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Nokia’s 41-megapixel 808 PureView is up for pre-order now, but will cost you half a grand to acquire.
The Finnish company has confirmed that its snap-happy Symbian phone will be released at the end of June, and can be pre-ordered right now on Amazon for the eye-watering price of £500.
So what exactly does your monkey buy you? You’ll primarily be shelling out for the 41-megapixel sensor, certainly one of the most monolithic cameras ever to be committed to a smart phone.
The downside is that the 808 PureView is running Symbian, an operating system that’s often confusing to use, and doesn’t have a great app selection. If you’re keen on the super-powered camera, my advice would be to hold tight — Nokia is likely to port the PureView tech to other phones in the future, potentially ones running the upcoming Windows Phone 8 operating system.
Leaked slides that emerged earlier in the year pointed to such a development, so we may not have long to wait before the 41-megapixel camera appendage appears on more futuristic phones.
There’s no word yet on whether any UK networks will be selling the 808 PureView — SoMobile is reporting that Orange will be selling it on 8 July and O2 will be flogging it this month — though O2 told me it’s not planning on offering the phone. I’ve contacted all five major networks and am yet to receive a firm ‘yes’ from anyone, but I’ll update this story if any operator decides to run with Nokia’s snap-happy toy.
We heard Nokia would be selling the 808 PureView in the UK back in May, and the fact that it’s going on sale at all is a pleasant surprise — our impression when we saw the 808 PureView back at Mobile World Congress was that it could simply be a crazy experiment on Nokia’s part.
We’re working on a full review, so stay tuned. In the meantime let me know whether you’re planning on buying this megapixel monster by posting in the comments, or on our Facebook wall.
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Nokia PureView 808 hands-on
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