Nokia 808 PureView review
A CAMERA THAT CAN MAKE PHONE CALLS — OR SOMETHING MORE? — At Mobile World Congress this year, Nokia CEO Stephen Elop cast a wary eye over the catalog of shiny new phones introduced by his competitors and posed the challenge, “which ones will you remember?”
Context & Ripple Effects
Nokia has spent 2012 building the 808 PureView into its answer to Elop's own Mobile World Congress challenge about which phones will be remembered: after the first sample shots landed in February, the company put the 41-megapixel shooter on sale in the US at $699 in mid-June. The Verge's review lands on the framing Nokia itself invited — a camera that can make phone calls — which cuts both ways for a handset running software outside Nokia's declared Windows Phone future.
The strategic tension is already visible in the corpus: Nokia committed in March to bringing PureView imaging to Windows Phone-powered Lumias, even as cost analysis showed its flagship undercutting Apple's cheapest iPhone 4S by $200 while costing Nokia more in components — and as the company cancelled the Meltemi low-end Linux OS and weighed a rumored sale of Vertu to EQT.
First-order effects
- Reviewers' 'camera that can make phone calls' verdict makes the 808 a halo product for PureView optics rather than a volume seller, validating Nokia's imaging bet while underscoring that the platform around it is not the draw.
- At $699 with component costs above Apple's per-unit economics despite the lower retail price versus the iPhone 4S, each 808 sold deepens rather than relieves Nokia's margin problem.
Second-order effects
- The review's praise of the sensor and dismissal of everything else raises the stakes for Nokia's promised port of PureView to Windows Phone Lumias — the imaging differentiator now has to carry a platform story it was not built for.
- Competitors at Mobile World Congress who failed Elop's memorability test face pressure to respond on camera hardware specifically, since that is the one axis where the 808 reset expectations.
Third-order effects
- If flagship differentiation keeps migrating from operating system to optics, handset makers without in-house imaging depth get pushed toward component suppliers and partnerships, reshaping where value accrues in the smartphone bill of materials.
- Nokia's simultaneous retreats — Meltemi cancelled, Vertu reportedly up for sale — point toward a company consolidating around fewer bets, with PureView positioned as the surviving technical asset if the pattern holds.
The trend: Smartphone competition is shifting from platform wars to camera hardware as the primary differentiator, forcing Nokia to transplant its Symbian-era imaging crown jewel onto Windows Phone before its cost structure gives out.