Nokia
808 PureView

With a massive 41-megapixel sensor and ahead-of-its-time pixel binning, the Nokia 808 PureView was a statement of technological leadership from a company that was still a global giant in 2012, when the 808 PureView went on sale. The 808 PureView was Nokia's last Series 60-based and last Symbian OS smartphone (the exact OS variant was called Nokia Belle Feature Pack 1). Strangely, Nokia launched the 808 PureView more than a year after announcing its intention to switch to Windows Phone as its OS of choice, and over six months after debuting its first Windows-powered phone, the Nokia Lumia 800. After five years of development, Nokia was keen to show the world the capabilities of its imaging team, even if the software platform was old. It was the unexpected hit of the giant Mobile World Congress (MWC) show in Barcelona, winning numerous awards, including ‘Best New Mobile Handset’ awarded by the GSM Association’s team of industry judges. Its giant 41-megapixel camera was developed as part of a four-year project with Carl Zeiss. Users could take extremely detailed 38-megapixel photos near the sensor's full resolution, but the default settings combined four pixels into one—binning—to improve low-light performance. This meant standard photos were eight megapixels, which was similar to Nokia’s competition at the time. However, the camera's high megapixel count also meant the phone offered 4x lossless zoom when recording 1080p video at 30 frames per second. The phone’s 41-megapixel sensor went on to hold the record for the largest smartphone sensor for seven years. The 808 PureView featured a four-inch display and was 13.7mm thick, with the camera extending to 18mm. It also included a xenon flash — as used on compact cameras. Although a niche product, it underlined Nokia's continued ability to innovate with supply-chain partners, even as the company began a steep decline. Despite its impressive camera, the device was ultimately hindered by its operating system and hefty $599 price tag. The operating system's weakness immediately showed in how long it took to process images after they were taken, a major shortcoming of the device. This was because the 808’s hardware platform was old. While the 808 had a 1.3 GHz ARM CPU, 512MB RAM, and 16GB of onboard storage, the camera’s shot-to-shot times in full-resolution mode were very slow. Rather than counting shots per second, 808 users had to think in terms of seconds per shot. As was common on Nokia smartphones, the 808 PureView included a broad range of features and software standards including an FM radio; an FM radio transmitter to connect to car stereos; microSD card slot; HDMI output; support for Wi-Fi, DLNA and UPnP for in-home networking; compass, A-GPS, accelerometer and proximity sensors; and a removable battery. Similarly, the 4-inch display with 360x640 pixels was far too low-resolution and small for users to see the detail in the photos captured by the 808’s vast camera sensor. However, it was perfectly suited to using the standard Series 60 Symbian apps. Despite the phone’s limitations, its innovative camera lived on. A year after the 808 PureView, Nokia launched the Lumia 1020. This Windows Phone smartphone included a similar large 41-megapixel camera, but it was housed in a slimmer design and backed by more powerful hardware. The model in the Mobile Phone Museum collection features a very rare back cover known as the “Tampere Limited Edition”, celebrating the phone's crowning as “Best Handset” at MWC. We also own a very rare black prototype variant of the device.