I've been using the F828 for about 6 months now. Yep, it do have its limitations, but even in sunset situations, it delivers crisp 12x18 prints when you work with it.
It will only close down to F8.0, so I'm learning to use ND filters to help that problem. Also, it has a deep DoF, which the ND's can help by opening the aperture more in sunny situations.
As far as aberations go, such as the purple fringing and blockes, yep, I've seent eh purple many times, and the blocking a few. The blocking happens when you try to take pictures into to teh sun too much usually. The purple fringe never shows up in prints though so far.
Noise? Yep, but when you consider your original on screen size is about 45" wide and you are compressing it down to 18 inches wide, you don't see much noise at ISO 200 or less when printed.
That said, I hope Sony come up with a professional F828 type camera. If they couild manage to update the F828 so it had less noise and useable higer ISOs with less abberation, they would ahve a show stopper on their hands. It's a very pleasurable, solid camera to use.