The Nokia 808 Hurts Me

Reviews for the Nokia 808 PureView are trickling in from major websites and the conclusion that nearly all of them reach is the same: the 808's camera is truly amazing, everything else makes the phone unpurchasable.

This is depressing for an old Nokia fan like me. I owned the Nokia brick in the late 90's. I jumped through various phones, with even the downright bizarre 3650 and 7380 crossing my hands at one point. I owned the N93 — one of the first super-imaging phones — and finished up my love affair a couple of years ago with the N86. By then, it was apparent that Nokia, for whatever reason, was incapable of competing with Apple and the rising Android threat. The colossal disappointment that was the N97 was the final nail in the coffin.

If Nokia had chosen Android, I would have jumped on board. I just cannot see through to using Windows Phone. Microsoft has proven itself to be too corporate, too litigious, and too myopic to be a company that I can support. Google is far from innocent in these regards, but they are at least better; they at least try.

So I don't know what Nokia's internal state is. I don't know what the relationship with Microsoft is. I don't know what their market research data shows. Truly, I don't know anything about Nokia's operations. All I can say is that I, this one person, is not buying Nokia products because and only because Windows Phone is on them. And that hurts, because I want this camera phone but bad.