Nokia's 808 Will Blow Your Fucking Mind

"I can't believe that this is a cell phone," is what you'll say.

GSM Arena has posted its comparison of the Nokia 808 versus other phones. They have the iPhone 4s, representing the best that cell phones can currently produce. For fun, they also include the Olympus E-PL2 and the Canon EOS 5D Mark III — both excellent cameras for their size and price. The 808, no surprise, blows the cell phone competition completely out of the water. Importantly, it also blows the Nokia N8, which was supposed to be the one cell camera to rule them all and totally wasn't, into another time zone.

What was a surprise, though, was that the 808 completely outresolves both the Canon and Olympus. Obviously, that has as much to do with the lens as the camera itself, but since the lens is built in, knowing that it is top-notch is pretty important. Obviously, colors from the Canon are smoother, with a lower amount of noise, but that is completely expected. The Canon's sensor is multiple times larger. The Olympus, though, has its ass handed to it. The Nokia is better in every way save for color rendition. The Nokia produces incredibly cold, blue images, which look very poor next to the warm, natural colors from the Olympus.

The detail, though, the detail is amazing. These are all likely OOC JPEG images, and as such, more detail is possible from the Oly and Canon, but I doubt that they would ever match the Nokia. In the first set of crops, look at the far left of the image. The doors and windows have a chain-link pattern that is only visible in the Nokia.

This is an epic performance, one that only drives home that cell phones will quickly become a threat for even standalone camera companies. That it took this long for Canon, Panasonic, Olympus, and the entrenched camera companies to respond to the unavoidable threat of cell phones is a disgrace. Once the final tests come out, this new Nokia may very well obviate the Sony RX100, Fuji X10, and Canon G1X. And Panasonic's and Olympus' ridiculous quest to turn micro 4/3 into the new point-and-shoot cameras will be their downfall. Will those cameras produce better images? In many cases, yes. But the fact that most compact cameras still outperform most cell phones hasn't stopped cell phones from ripping up the market.

The Nokia 808 portends a dark future for camera companies, unless they finally, finally, stop being arrogant, intransigent, old men, and start driving the market forward with innovation and investment.