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

[afanen01]

I don't agree with the arguments that the resolution is a symbian flaw either, and I know that the technology to double the screen resolution and transparently scale the images is not impossible to implement.

It must be something to do with cost, or just plain taking the easy way out that kept them from raising the resolution. Perhaps they would have needed a higher specced CPU and GPU to double the resolution and keep up with handling the grunt work for the camera, which would put the phone at a price that will make it hard to sell.

If they are still committed to Symbian, they may announce another pureview phone soon enough with improved specs as scale improves pricing.

[elm70]

@Baron95

Man you are INCREDIBLE .... you are the big fun boy of Windows Phone

And state these thing:
-> Because Symbian is such a decrepit OS that Nokia can't change the screen resolution. They tried on the E6, and a bunch of apps simply don't work, further frustrating users. The single core process, will make editing and processing pictures on the phone extremely slow <-

MAN !

Windows Phone is also fixed to 800x480 ... Windows Phone 8 will support only 4 display type ... wow, this is the brand new fresh OS from the smart US developers.

Windows Phone, not only is castrated to single core, reason is that is not supporting multitasking, so, no multitasking, no sense for multi-core. Again Super duper Windows Phone, is behind Symbian.

Yes, Elop must have sleep bad after present the 808, 808 shout loud and clear, that Windows Phone decision for Nokia was a big disaster, market said this already the same day that Elop disclosed his new strategy. -30% in stock market only for announce a new strategy ... this is a world record in a company devaluation

Tchuss

e_lm_70

ps: Tomi said already, yes, 808 is too late, after 1 year that Nokia-Elop announce the death of Symbian, it is too late ... people did move on, this will be just sold to few geeks probably better the N9, but still will not change the down spiral of Symbian sales.

[vladkr]

Will the 808 be sold in "exotic" markets only, just like the N9?

I'm also curious, where will it be made, if most Nokia factories closed recently?

Is it just marketing to say "hey, wait a little, we're able to make a 41pix photophone, so if you're patient enough, you'll get a 41pix WP-photophone in 10 years" ?

[F.OO]

@Tomi: "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."

That's the best analogy for Elop's strategy so far!

It's like if Ford declared that all the previous cars were crap, and would launch the perfect car... in the next year!!!

Obviously, sales tanked. And when the new car was unveiled, it would be pretty much what General Motors and Chrysler had to offer -- the same chassis, with slightly different shell.

[elm70]

@F.00

Yes, you explain even better what Elop did ... the most moronic action for every CEO in every company ... the real World Record of Nokia

Market react with -30% in Nokia capital valuation in no time while Elop was still finishing to explain the new strategy with Ballmer on his side.
Stock Marker is never wrong, in this case it can't be blamed the speculation from some Edge funds, since Nokia did further loss -30% ... putting Nokia to lowest value since 13/14 years

Yes, the most moronic action ever ... and still the share holders of Nokia are keeping him as Nokia CEO ... simple because the share holders of Nokia are also heavily involved with Microsoft ... the platform on fire we all know, was Windows Phone on February 2011 (and it was burning since years)

In additional Elop gifted Microsoft the right to use and get revenues from Nokia IPR. So far Microsoft is making more money collecting royalties from Android producers then selling Windows Phones OS. The Elop gift to Microsoft also strength the power of Ballmer to force more Android producers to pay "taxes" to Microsoft.

Tchuss

e_lm_70

[zlutor]

@Juan, Baron95: "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."

Do you happen to know the screen resolution of your digital camera? Are you interested in it? It just simply does not matter...

N808 is not about its screen resolution. You obviously will not edit the photos/videos it shoots on its screen but on your PC (if anywhere).
This device just kills its competition. Second to none in its category. Period.

Maybe not all the fanciest apps can be downloaded to it but its buyers will not give a sh#t about thos apps... :-)

BTW, @Baron95: you constantly mention that real programmers sits in Silicon Valley and there is no competence out of it. Did you happened to read that Nokia guys 'helped Microsoft' in optimization of WP7 enabling to run on less capable devices? Evidence of lack of competence, right? :-)

[F.OO]

@Louis "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."

I don't blame Elop for adopting Windows Phone, which is a great operating system.

The problem is that Elop closed the door for all alternatives. As I said many times before, that was a huge strategic mistake, which will condemn Nokia to spend the rest of its days fighting for a fraction of a fraction of the market.

Even if Windows Phone succeeds, Nokia will be limited to 1/3 of its market share.

There was no need (and absolutely no sense) in going 100% Microsoft.

Nokia should have adopted a neutral approach regarding the operating system, which would allow them to produce Windows Phones, Androids, and evaluate new technologies, like Mozilla's BootToGecko.

Who would loose with that decision? Microsoft. But Nokia would be in a much better position right now.

[crunkykd]

If all it took was having the latest greatest radios, cameras, sensors, screens, then you'd think that Sony or LG would have ruled the world ages ago. They have access to the latest hardware. But they don't rule the world. Because hardware alone is not enough as Apple and Android have so convincingly shown. A great camera on Symbian may disrupt some point and shooters, but not the smartphone leaders. So I suppose Kodak should be nervous about this phone; oh, wait...

[darwinphish]

The Ford analogy is funny because it reminds me of Ford's great quotes: "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." The 808 looks like one really fast horse.

[AtTheBottomOfTheHilton]

The reason that they are using Symbian is because phone takes in general several years to develop. When the Nokia 808 project was planned, Symbian had already been chosen. I think what Elop most wanted was to can the project but too many in the company wanted this phone in order to show the world that Nokia is still the leader in imaging.

The question is if there is going to be a Microsoft camera phone in the future? I don't think Microsoft cares much about imaging as Nokia.

[DS]

The target audience for the WP7 (social network addicted youth) isn't much aligned to that phone. So I don't see MS bending over to support Nokia dedicated HW in WP. The phone is clearly directed towards photo professionals (the PRO moniker reflects that) and has potential to do well in this influential niche.
For those people some adequate sharing , basic phone functionality (where symbian excells) + non-nightmare FB, TW support should be enough. Instagram client wouldn't hurt though so Nokia should throw some cash at it asap.

[DS]

As for canning projects, looks like Elop is throwing out most of the genuine value Nokia has developed throughout the years.
He doesn't need the software,
he doesn't need the hardware (Taiwan/Qualcom can supply that),
he doesn't need the production,
he doesn't need the innovation (MS/WP wouldn't let it in anyway)
What does he need Nokia for then? The brand that has no value in the only market he cares about?
He took a huge, multi-varied company and tries to reshape it into, I dunno, HTC clone. But Nokia is Nokia and HTC is HTC. This is not going to work.
And if that is not the strategy for Nokia as company, he should look to realize his 3rd ecosystem vision elsewhere.

[nsiltane]

@Hoista

I'm completely aware of the megapixel myth. But still, you watch your TV or computer further way so the resolution per inch doesn't have to be as high as on a phone. The optimal resolution on a device would be the human iris' spatial resolution at the viewing distance. So there definatly is a point where resolution increase doesn't improve image quality. It's just that 0,2MP on a 4" screen is just nowhere near that. My iPad2 is another great example where spec bump wouldn't make any harm.

@Dr Zorg

Yes, I read their PR material. All of it. It's just the things they're saying isn't true. I'm a grad student on digital imaging so thrust me, I know what I'm writing.

So when completely zoomed out at 8,0mm (28mm eqv.) PureView does bicubic sampling to resize the picture from sensor. When zooming in you finally end up at 1:1 resolution. Then you still have the native resolution (1080p, 720p or whatever) but you lose the advantage from the bicubic sampling. The camera benefits nothing from sampling the pixels that end up not being used in the final image, right? The same applies for the optics, which by all odds is the limiting factor when considering resolving power here. The Zeiss optics might be the best phone optics there is, but when zoomed 3x in you end up using only one ninth of the image coming from the lens.

It's a great camera and definatly the greatest camera ever on a phone. Nokia's marketing is just stating facts that are not true.

[tm]

@nsiltane

But surely you agree that as opposed to normal digital zooming (upscaling the image by inventing pixels), method used in 808 (cropping) is taking the actual pixels from the sensor and not loosing any of those. Hence the lossless.

[EL]

According to Tomi, the 800 was Elop's fault, the 900 is Elop's fault, the N9 was great but had nothing to do with Elop, the 808 is great but has nothing to do with Elop, the E7 was Elop's fault.

Something tells me that the above arguments, when put together, do not read like a balanced assessment.

[Pimu]

If you take the Ford comparition a bit further you might see the genius behind Nokia's WP strategy. Obviously WP is the electric car and currently Nokia is using the Symbian platform to explore new tehcnologies that will be eventually used in future WPs to differentiate Nokia WP phones from the rest of the WP phones. I think Nokia was thinking two years ahead of all you because you seem to miss the obvious direction where mobile phones are heading to. In the future smartphones are only as smart as the services running on the backend servers or cloud servers and at Nokia they realized at least a year ago that without the help of a software giant like MS they wouldn't have nothing to offer at that end.

[dr zorg]

@nsiltane

Ok I understand now what you mean. We are talking a bit at cross-purposes here. You are talking about zoom, and of course the zoomed in pixels are taken from the full 38MP image and practically nothing happens to them - but nobody is saying that it does. The benefit to you, me, anyone is that we are able to zoom in to a portion of the full image without losing detail as previously happened in digital zoom.

In my previous post I was talking about the full 8MP image oversampled from 38MP, not about zoom. Even at 5MP the images with 808 are extremely sharp and clear, something that was only achieved on really high-end DSLR previously. Of course, once you use the technology to zoom 3x you will not have the oversampling advantage, but that's a different story. I don't think Nokia was even saying that.

[dr zorg]

@Baron95

What is your resolution on your laptop/desktop screen? How many PPI? What about your digital camera?

You are obviously fine with both of those and aren't suffering from lack of pixels on either. Why a different approach to mobile phones? Just because a company can cram 1080p into a tiny screen doesn't mean they should or that it's any use.

So, using your own words, some balance please.

[dr zorg]

@Baron95

...
....
.....

That's the whole point of the award - to reward the devices/companies that have innovated during the past year, that is, since last MWC. That can't be too hard to understand now, can it? IP3 will be a nominee in next year's awards.

And who cares about what Apple think?

[ChrisD]

@Tomifan, I concur with Tomi there - the 900 is like the 800 + LTE + front camera, it is hardly much of an improvement.

@F.OO, BootToGecko would be really interesting for Nokia to try out. I agree they should have done a multi-OS strategy like they have had for the longest time. That makes them less unique, but gives them more potential to succeed.