Nokia’s 808 PureView is a technological achievement that not everyone, this writer included, understands at first glance. Companies can’t just say they’ve made a smartphone with a 41 megapixel camera and not expect people to call bullshit. Here’s how it works in a nutshell: You take a picture with the 808 PureView and the sensor captures 41 megapixels worth of data, then the dedicated image processing chip onboard will average out the values of a block of several pixels and spit out what it thinks is an accurate representation of the subject you’re trying to capture. Out of the box, the 41 megapixel 808 PureView takes 5 megapixel photos. You can configure that option to 3 megapixels, 8 megapixels, or just go nuts and ask the device to give you the raw 41 megapixel file. Anyway, people in Europe and Asia can expect to see the 808 PureView hit store shelves this month, but what about Americans? We thought that Nokia wasn’t even going to bother shipping anymore Symbian devices across the pond, but according to PC Magazine, that’s not the case.
Chris Weber, who’s the head of Nokia Americas, says that the 808 will be sold in FreedomLand, but no operator has opted to subsidize it. In other words, you’re going to be paying roughly $700 to have the pleasure of using an 18 mm thick imaging focused smartphone. We don’t know how good the camera is on this thing, but something tells us that it’s going to make an iPhone 4S look like the damaged Polaroid camera your parents left in the closet over two decades ago. You’re going to have to live with Symbian Belle Feature Pack 1, which is as close to a clone of Android as we’ve ever seen, but photographers probably don’t care since they know that they’ll have a capable camera with them at all times.
Are you going to buy one?