When You Let Nokia Be Nokia - the 808 PureView - The superphone when CEO Elop does not meddle

Nokia just announced its 808 PureView. Lets look at what Nokia can do, if the CEO steps aside and stops meddling in matters he clearly does not understand. So a quick overview? The biggest camera sensor ever seen in a phone - 41 megapixels! Not 4.1 megapixels, yes, 41 megapixels. If you thought the HTC Titan 2 was a huge camera sensor at 16 mp, this 808 PureView maxes that not by the usual 20% to 33% better (the usual jump in camera resolutions by generation) or not 50% better, not even 100% more, but truly 2.5x bigger sensor. MASSIVE jump. So big, it will take years for rivals to match this.

And the rest of the specs. Total top-of-the-line across the board. 4 inch capacitive touch screen, WiFi, Bluetooth 3, second camera, FM radio, FM transmitter, TV out, HDMI out, NFC, and obviously all specs that are normal now for top phones from WiFi to GPS. The specs are on par or better than most top phones on the market and by most specs will leave for example the iPhone 4S in the dust. And thats before we look at the piece de resistance, the camera...

Xenon flash (that is 'real' flash for the non-camera geeks). Full HD video recording resolution (??? Yes!) ie - get this - 1920x1080 !!!! and that is at 30 fps. Carl Zeiss optics (of course). Focal length of 35mm equivalent, F stop 2.4. Autofocus and manual focus. And macro mode to 15cm close-ups. ..and the 808 PureView has tripod support as well. This is instantly the cameraphone every single professional journalist and photographer and media person craves.

PLATFORMS BURNING?

And what is this superduper smartphone then running on? That 'our future smartphones will all work on Windows Phone' operating system from Microsoft? No. Oh, then it must be that 'other' new OS that Nokia developed with Intel last year, called MeeGo, for which it produced two superphones already, the N9 and the N950. This must be the third MeeGo phone. No.

This 808 PureView runs on the 'burning platforms' obsolete Symbian. Yes. The specs are so incredible, Windows Phone cannot be used to run this phone. Only Symbian supports all these features on this phone. Now who was that lunatic CEO who said last year in February that Symbian was so totally dead as an OS, that Nokia staff had to jump off the oil rig to near-certain death? Ah, yes. That Symbian. And its newest edition, called Symbian Belle.

ALL NEW PHONES LOOK GOOD WHEN REVEALED

Is it the ultimate phone? We don't know yet, because you never know when a phone is announced, if it then has unforseen problems or design flaws. But on paper, this is a hot smartphone. Is it the best phone of the year? Maybe, maybe not. Is it the best cameraphone. For sure. This 808 PureView did not just move the goal-posts of the cameraphone game, it invented a whole new game where it is the only player. This is what Nokia can do, when the meddling CEO steps aside, and just lets Nokia be Nokia. This is the level of market brilliance and excellence, that we used to expect from Nokia back in the years of Ollila's leadership (before his successor CEO, Kallasvuo the accountant, came in and made moronic decisions to cut corners and savings at the cost of the brand and leadership).

Is it ugly. Yeah, I'll grant you its not pretty. If you want a pretty phone, buy an iPhone. But this is such a monster leap in the camera side of mobile phones, that even if it is severely delayed like the N8 was, for example, it will still set a whole new standard to cameraphones when it ships. And one thing Elop has been doing at Nokia, clearly, is getting Nokia to deliver promised phones more on time, so we might see the 808 PureView selling this summer - just in time to run against the iPhone 5, which will look quite modest (in its specs) when compared to this monster. I mean, the 'big' step for Apple that people hope for is NFC, something Nokia has had in its previous flagship already in the N9 last year.

BUT CAMERAS DO NOT MATTER

Do cameras matter. Haha, funny you'd ask. The camera ranks among the top criteria in buying smartphones - ahead of the OS or the apps in fact. When I did my simplified smartphone segmentation model here on this blog two years ago, I found that 6% of consumer smartphones are purchased based on a premium camera ability as the most important criterion (for those of us who really love our cameraphones or video recording phones). And I stressed back then, that this segment was owned by the top cameraphones of the Nokia N-Series. How big is this segment overall this year? About 39 million premium cameraphones. The 808 PureView will not win all of that, as its price will be a barrier, but it will be the aspirational phone for those 39 million customers, for literally every one of them. They will all test an 808 PureView in a store and will do their darndest to try to justify buying it, regardless of what is the price. If Nokia is smart, they will rush an 707 PureView onto the market well before Christmas, as a lower cost little-brother and Nokia may well return to be the cameraphone master as it was up to the N8 a year ago and take most of this market segment.

WHAT TOMI WOULD DO

But lets be clear. I argued time and again on this blog and elsewhere, that the madness for giant handset maker Nokia was to abandon its competitive edges, and try to do a perfect copy of the iPhone. That was as mad as Ford abandoning its vast range of cars, and only do supercars to compete with Ferrari. A year ago on this blog, after I had been quite critical of Nokia the past few years of cutting corners and pursuing its 'iPhone envy' strategy, I was asked by my readers, what would I do. This was soon after Elop had taken over - and I was early on very supportive of Elop's early steps - I did write a long blog about how to fix Nokia. I have explained very clearly on this blog that the problem was not the operating system - that Nokia had a strong strategy for its OS migration - which was of course moving away from Symbian to the MeeGo OS - and that moving to some other OS like Windows Phone would be suicidal. I was very clear that Nokia's true problems were those of execution and of marketing. Of very basic business issues such as providing products that customers want and love. Like Nokia was early in the 1990s but lost its way under Kallasvuo's crazy cost-cutting days towards the end of the decade.

In that blog I made it very clear, that one of the competitive advantages that Nokia had always held, a true Nokia strong-hold was the cameraphone segment of premium smartphones, most epitomized by the N93, the smartphone that redefined what a cameraphone could be, and for years being the standard-setter for supremacy in cameraphones (US consumers never got to buy the N93, like they missed out on most of Nokia's true flagship phones). I was very clear, a year ago just before the notorious Burning Platforms memo, that what Nokia needed was a flagship smartphone that was an anti-iPhone, something completely different, and one of Nokia's such superphone legacies was the cameraphone side. And I urged Nokia to produce the best cameraphone ever made, with Xenon flash etc etc etc. This 808 PureView is EXACTLY what I begged Nokia to do a year ago. It is a shame it took idiot CEO Elop a year of trying every other stupid path of futility, before he finally did stumble upon this path. So do I agree with this phone, its form factor, its target market, its specs? You betcha! This is EXACTLY what Nokia need.....ed last year. 

And better yet. I have been very critical on this blog about recent Nokia top phones, which have been abandoning various Nokia staples and strongholds and competitive advantages. It started with Kallasvuo's time and was made far worse under Elop. So look at the Lumia 800 and what 'faults' I have catalogued with Nokia's supposed flagship for Christmas 2011? On a vast array of abilities and specs, Nokia has moved backwards from what it once offered - every one of those backward steps will produce disappointment in loyal returning Nokia consumers. And please remember, some of these problems were introduced already before but are also on the Lumia 800. Problems like what? No removable battery! (Nokia phones often sold in countries where electricity supply is not regular and steady; plus premium phones used by busy execs who may run long days and travel and need extra batteries, not to mention Nokia phones being the brand most sold in second hand market - where a fresh battery is needed). No more microSD memory slot! No forward-facing second camera! No Xenon flash, only LED flash. The camera resolution was literally a step back where previous flagship had 12 mp, with the Lumia 800 it was down to 8 mp. No more NFC. No TV-out. No HDMI out. The stupid fixed-focus lens that does not do close-ups. No FM radio transmitter, etc etc etc

This 808 PureView fixes ALL of those issues I have cried about on this blog. Yes, it finally restores the user-removable battery. Yes, the microSD is back! The Xenon flash is back. The flagship has the biggest camera sensor Nokia has ever produced (and wow what a leap). TV out is back. HDMI out is back. FM transmitter is back. The camera - ah, thank you Nokia for seeing the reason - is back to having autofocus and macro mode. We need to scan our receipts and documents and all sorts of little slips of paper etc that we now store on our phones. Thank you! Yes, this one smartphone fixes essentially every problem I have complained about on this blog, about why Nokia has lost its way and is pissing off its customers. The only minor qualm I would have is that the screen resolution does not do justice to this phone.

If this 808 PureView is the sign of what all future Nokia smartphones will be like, it is good news indeed. And if I had been in charge of Nokia's design, this is just about exactly what I would have wanted Nokia engineers to produce. This is as near perfection to my mind as I can imagine - and bearing in mind, I am an ex Camera buff who once was a serious amateur photo-journalist with countless printed photographs including newspaper cover shots etc. So I am obviously in that camera-geek category segment for whom this 808 PureView is targeted.

A CONFUSED COMPANY

Will this 808 PureView help Nokia's Lumia and Microsoft strategy? No. The tech in the 808 PureView is not even compatible with Windows Phone as it exists today. Maybe some day. But no. Symbian is far ahead of WP on the tech specs to enable this kind of uber-device. Will the 808 PureView restore Nokia's leadership image - it could have if moron CEO Stephen Elop didn't first issue his infamous Burning Platforms memo that wiped out billions of Nokia revenues and indeed billions of Nokia profits. But now, after all the damage done by Elop last year, this will be something that came just too late. 

But for those who thought Nokia's best offer was the Lumia 900 was somehow the best Nokia could do these days, clearly not. The Lumia 900 is a sorry excuse for a flagship phone. This 808 PureView is far closer to what Nokia can do. And think about this. Last year Elop torpedoed and sunk any resources in and around Symbian, and Nokia's past path, and Nokia's exceptional and unique competitive advantages. He attempted to mold Nokia into the form of Apple, copying the iPhone with the lame Windows Phone OS. This 808 PureView is the absolute opposite of that. This is clearly the 'anti-iPhone' - a smartphone that excels in superb technology, while not attempting to be the coolest-looking show-off fashion phone.

If Elop had not caused unprecedented chaos at Nokia last year, and instead had let Nokia be Nokia, we would have had something like this 808 PureView for Christmas 2011 sales, maybe not 41mp but looking what Nokia managed in 2010 with the N8, surely we'd have had something like 16 or 20 megapixels - and Xenon flash etc etc etc - for Q4 (running Symbian obviously) and Nokia would have had a big Christmas sales quarter and all tech magazines would have featured the top-of-the-line Nokia on their covers. This 808 PureView yes, on Symbian, could have been a hit phone in the USA even. If Elop is able to land deals for the truly pedestrian Lumia 710 and the (boring) Lumia 900 at US carriers, imagine the excitement they could have had with this 808 PureView.

But yes, congratulations Nokia! This is what we all expected of you. Not those rubbish toys under the Lumia brand that are moving Nokia years back in time and treat Nokia customers like fools. (and that only managed 600,000 total sales in Q4 of last year, when even the N9 alone running MeeGo outsold all Lumia phones by Nokia by 3 to 1) This 808 PureView is a tour de force, showing what Nokia can do if the CEO steps aside and simply lets Nokia be Nokia. This 808 PureView has re-set the standard for all cameraphones and will be the standard for years to come (until eclipsed by an even more astonishing Nokia uberphone) 

Comments

[Markos]

@Baron95: I totally agree with some things you say - the same as I agree with TomiAhonen's text. It's a pity that the 808 has such a low resolution and that this couldn't be fixed - I also think its a bit exagerated to say that the 808 leaves other phones behind. That for sure counts for the Camera, the same as N9 Meego leaves others behind with a superior operation system - but in other specs, other phones win.

I think it's not the limits of symbian, but missing effort which has put into - and maybe missing human resources since the Symbian team got reduced to a minimum.

I don't have a Symbian phone, but Belle seems to be a big update. There have been made a lot of mistakes with Symbian, but Belle could hopefully make Symbian to what it deserves to be.

It's self explaining that the 808 is a rather fat phone. The camera takes a certain space which leaves us two posibilities: Make the hole phone thicker to fit the camera size better + plus make it easier to handle (a camera just needs some thickness) or make it slim like other phone and let the camera stick out in a probably disturbing way.

The 808 is for sure a good thing for Nokia since it gets a lot of attention and media are so far talking well about it - just those two days I felt I heard more good things about Nokia than all those month with the Lumia section (I'm working in the mobile phone business and am daily confronted with that topic). Just see the reactions f.e on Nokia's blog "Nokia Conversations". It's crazy how the 808 is accepted - or Symbian and MeeGo in general - while Lumia is still rejected by many readers.

So even if the 808 is rather a super camera than a super phone, it will have its success since I'm sure there is a market for such a phone.

[ds]

Nokia should now partner with Ade to release lightroom mobile companion with access to raw data to cather a niche among pro documentary photographers and other visual artists. Call together some icon personas in photography and ( even more important ) videography to do some serious project using the device. 808 could become beloved device among that demographic (the camera is so far ahead that overshadows all other aspects competition may pose, provided it is relatively usable (and with Belle and 2.5 the CPU of n8 it definately is). It may not be numerous but is very important in creating mindshare and repairing damaged brand. And mindshare is everything these days.

[Visitant]

It seems that a lot of people are missing the point about this camera, and why it's such a game changer. I think it has the potential to wipe out the compact camera market (for cameras with a modest 3X optical zoom range anyway).

Damian Dinning from Nokia gives a good, clear explanation here: http://goo.gl/LvK4Z - it's not really about the megapixels, but the large sensor and what can be achieved with those megapixels. (Note that Damian seems quite frustrated in the video, as he would be when so many people fail to understand how the technology works).

As for the phone being chunky, yes it is, but it beats carrying around even a small compact camera. I can't wait to get my sweaty hands on one!

[nsiltane]

You concentrate way too much on the megapixels in your writings. PureView has over triple the resolution of a 5000€ Nikon D3S DSLR. So does former have triple the image quality of the latter? Nope.

Resolution has nothing to do with image quality. Nothing. That point was passed 10 years ago. Big images are good when printing huge, but in a digital world we simply don't need resolution. Full HD is 2MP. 4K is 8MP. What matters is the size of the sensor. Bigger sensor catches more light with same f-stop. So actually the big news here with the PureView is the 1/1.2" sensor, witch is larger than any point-and-shoot camera has.

What matters though, is screen resolution. The Nokia PureView 808 has 0,2MP screen. IPhone 4(S) has 0,6MP screen. The new phones from Samsung and HTC have 0,9MP screen. This is where resolution matters. I personally look my phone's screen for hours per day.

So the PureView might be the best camera in a phone ever, but the rest of the 808 phone sucks, big time. The screen is not nearly as good as the competition in the same price range. The SOC is way overdated. The phone is rediculously thick and also just plain ugly. It's a shame that such a great piece of hardware is planted to such an uneven product.

But still the biggest problem is software. Symbian is gone. It's still ugly, even when strongly leaning towards Android in the latest Belle update. The UI is laggy. The user experience just isn't there for a product in this price range in 2012. And the app support is subpar. There's no Instagram here. Nothing that comes even close. There might be a lot of apps in the OVI store, but missing are the big names and popular ones from Android and iOS. If you disagree, I strongly recommend taking a look between the differences between Gameloft's Modern Combat 2 releases on Symbian and iOS. It cannot be described in words.

Pureview 808 does not have a place on market. It might have best camera on any phone yet but that's not enough for making it a desirable phone. Cameras do matter, but for the most of us the cameras in iPhone 4S or SGSII are good enough. Any person interested in photography already has a specific camera superior in image quality to PureView.

[nsiltane]

@Visitant

They have quite a lot of false information in that video. Typical marketing stuff.

Their digital zoom is lossy, whatever they say. It may have the native resolution at full zoom, but then it loses the benefits from sampling down the image. Bicubic sampling in a mobile device is impressive, though.

The same applies to the claim that there's now light loss with digital zoom. When zooming in at 3x, you are creating the image from the central ninth of the image (1/3 by 1/3). That means you are using only one ninth of the light to create the image as well. Mr. Dinnings says that with optical zoom the aperture drops from f/2.4 to f/5.6 when zooming in. The light loss here in PureView is from f/2.4 to f/8.

I'm not saying it's not an impressive camera. I just want to clear out what is reality and what is marketing BS.

[crunkykd]

So Baron95, for you to be right the 808Pureview needs to be a failure. For Tomi to be right it needs to be a success. Seems like a simple experiment to run. We'll know the results in 3-6 months. At the end of that period we will know just how important superior camera specs and all other hardware specs are, especially when compared to software modernity specs.

[Steve de Mounford]

Excellent blog review from Tomi !

Iphones are for the sheeple - Apple makes the lowest common denominator product for the masses; a system you also find in communist countries where everybody has the same watch, the same phone, drinks the same vodka.

This Nokia 808 is a welcome innovation - its the new toy on the block with a godlike camera that brings differentiation and innovation .

The communists and the sheeple can stick to their mass Iphones: I want this new Nokia 808 and its superior specs.

[Juan]

I am really sorry, but a phone with a 41mpx camera and a 360 x 640 display to see your shots can only be thinked as a bad joke.

Also, a 18mm (deep) is pretty near the N95 (from 2005), my Sony camera is thinner than this.

Elop is not the only confused at Nokia, the one that developed this atrocity thinking that the number 41 will fool customers must be closed with Elop in the same institution.

[Hoista]

@crunkykd It also depends on how much push the phone will get. Will it be available on all markets or restricted to certain markets. Will it get carrier subsidy? These factors will also determine the sales success.

@Baron95 @nsiltane Screen resolution is also similar to the "megapixel" myth, it reaches a point where it is good enough and then needs a different value proposition to reach out to the masses. e.g. Many people still have low resolution TVs where PPI is much lower, heck lots of people still use laptops and desktops with lower PPI than an iPhone 4 and use them for hours on end. The physical size of the screen is likely a bigger factor than the resolution as long as the resolution is "good enough".

@Tomi agree with the sentiment of the phone, I will be one of the people who will be buying this and returning to Symbian, have been looking for a decent replacements for my N93 & N82 for a while and this hits the spot. However, you need to emphasize more on how the 41MP is used, because the headline number isn't where the value is. It's the algorithms and sensor that has made the press stir crazy. There's a divide in the reporting.. the ones who focus on the headline 41MP (usually negative press), and the ones who focus on the underlying technology (usually positive press).

[sams0n1te]

As usual Tommi lives in past. So long in past it is sort of funny. Sorry everything else in 808 is ancient and underwhelming except camera. It is really bad phone and as you read the reviews nothing has changed symbian is trash, very bad techonology. The display in 808 is not up to date. Microsd cards are not issue, in fact they have dissapeared from phones because they are bag of pain. Most problems with phones are with microsd cards because they are just bad. Bluetooth 3 well sorry all competition is in bluetooth 4 which have obvious benefits. Nokias NFC chip is the kind which you CAN NOT use as wallet, sorry it not up to standards with security.

1080p video is every competition phone and with stabilizers so nothing new there. In a way the way 808 camera works it is just gimmick. In most cases it is 5-8 megapixel camera. Actually you cannot get 41 MP pictures out of it, which would not be very good anycase. These pictures are allways sort of photoshopped, product of software. And cameras are good enough in most smartphones so it is not really an issue. And still you cannot get optical zoom into phone.

Nokia 808 is pure example why nokia can not walk alone anymore. It is the ultimate meh product, sort of nice but not really relevant. Besides Tommi does not like the positive buzz that lumia has got. There are real developers intrested in lumia, symbian was allways for telecommunication robots. Symbian softaware was bad looking crap with no innovation what so ever. WP7 looks nice but it remains to be seen if it enough against android and ios.

Nothing Tommi you have written is recipe how symbian would be able to live in this 2010 world of mobile computing. Phones are dead and mobile computing is rising from ashes of destruction of mobile phone revolution.

[ChrisD]

I find it bold that they come out with a thick 41MP phone. Personally, it is not for me, but I can imagine that camera enthusiasts would go for it. They should have put a higher-res display in it for sure, but then again, how much resolution do cameras displays have? This is a great camera that doubles as a good smartphone - as opposed to a great smartphone that doubles as a good camera ;-)

I do not think that this will save Symbian - or Nokia for that matter - but it certainly shows that the Symbian team is capable of creating an innovative smartphone, and it may well still sell more than the Lumia. The sad thing is that this may well be one of the last death throes of Symbian as a smartphone platform. (I never liked Symbian much, but still find it way better than WP7 in terms of looks.)

[Louis]

Who exactly is this for? It's a slow, hard-to-use phone, with a bad screen and a sensor much smaller than DSLRs. So people who just want to shoot nice-looking photos quickly and post them to their preferred sharing site will want---duh--the iPhone, and pros will keep using their DSLRs.

Elop made the best choice of the ones available, which was to go with a platform that actually has the potential to be competitive. Whether it will work out seems a bit up in the air, but his WP team did work unimaginably fast by Nokia standards.

[dr zorg]

@nsiltane

You clearly haven't understood what the technology behind PureView is about.

The zoom is about pixel oversampling. You DO NOT lose the detail, because several pixels from the full rez are "merged" into one for the final shot. Not binned, but merged. There's a world of difference. Read up on it.

[dr zorg]

@ChrisD

The sad part of the story is that you'll only realise how great Symbian was when it's no longer with us.

When you are firmly tied to "app stores" for any programs you want to run, when companies only offer you the functionality THEY feel comfortable with, when you are being nickel-and-dimed for the smallest of things, perhaps you'll remember it fondly, and the total freedom and versatility it offered. But it may be too late then.

[dr zorg]

@sams0n1te

Many words and most are wrong.

1. "symbian is trash, very bad techonology"

Reasons? What makes it "trash" and "very bad"?

2. "Microsd cards are not issue, in fact they have dissapeared from phones because they are bag of pain."

Again, why are they "bag of pain"? Last I checked, over 75% of all phones supported microSD. That they have "disappeared" is a lie.

3. "Bluetooth 3 well sorry all competition is in bluetooth 4 which have obvious benefits."

The highly prized iPhone still does not support Bluetooth file transfer. Not even BT 1 or 2. What are you talking about? Besides, BT 2.0 is very usable by itself, BT 3.0 even more so. Another lie from you.

4. " Actually you cannot get 41 MP pictures out of it, which would not be very good anycase. These pictures are allways sort of photoshopped, product of software."

Another blatant lie, stop trolling.

[lizo]

Hi,

After lurking for several years, I moved to comment by the severe partisanship and misinformation contained in several of the comments. I will restrict myself to Camera performance as reviewed by Werner Ruotsalainen on his iphone life blog. Werner is interesting being an IOS and Nokia fan boy.

Log story short, this phone has the best camera of any phone bar none and is better than the vast majority of point and shoot cameras. The disheartening thing about several comments is that they are posted by people who appear to have little knowledge of what they comment on.

http://www.iphonelife.com/blog/87/mwc-report-iv-exclusive-nokia-pureview-808-high-iso-images-binned-resolution-tests-vs-panaso

Dpreview also has several threads on this with over 500 comments each! The consensus is this is an epochal Camera and will change the face of both mobile phones and compact cameras.

@Baron95, you express opinions about the speed that are not supported by the evidence of people who have used the phone. You also conflate processor speed with overall phone performance. Symbian is known for is efficiency and the phone apparently has a dedicated co-processor for imaging.

@dr-zorq & Hoista - thanks for providing a bit more information, and avoiding the emotive responses of the "fanboys".

Talking about phones is very often like politics. We exhibit tribal affiliations that block our ability to critically think about likely outcomes

@Tomi - Been following you religiously for over 5 years now, I share your pain about Symbian (was a UIQ, fan boy back in the day) and love your analysis. You, Eldar, Gruber, Mace, Dedeiu & Orlowski are my go to guys for understanding and insight. We appreciate your sometimes loooong articles (apparently a Nokia trait, No?)

[Dipankar Mitra]

Tomi, 808 just own MWC 2012 "best new handset or tablet" award.

[anobserver]

"808 just own MWC 2012 "best new handset or tablet" award."

How come? The list is here, and there is no mention of the 808 whatsoever:

http://www.globalmobileawards.com/winners2012.php

What Nokia won was the award for the best feature phone with its C3-00.

[Alin]

@Baron96 The resolution is not a Symbian problem, Nokia E90 has 800x352 and was released years ago!! I think that Elop came into game here! But another reason could be that all legacy apps developed for Symbian would not work properly, they need changes in graphics!

[Sander van der Wal]

The resolution problem is likely to be an S60 issue. S60 phones have a limited number of screen sizes. And even though scalable graphics facilities have been in the API for a long time now, it is still possible that a lot of apps just won't work, as this 808 screen apparently is the first of its kind. I haven't seen it mentioned in the latest Symbian Belle SDK, for instance, this makes it almost impossible for developers to adapt their apps for it.

Regarding the technology, it is quite amazing for a point-and-shoot camera. That space is under a lot of pressure indeed with smartphones having now good-enough point-and-shoot camera's and excellent software for sharing these point-and-shoot pictures.

Strategically, it is a bit of a bummer to see it on the obsolete Symbian platform. But on the other hand, it will serve to keep a certain amount of people away from the competition. A skirmish, then.