Nokia N8 Review

Amidst much hype, Nokia finally started shipping its new flagship model the Nokia N8. It is finally out , but its rather a little too late from the previous N series which was N86 which was announced and shipped in June 2009. Any how while the world moves to Android based smartphones there is a still alot of scope for the Symbian series though. We have a detailed look at the N8.


The Nokia N8 is a beautiful and sensational mobile phone that is created using high quality materials. The smooth and stylish sliding mechanism of the mobile is made from stainless steel and glass. Like other sophisticated Nokia phones, the N8 put forward a wide range of features that ensures that the users are able to experience music, imaging, as well as high-end connectivity options in one device.

The N8 features a huge 3.5 inches AMOLED capacitive touchscreen. The 3.5 inches display sheer pleasure for the eyes and suits best for video playing.

Similar size of N8 display to SE Satio - 3.5"

N8 has proximity sensor,accelerometer sensor for auto rotation and scratch resistant display. Its display size can be compared to the Sony Ericsson Satio although that's a TFT touchscreen. iPhone 4 has also a 3.5" display too.
But don't be impressed with the size of the display. The resolution (360 x 640 ) of the display is good if we consider it keeping in mind other similar priced mobiles but compared to iPhone's 854 x 580 it falls behind pretty well.


The Design & Look


The phone has an all metallic body which suits it nicely and creates a premium look. It weights a decent 135 grams but the Samsung Wave is much lighter weighting just 119 grams. The other 12 mega pixel phone , The Sony Ericsson Satio(Idou) is a little heavier then the N8 weighting 126 grams. Looks like the N8 has managed to pack in great stuff at a decent weight and premium metal body.


Main Features

• 3.5" AMOLED capacitive touchscreen of 640 x 360 pixel resolution.
• 12 megapixel autofocus camera with xenon flash and 720p@25fps video recording
• microHDMI port for 720p TV-out functionality
• GPS receiver with A-GPS support and free lifetime voice-guided navigation
• 16 GB storage
• Active noise cancellation with a dedicated Mic
• Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n
• 680 MHz ARM 11 CPU and 256 MB RAM
• FM radio with RDS and FM transmitter.

N8 comes with some great features such as the TV out functionality which enables the user to play vidoes directly on his TV. The other Feature is support for DivX/XviD format videos.


The Camera :

As the highlight of the phone is its camera its need a little more attention then others . The 12MP camera comes with some cool features such as ND filter, face detection and geo-tagging. besides a 1/1.83'' sensor size. The usuals like Xenon Flash and auto focus are also present. The camera is a true daddy of all previously equipped 12 MP camera phones and does its job pretty well.

Nokia N8 priced at 40,000* PKR.

User Interface & Performance


The user interface running on symbian'3 does pretty well but it lags behind when it comes to multi-tasking and you have a large number of tasks to be completed. Though its good but not good enough to compete directly with android based phones.
Sms are displayed in a threaded mode for the ease of the user however social network integration is still not up to the mark and is not that easy to seamlessly connect with friends and send and recieve messages.
When it comes to writing text messages , a large virtual QWERTY keyboard is not good enough to satisfy our needs of fast messaging . It lacks the agility and easiness to be consistent with our fingers.


Negatives of N8

• Processor is somewhat slower to respond
• Virtual QWERTY keyboard is not exactly what will motivate us to send messages to friends.
• User Interface is not up to the mark and can be improved further.
• Web browser lacks user friendliness.

The N8 is the last of N-series having symbian'3 series , Future N-series phones will be running on MeeGo which is why we give N8 full marks for overall in terms of Camera , Display & UI performance although it remains to be seen how the coming N - series phones will compete with android based smart phones.


Specs & Features:

Dimension	113.5 x 59.1 x 12.9 mm, 86 cc
Weight	135 g
Battery	Talk time Up to 12 h 30 min, Stand-by Up to 390 h, Music play Up to 50 h
OS	Symbian^3
Memory	48 MB built-in + microSD Card (supports up to 16GB)
Processor	ARM 11 680 MHz + 3D Graphics HW accelerator
Connectivity	Bluetooth v3.0 with A2DP, USB, Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g/n), 3G (HSDPA 10.2 Mbps, HSUPA 2.0 Mbps), GPRS, EDGE
Display Size	360 x 640 pixels, 3.5 inches (Multi-touch input + Scratch resistant Gorilla glass display)
Display Colour	AMOLED capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors (Proximity + Accelerometer sensor)
Operating Frequency / Band	GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 (HSDPA 850 / 900 / 1700 / 1900 / 2100)
Browser	WAP 2.0/xHTML, HTML, RSS feeds(Opera Mini)
Colors	Dark Grey, Silver White, Green, Blue, Orange
Entertainment	Stereo FM radio with RDS, FM transmitter, 3.5 mm audio jack, MP3/WMA/WAV/eAAC+ player, DivX/XviD/MP4/H.264/H.263/WMV player, TV-out (720p video) via HDMI with Dolby Digital Plus sound, Flash Lite v4.0, Games (built-in + downloadable)
Camera	12 MP, 4000x3000 pixels, Carl Zeiss optics, autofocus, Xenon flash, 1/1.83'' sensor size, ND filter, geo-tagging, face detection, Video (720p 25fps), 2ndary videocall cam
Other Features	GPS + A-GPS support, Ovi Maps 3.0, Speakerphone, Anodized aluminum casing, Active noise cancellation, Digital compass, Document viewer (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF), Video/photo editor
Ring Tones	Downloadable, Polyphonic, MP3, WAV
Messaging	SMS (threaded view), MMS, Email, Push Email, IM