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| Nokia 808 Pure View vs. Samsung Galaxy S 3 |
Steve Litchfield from All About Symbian has made a very clear and non biased comparison between two flagships from Nokia & Samsung i.e Nokia 808 PureView vs. Samsung Galaxy S III. These two flagship devices are very popular among the gadget lovers for the year 2012. therefore people should know the positive aspects / strengths of both the devices before making the purchase decision. Lets take a deep look into the comparison, the strengths are being highlighted with GREEN.
| Nokia 808 PureView | Samsung Galaxy S III | |
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| First sold | May 2012 | May 2012 |
| OS | Nokia Belle FP1 | Android 4.0.4 plus TouchWiz and other Samsung extensions |
| Form factor, materials | Solid plastic body, full-face Gorilla glass capacitive touchscreen, 170g | Larger but lighter, essentially two-handed form, plastic body, full face Gorilla glass, 133g |
| Dimensions | 124 x 60 x 14 mm | 137 x 71 x 9 mm |
| Connectivity | Pentaband 3G, Wi-Fi b/g/n, Bluetooth 3.0, ‘USB on the go’ (to USB disks/accessories), NFC | Quad band 3G, Wi-Fi b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, integral wifi tethering without needing third party software, USB on the go, NFC |
| Input mechanisms | Adequate virtual qwerty landscape keyboard with writing aids, plus qwerty or numeric ‘T9’ input in portrait mode. Compatible with most Bluetooth and USB keyboards. | Pretty good multi-touch virtual qwerty keyboard in both portrait and landscape modes (where appropriate), with writing aids. Compatible with most Bluetooth keyboards. S-voice (based on Vlingo) allows some voice recognition and control. |
| Display | 4.0″ (360 x 640 pixels) AMOLED with ClearBlack Display polarisers, true RGB pixels, readable in bright sunlight | 4.8″ (720 x 1280 pixels) Super AMOLED, pentile pixel layout (some argue that this effectively halves the ‘real’ resolution), just about readable in bright sunlight |
| Interface | (Symbian) Nokia Belle FP1, kinetic scrolling everywhere, multi-touch where needed, six homescreens of live widgets, whole interface works in portrait or landscape mode. | Android 4, customised with TouchWiz additions, kinetic and multi-touch, of course. Seven homescreens of live, often interactive widgets. Most applications work in landscape mode, but homescreen and app menu is resolutely portrait only. S-Voice interface with customised ‘wake up’ audio control |
| Speed | Good, 1.3GHz ARM 11 with 512MB RAM and a graphics processor to help out with effects, transitions and multimedia, plus a dedicated PureView camera GPU. | Generally very good, with a quad-core 1.4GHz Exynos processor, plus GPU. The processing power has been demonstrated by playing back smooth 1080p Flash video in web pages – amazing, in a phone. As with Symbian, there’s full, no holds multitasking. |
| Memory capacity (storage) | Up to 512MB of C: (system) disk, plus 16GB mass memory and flexible microSD expansion, e.g. adding an extra 32GB. Apps can be installed on any disk. Plugging in the phone to any desktop computer allows mass memory and microSD to be mounted and treated like any other disk. Plus generic USB disk support via ‘USB on the go’, adding up to 128GB extra. | 16/32/64GB (depending on variant) of integral storage (MTP-mountable on a desktop), plus microSD expansion, quoted up to 64GB. Plus generic USB disk support via ‘USB on the go’, adding up to 128GB extra. |
| Camera (stills) | Superlative 38 megapixel stills, though usually running in 5mp ‘PureView’ mode, offering zero digital noise and ‘perfect’ pixels with lossless 3x digital zoom. Huge 1/1.2″ sensor and Carl Zeiss optics. Exposed camera glass. Proper shutter button. Genuine Xenon flash and tuned camera hardware make for foolproof evening/social shots. |
Good 8 megapixel photos, 1/3.2″ sensor. Results will be similar to those from the Galaxy S II with near identical camera hardware – see my SGS2/N8 photo comparisons. A variety of extra camera modes in software. Not having a camera shutter button has to be a negative though… |
| Camera (video) | 1080p video capture is superb and at high bitrate, a variety of focus options, plus intelligent (non-lossy) 3x digital zoom; audio capture in stereo and with pro-quality digital mikes and RichRecording software and electronics, capable of handling a very wide volume range. | Full 1080p capture, with continuous auto-focus good audio capture at normal volumes, in stereo. |
| GPS and navigation | Good GPS, backed up by Nokia Wi-fi location, with Nokia Maps 3.9 worldwide free sat-nav. Maps can be pre-loaded by continent, country or area. | Good GPS, with Google Maps Navigation and (somewhat robotic) voice guidance. Maps can now be pre-loaded into a cache and then pulled back later, but not, as far as I can see, on a country level. |
| Audio out | Loud, high quality mono speaker, 3.5mm jack, A2DP, FM transmitter to car radio, plus Dolby Digital Surround Sound (through HDMI port) | Adequate mono speaker, 3.5mm jack, A2DP. |
| Multimedia playback | Video playback is terrific, with a wide range of codecs supported. YouTube playback in high quality requires a third party download (e.g. CuteTube), 360p via the mobile YouTube web site. | Video playback is excellent on the big HD screen. Excellent HQ YouTube support means that quality streamed video is never far away, too, on that 720p screen, bandwidth permitting. |
| Web browsing | Symbian Web (webkit-based), functional without ever really impressing, though it’s faster on the 808 than on any previous Symbian handset. | Stunning rendering speed on a stunning display. The Android browser on the SGS III is fairly unbeatable in mobile, with text reflow, etc. At 720p resolution, many sites also don’t even need zooming or panning if your eyes are good enough. |
| All purpose Mail client provides ‘push’ facilities for Mail for Exchange, Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo! mail and many others – works well on the whole but some limitations and performance annoyances when ‘rich’ emails come in. | The odd pairing of Gmail and a generic email client persists, as is usual for Android, but it should all work well and at very good speed here, bandwidth permitting. | |
| Other application highlights out of the box | Microsoft Office Mobile editing suite/cloud integration, Dictionary, Zip manager, Photo editor, Video editor, Nokia Social Networking (Twitter and Facebook) | Full Polaris Office editing suite, plus Dropbox, various digital content hubs/stores and the usual Android core applications. |
| Application store and ecosystem | Nokia Store client, hundreds* of high quality native Symbian applications are compatible. There’s an automatic update system but installs are somewhat intrusive where the Qt Smart Installer is involved. | Google Play (the new name for the Android Market…!), and access to many thousands* of high quality native (based on Java) applications. Applications can be automatically or manually updated. |
| Battery | 1400mAh, replaceable when needed, microUSB charging, casual use should last 2 days. | 2100 mAh, replaceable when needed, microUSB charging, casual use should last 2 days. |
| Ongoing firmware support and OS updates | Symbian’s long term prospects are of course time-limited now. Support and minor upgrades will continue at some level though, for another three years. Many OS modules and components can be upgraded, over the air, as-and-when using the ‘Sw update tool’ in the device. | Prospects reasonable, this is Samsung’s flagship for 2012, though any core Android updates will take many months to appear, since the OS has to have TouchWiz applied and then tested as such. |
Summing up the total green strengths will give 6 points to Samsung Galaxy S 3 whereas Nokia 808 Pureview has secured 4 points from the above non – biased comparison.
After having a look at this non-biased comparison, let us know via comments, which device will you still consider buying this year, either Nokia 808 Pure View (The Best Ever Imaging Device from Nokia) or Samsung Galaxy S 3 (The fastest flagship from Samsung)