Nokia 808 PureView vs Apple iPhone 4S

If you have been itching for a smartphone camera breakthrough in your life time, the Nokia 808 PureView is the one the fits the bill. Unfortunately the PureView camera technology has been years in the making, and developed with the idea that the handset will be running Symbian, so all the camera interface and APIs are tied up to the aging OS the handset is running – Nokia Belle.

Still, is it worth to consider the Nokia 808 PureView if you are rocking, or intend to get Apple's finest – the iPhone 4S – with its steel and glass design and more than half a million apps army behinds its back? Read on our quick comparison to find out...

Design:

You'd have to be a total function-before-form kind of guy to call the Nokia 808 PureView design good compared with the svelte iPhone 4S made of premium materials like glass and steel. The 808 PureView looks like Quasimodo in comparison, and we are not only talking about the hump on the back here, but also the front with its physical navigational keys bar, and the rough plastic used for the chassis, which make it look like a Symbian phone from a few years ago.



Granted, the chubby 14mm device with a big 41MP PureView camera sensor hump feels very solid in the hand, and the heft is not nearly as we would expect from one with such a monster camera. It is also pretty easy to use with one hand, not only because of the 4” screen, whose size is good for one-handed usage, but also because the hump on the back makes it easier to hold.

The iPhone 4S feels more “edgy”, but solid as well, and is even easier to operate with one-hand, thanks to the smaller display. On the other hand, you get all the ports and slots you may wish for, like microUSB, HDMI-out and microSD with the 808 PureView, and there is a removable battery inside, whereas with the iPhone 4S you only get a proprietary dock connector. Both handsets utilize micro-SIM cards, though.



Display:

The AMOLED screen of the Nokia 808 PureView is with a very low pixel density compared to the Retina Display on the iPhone 4S, due to the 360x640 resolution splashed over a 4” display. It makes reading and browsing pretty unpleasant experiences in comparison with the 640x960 pixels on the 3.5” screen of Apple's best.

What the AMOLED screen has going for it is the stellar antireflective coating that comes with Nokia's ClearBlack layer, making for the brightest AMOLED screen we've seen to date, helping tremendously for good visibility when shooting outside under direct sunlight. The iPhone 4S also has a very bright 500 nits screen, and, since it is IPS-LCD, viewing angles are very wide, just like on the 808 PureView.

The other difference between the two, besides the pixel density, is the color representation – the Nokia 808 PureView AMOLED display exhibits the typical for the technology oversaturated, to the point of gaudy here colors, while the Retina Display covers a more narrow gamut, making its colors appear natural in comparison.

Interface and Functionality:

Symbian has come a long way in its latest Nokia Belle FP1 iteration on the 808 PureView in terms of performance, widget and pull-down notification bar support, yet when it comes to visuals and smoothness, the iPhone 4S has the definite leg up.

With Nokia Bell FP1 you get a vast number of new widgets, so you can pimp your home screens up like on an Android phone, but with this pixel density the interface doesn't look nearly as good as on the iPhone 4S and its attention to detail. iOS doesn't offer widget and full portrait UI orientation support , like what we have on the 808 PureView, but it has so many quality apps written for it, that Nokia Belle just pales in comparison.





Processors:

The Nokia 808 PureView has a 1.3GHz processor plus a separate one for the imaging tasks, as well as 512MB of RAM and 16GB of internal memory. It runs Nokia Belle fine, with the occasional hiccup attributed more to the mobile OS hangs, rather than the processing power. The iPhone 4S also has half a gig of RAM and starts with 16GB of internal memory, but its dual-core A5 chip and strong PowerVR graphics processor are way ahead of the Nokia 808 PureView's silicon, and make the interface and apps, especially games, a pleasure to use.

Internet and connectivity:

The browser on the Nokia 808 PureView is so cranky, that you'd be hard pressed not to download Opera Mobile immediately and be done with the default one. It shows the checkered boxes each time you zoom in, and is pretty slow in rendering pages. Only when the page is completely loaded you can pan around, scroll and zoom with relative fluidity, which is still far behind what Safari on the iPhone 4S offers.

One big disadvantage of browsing on the 808 PureView is the pixel density again, which makes text unreadable when zoomed out, whereas it is a pretty pleasure to read with the 320ppi of the iPhone 4S display. Both browsers don't support desktop Adobe Flash, just Flash Lite 4.0 in the case of the Nokia 808 PureView, which will still allows you to see ads and view some videos on Flash websites.




Nokia's phone offers pentaband 14.4Mbits HSDPA radio, meaning you can pretty much use it on any GSM/3G network worldwide with up to these download speeds, whereas the iPhone doesn't support T-Mobile's 3G frequencies in the US.

Both handsets have the usual Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, A-GPS and DLNA connectivity options, yet the Nokia 808 PureView is more versatile in that respect as it also has an HDMI-out port for hooking the phone up to a TV directly, whereas you need to buy a dongle for the iPhone 4S. It also has an NFC chip, for exchanging files and mobile payments, as well as an FM transmitter for streaming music to your car stereo, and USB-on-the-go for connecting flash drives to the phone directly.

The Nokia 808 PureView shines with its free offline voice-guided navigation Nokia Drive as well, which is also available in the Lumia range, and saves you a few tens that you'll need to buy a good standalone navigation app on iOS.

Camera:

We don't need to tell you that the Nokia 808 PureView advantage before the iPhone 4S is in the camera department, you just need to look at the pictures. The iPhone 4S' 8MP unit makes pretty good pics for your everyday needs when there is enough light, but it is no match for the abundance of detail and ultra low noise the 41MP sensor on the 808 PureView is able to produce. Not to mention that in low-light photography the Nokia is simply years ahead of the other smartphones out there, and not only due to the powerful Xenon flash on the back, but also because of the comparatively gigantic sensor surface it sports.

The camera interfaces also couldn't be much different – the iPhone 4S follows a credo of point-and-shoot simplicity and easy of use, with only HDR mode thrown in as an option, whereas the Nokia 808 PureView has the camera UI to match the sensor. It doesn't have an easy HDR mode, only offers bracketing which you have to stitch yourself afterwards, or use an app. Yet Nokia's whiz kid allows from fully automatic, through presets, to fully manual modes, and you can adjust for almost everything but shutter speed.

Both handsets shoot fluid 1080p video with 30fps and appealing colors, but the Nokia 808 PureView has the advantage of using the 41MP sensor for oversampling, combining a few pixels in one super pixel, allowing more detail in. Not only that, but the huge sensor allows for full 4x lossless zoom while filming in 1080p, which is a great feature to have. If you shoot in 720p, you have even more, 6x lossless zoom, allowing you to be your own movie director while filming.

Nokia 808 PureView Sample Video:



Apple iPhone 4S Sample Video:



The other advantage the 808 PureView has is in the Nokia Rich Recording stereo audio that the dual mics on the handset are able to capture. Nokia says the microphones can pick up from the very low to the extremely high – up to 140dB – noises, without crackling or distortion, so you can take the phone to the club or a concert with confidence. Indeed, it is probably the first handset where we can actually hear the bass recorded when we play the video back.

Multimedia:

Both the Nokia 808 PureView and the iPhone 4S have capable music players which allow song categorizations by artists, albums and playlists, as well as pretty album art shuffling. The Nokia 808 PureView supports Dolby Mobile technology in headset mode, which boosts the bass, and makes music sound more distinct, but the iPhone 4S also has very good output capabilities, and a widepsread entertainment ecosystem like iTunes to boot.




Where the Nokia 808 PureView excels is video playback formats support out of the box, as it played every 1080p video we threw at it, even those encoded in DivX/Xvid/MKV. The pixel density of the screen does, of course, render this support pretty over the top, but the handset has the advantage of a larger screen than the 3.5” on the iPhone 4S for watching movies and YouTube videos.

Call quality and battery:

Both the Nokia 808 PureView and the iPhone 4S exhibit above average sound quality in their ear pieces, with loud and discernible voices coming in. The dual mics on both make for good noise-canceling efforts, weeding out the background noises when we spoke.

The iPhone 4S has a sealed battery compartment, yet the marriage of hardware and software made by one company gives it one of the longest battery lives of all smartphones, but those with supersized battery packs like the DROID RAZR MAXX.

Apple's handset is quoted for 8 hours of talk time in 3G mode, while the Nokia 808 PureView manages the below average 6:50 hours with its 1400mAh battery. Since Nokia Belle FP1 is quite the frugal mobile OS, and the screen pixel density is so low, Nokia's handset performs pretty well in the battery life department, too, and with normal usage it seems to be on par with the iPhone 4S.

Conclusion:

We are arriving back to our introductory question now, and it was whether some might swap or go directly for the Nokia 808 PureView before the iPhone 4S. Given that the price is about the same, the answer would be yes only if you are a shutterbug, or just very curious to try the outstanding PureView sensor.

The arguments are that Nokia Belle is leaps ahead of what Symbian used to be, supporting multiple homescreens, widgets and a notification bar, but is still no match for the fluidity of iOS, not to mention the power of many thousands of quality apps that the Nokia Store doesn't have much to show for. The Nokia 808 PureView has the advantage of its free offline voice-guided navigation Nokia Drive, though, which saves you a few tens that you'll need to buy a good standalone navigation app on iOS.

A big hindrance is also the lousy screen resolution that those Nokia apps are written for, and which makes both the interface and even the best apps look quite outdated in comparison with what's out there for the Retina Display of the iPhone 4S. The design of the Nokia 808 PureView also looks pretty outdated next to the exclusive iPhone 4S chassis. Still, it feels like a solid function-before-form device, and is more versatile in terms of connectivity and expandability, offering a removable battery and a microSD slot.

What might make you fall in love with the Nokia 808 PureView and forget about all of its disadvantages in comparison with a modern mobile OS smartphone like the iPhone 4S, however, is that groundbreaking PureView camera technology. While it might not make you switch your Apple handset, especially if you are design-conscious and deep into the iTunes ecosystem, it might certainly make you consider it a choice when you go on vacation or on your next night out, that's how good the 41MP PureView sensor is.