Nokia N8

I should probably say that this is my first phone review. Hopefully this goes well.

The Nokia N8. Its the one of the latest phone by Nokia which comfortably sits among the higher level smart phones by Nokia. The N-series phones are made to offer a full smartphone experience. It is in some ways a combination of the current Nokia business phone, the E-series and an all rounder entertainment phone. In other terms, its a hybrid.

This flagship model was announced around April but for some reasons, it took 6 months to reach our stores. It seems like they deliberately launched it after the IPhone 4 to avoid this phone living in the older generation era ( IPhone 3gs era). Obviously, its aimed at the smart phone users who seem to prefer the IPhone and the younger Android users.

Now, lets not waste any time and get to the phone review...

Outlook and design features

Its aluminium unibody makes the phone look more stylish and thin. In-fact, the design is so nice that Nokia has decided to go with the same design for their upcoming E7. The available colors are silver, grey, orange, blue and green. The unit I tried was grey and orange. They both look great and pretty sleek. All the buttons are well-placed and easy to reach. The design itself rests nicely on the palms and surprisingly, I find it easy to operate with one hand. It doesn't feel like you're running your finger on a marathon when you reach the corners of the phone.

Hardware

The 680 MHz ARM 11 CPU does not make the N8 a super High-tech phone. Most killer smart phones these days come with a 1Ghz CPU. However, based on Nokia's claim that the Symbian 3 is light, I think its good enough. A few minutes of pressuring the phone, proved that the CPU can handle the OS smoothly. and I am sure it will do great with games as there is a dedicated graphic processor. One thing that puzzled me is the 256MB RAM. Even the latest Garmin requires at least 256MB of RAM. I wouldn't want a phone that hangs when I pay that amount of money for it. The N8 comes with a built in memory of 16GB and expendable by microSD up to 32GB

Display

The N8 spots a large 3.5" AMOLED capacitive touch screen display with a 640 x 360 pixel resolution. The scratch resistant, glass display look nice and bright. But having operated the Iphone 4 and the Samsung Galaxy S, the N8's display does not set the standards high enough. The IPhone 4 has a LED-backlit IPS TFT display with a mind blowing 640 x 960 pixel resolution and my personal favorite, the Samsung Galaxy S's Super AMOLED display. The display on the N8 looks only as good as my Bold 2's 480 x 360 display. Of course its more brighter, but it doesn't make me feel that my Bold 2 is out of the topic. The sensitivity of the touch screen is as good as the best capacitive touch screen phones out there. It feels very responsive and the vibration feels very natural.

Camera

Oh when I said Hybrid, I should have also say that its a camera. This is probably where the N8 kicks all the other smart phones out there back to a time when phone cameras were meant for emergency use. The 12 megapixel autofucus camera snaps pictures which are as good as high end point and shoot digital cameras. Its better than any phone camera out there. Its wide angle Carl Zeiss is also accompanied with a xenon flash to take stunning pictures in low-light situations. I tried snapping a few pictures and immediately could notice the much clear and vibrant pictures compared to the Sony Ericsson Satio. The N8 also records video in high definition, 720p at 25fps.. Other features include the usual face detection and geo-tagging. The only let down in the camera is the software. I expected the new symbian 3 OS to have a more user friendly camera interface.

Connectivity and internet Browser

All the smart phone features can be seen on the N8 . It has a built in GPS receiver with A-GPS support. The OVI maps is descent for a voice guided navigation software and best of all is its free for a life-time. However, personally, I'd still prefer using the Garmin software if I am going to use it as a car GPS navigator. The N8 supports HSDPA and also has WIFI connectivity which was I used to test the browser. The browser supports flash and java but using it wasn't as easy as using the browsers on android and IPhone. Even the new Blackberry Torch beats it. Other connectivity include Bluetooth 3.0 and stereo FM transmitter.

Others

One of the key features in the N8 is the microHDMI port. This means u can play your videos in HD on your TV or monitor. It also supports DivX playback which looked quite nice on the 3.5" display. The built in accelerometer allows motion based games to be played and rotating the phone to change the display orientation. The sound quality on the N8 is rather impressive as it reminded me of the stereo speakers on the Walkman series phone once upon a time. I'm not sure why, but probably because the sound just sounded right.

Conclusion

I would say the Nokia N8 is one great phone. It will sit on top with the kings. The only problem for me is Symbian. I never really liked symbian for the touch screen phones from the start. When it first came out in the 5800, it looked very basic and backwards. Sad to say, it still looks the same and I wanted it to change. I understand that its made for simplicity, but its just not my cup of tea.