The Nokia 800 PureView and Symbian Belle FP1 ...
Syl,
<< The camera is clearly awesome but the phone isn't. >>
Your opinion is noted but mine is quite different. PureView appears to be great technology housed in a fine whose outstanding features go well beyond its imaging technology and which sports a great OS and a much improved UI (that sorely needed to be improved) and increased performance. I am of course a user of Symbian Imaging phones and my Symbian S^3 N8 (upgraded to Anna and soon to Belle) replaced my high end N86 Symbian Imaging phone.
Its features include Nokia Rich Recording, which combines a unique digital microphone technology and Nokia algorithms to record distortion-free stereo audio at levels of up to 140 dB, a 4" AMOLED ClearBlack display and 2.5 D curved Corning® Gorilla® Glass, Active Noise Cancellation, Dolby Digital Plus and Dolby Headphone for playback, NFC for easy sharing and pairing, HDMI micro, On Demand WebTV and A-GPS with Nokia Maps. It has 16 GB Mass Storage Memory with up to 32 GB Micro SD storage, 128 MB Graphics Memory, 512 MB RAMon a highly RAM efficient OS, a 1400 mAh high voltage Li-ion battery Micro USB charging and USB On-theGo 1.3. The development interfaces include Qt 4.8, Java Runtime 2.3, Bluetooth 3.0 and Flash Lite 4.0. While the pentaband RF does not support FauxG HSPA+ it does support HSDPA Cat10 (14.4 Mbps) and HSUPA Cat6 (5.76 Mbps). Screen Resolution is only 640 x 360p, a tad low for a 4" display CBD on AMOLED makes for great display quality indoors or out. Some might feel that the camera bulge detracts from the phones appearance ...
I don't, although it might make it awkward to pocket. Altogether I think it's a heck of a phone.
<< What I'd like to know is why they didn't go with WinPhone in the first place? >>
There are several reasons but the major one is that Windows phone has a rigid chassis spec that Nokia will undoubtedly influence significantly as it evolves to WinPhone 8 (Apollo), but they did not have the opportunity to do with WinPhone OS 7.5 (Mango) which runs on Qualcomm S1 or S2 ASSPs because its spec was fixed before the Microsoft agreement was finalized last May. By contrast Nokia controlled Symbian and the integrated ASIC with OMAP processor is their design fabricated by TI, giving them more flexibility in implementing their own technologies and the PureView and Nokia Rich Recording technologies have been in development for some time and are now ready for market. The 808 release gives them the opportunity to mature the new technology for eventual implementations in WinPhones. Sage move.
<< Nokia needs to come clean on Symbian me thinks. Either is alive or isn't it. The indecision shows (possibly incorrectly) that Nokia is hedging which hurts both Symbian and WinP.>>
There is no indecision whatsoever. The successor of the S^3 12 MP N8 with Carl Zeiss optics and Xenon flash which many consider to still be the best imaging phone currently shipping despite its age has been anticipated for some time. Symbian is being wound down but it's still alive (with further development and some 2,700 former Nokia developers now formally transferred to Accenture), and the Nokia strategy that was announced in February 2011 called for Symbian to wind down but continue to evolve and overlap WinPhone while Windows Phones ramped and expanded distribution. That ramp is now fully under way and expanding to new geographies but there are still only two Nokia WinPhones shipping with one more and a global variant of the Lumia 900 due to release to market in Q2 and unlike the Symbian devices global distribution (and languages) while expanding, is still limited.
According to plan since the WinPhone announcement was made in February 2011 Nokia brought Symbian Anna then Belle to market and has launched the Symbian based E6 and X7 (April 2011), Oro (May 2011), T7 and 702T (June 2011), Nokia 500, 700, and 701 (August 2011), Nokia 603 (October 2011), and the Nokia 801T (December 2011). All but the last two are now shipping, the last 4 launched with Symbian Belle, and the Anna devices can be upgraded to Belle.
In parallel with the Nokia 808 release, Nokia launched Symbian Belle Feature Pack 1 (Belle FP1) ...
allaboutsymbian.com
Whether or not we'll see more Symbian launches (or new Carla or Donna devices) is unclear although I do expect we'll see a few more, but not many -- but if not the Belle FP1 based 808 PureView is a great departure point. While I don't expect it to be distributed by a US network operator I expect that the product will be FCC certified and made available SIM unlocked by Amazon and other 3rd parties.
Cheers,
- Eric - |
