nokia Pureview 808 and other phones is that for the Dolby channel test video (or any other movie with HD audio), the 6th channel (for the heart stopping sound samples you find played in the theatres during horor/thriller scenes) plays flawlessly on the 808 but doesn’t produce the effect on others.
5. Excellent noise cancellation: The noise cancellation is splendid, works brilliantly even in a noisy market place.
6. Good button placements: The lock switch and camera buttons are so suitably placed that time from pocket to shoot is excellent. Just pull out from the pocket, long press the camera button and click the shot. Took me about 4-5 seconds.
7. Easy to invoke inbuilt flashlight: Just slide and hold the slider switch to activate the brightest ever LED flashlight seen on a phone.
8. Fast preloaded offline maps for India: Even if you don’t have a data connection, you are not left at the mercy of tile based maps like Google Maps. On the Nokia Pureview 808, the Nokia Maps has all the map data preloaded for every city in India, and just open the Nokia Maps app and hit the road. Even the GPS fix speed is very fast.
9. Big Screen (HDMI) and DLNA support: Haven’t experienced it myself, but the builtin DLNA support and the Big Screen app (for viewing on TV via HDMI) are two promising and distinguishing features of the phone, found rarely on other phones.
Rest of the features are all comparable with other smartphones. All the commonly used applications and support for social networking services are preinstalled (or can be installed from Nokia Store): Mail, Calendar, Twitter, Facebook, Microsoft Office, QuickOffice, Dropbox/Skydrive client, Shazam, BBC, CNN, Weather, Adobe Reader, Music Player etc. etc. Oh, and did I say the camera on the Nokia Pureview 808 is a 41 megapixel one, more than 4 times that of cameras found on most smartphones?
