NOKIA N8

The Nokia N8 is a real multimedia monster, because it's part of the N-line of Nokia.
Mobile phones and the N-line are capable of handling multimedia, like photos, videos, social networks and more. The N8 (former Nokia N98) contains a high-quality Carl-Zeiss/Tessar camera, with 12 megapixels. This camera can record in High Definition.
It also contains a full QWERTY keyboard and 480*800 pixels screen, which is identical to the screen of the N900. This screen measures 2.5 inch and is multitouch.

The Nokia N8 runs on brand new Symbian 3 platform, which will automatically synchronize with your online social networks so you'll be able to edit all menu's of the Nokia N8 yourself.

Specification

REVIEWS

Features

Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE

• Penta-band 3G with 10.2 Mbps HSDPA and 2 Mbps HSUPA
• Sleek anodized aluminium body
• 3.5" 16 million color with ActiveMatrix-OLED capacitive touchscreen of 640 x 360 pixel resolution
• 12 megapixel autofocus camera, xenon flash and 720p@25fps video recording
• Cam features: large 1/1.83” camera sensor, mechanical shutter, ND filter, geo-tagging, face detection
• Symbian^3 OS
• 680 MHz ARM 11 CPU & 256 MB RAM
• Wi-Fi IEEE 802.11 b/g/n
• microHDMI port for 720p TV-out functionality
• GPS receiver with A-GPS support and free lifetime voice-guided navigation
• Digital compass
• 16GB on-board storage, expandable through the microSD card slot
• DivX and XviD video support
• Built-in accelerometer and proximity sensor
• Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
• Stereo FM Radio with RDS and FM transmitter
• microUSB port with USB On-the-go support
• Flash and Java supportable web browser
• Stereo Bluetooth 3.0
• Nice audio reproduction quality
• Smart voice dialing
• Scratch protection with Gorilla glass display

Applications

Calendar, Contacts, Music player, Photos, Videos, Games, Video and photo editors, Office document viewers with the possibility to improve editing functionality at a cost and Radio with RDS support.

PC Applications: Nokia Ovi Suite, Nokia Ovi Player application..

Online applications: Nokia Ovi Store, Internet, Messaging, Ovi Maps, Web TV, E-Mail.

Design

The Sleek aluminium chassis at the side and the back and a large AMOLED touchscreen up front – there’s nothing to dislike about the N8. If you have a thing for phones of metal you will absolutely love it. For the time of our review we managed to obtain four of the five color options of anodized scratch-proof paint available.

Nokia has always produced some great hardware and the Nokia N8 is no exception. As soon as you pick it up, you'll notice the high-quality construction with its metal finishes and glass display, at 113.5 x 59.1 x 12.9mm and 135g, the smartphone is a nice size: Big enough to have a sizable screen but thin and compact enough to make it easy to carry and hold. The camera housing on the back sticks out just slightly, taking a bit away from the streamlined design, but it's not a big deal. These are of course all equally attractive. The Dark Grey and Silver are definitely our favorites but we’re sure that the Green and especially the Orange.

Nokia N8 in dark gray, Orange & Green versions

User Interface

The User Interface of Nokia N8 is Symbian and the previous Symbian S60 platform was its poor user interface. The inconsistent touch interface, the archaic-looking menus, and the clunky navigation all contributed to a frustrating user experience. Symbian 3 corrects a number of those issues, and makes the N8 a dream to operate compared with previous Nokia smartphones. However, it still trails the competition in a number of respects.

In N8, main menu structure is unchanged, retaining the folders format. This comes in contrast to Android OSs, and mostly iOS, where you get a flat menu structure with all icons located on side-scrollable panes. And now you are free to rearrange icons as you see fit so you might go for placing them all in the main folder and get a flat-ish menu system from Symbian^3 too.
                                               
               symbion^3 keyboard                                                            main menu

Symbian 3 now offers a single-tap interaction model across the user interface, so you'll no longer have to go through multiple steps to complete a simple task or muddle through the confusion of which menus require one tap or two, as we experienced on past S60 devices like the Nokia N97 mini. The performance of the Symbian has also been taken up a notch with the ^3 version. The Nokia N8 feels snappy most of the time, with lags noticeable only when dealing with heavy apps or when there are a lot of apps running in the background.

In Software specification of the device, Symbian^3 operating system is an improvement over previous operating system versions, but it is still not at the level it should be. There are three major home screens packed with widgets and applications that can be viewed in landscape and portrait modes, which is a nice touch that many other smartphones lack. Each home screen is divided into four rows, that is already house four application shortcuts or display one widget such as email or social networking updates and even though heavy multi-taskers will frown at the 256MB of RAM we don’t get any memory errors even when playing the rather demanding NFS Shift game with the camera and the web browser with two tabs open running in background.

Performance

The quad-band (GSM 850/900/1800/1900) Nokia N8 is good and call quality is decent. For the most part, conversations sounds clear on our end, with very low background noise, but there are times audio would cut off the end of a sentence. User report good results and don't have any major complaints.
Speakerphone quality of the device is pretty good. It doesn't sound quite as tinny or as hollow as other speakerphones, so there is no problems hearing our callers, and there's plenty of volume to hold a conversation in noisier environments. It also has no issue pairing the smartphone with the Logitech Mobile Traveller Bluetooth headset or any other like Motorola S9 Bluetooth Active Headphones.
With N8, with good quality and synchronized picture and audio. It is enjoyable rich-sounding music playback through On-Ear Bose Headphones.
The N8 does well as a navigator. The phone is able to get a GPS lock in less than a minute, and it accurately tracks position
General performance on the N8 is a bit sluggish. It's equipped with a 680MHz ARM11 processor, but we could be encountered some delays launching and switching between apps. Though it never crashed or froze on us, there were a couple of occasions where the lag was significant enough to make us think there was a problem.
The Nokia N8 ships with 1,200mAh lithium ion battery with a rated talk time of 12 hours (GSM)/5.8 hours (3G) and up to 16 days (GSM)/17 days (3G) of standby time, it's not user-replaceable. In battery drain test, user may be impressed with the battery life. With moderate use--checking email and in Web browsing, and some music playback, there is need about a day and a half before needing to recharge. According to FCC radiation tests, the N8 has a digital SAR rating of 1.12 watts/kg.

Competition

The Nokia N8 is a good-looking, anodised aluminium covered with a scratch-proof coating to protect from damage. Nokia's also done well in crafting a compact design, measuring 113.5mm x 59mm x 12.9mm and 135g it's also pretty light. Its 3.5-inch AMOLED touchscreen looks great and is comparable to that of the Motorolla Andriod 2, Apple Iphone 4 and Samsung Galaxy S.

It is disappointed that the widgets cannot be expanded to take up the whole screen, as many people now want as much information as possible crammed onto the screen. The same problem was apparent in the Nokia C6, which runs an older Symbian OS.

In tests, it is found that customising the home screen was a bit of a chore and it was not possible to move widgets between panels. Instead, each of the three screens has to be customised individually, and even then it was fiddly. There is no sense of integration like there is with Apple IOS4 or Android home screens.

Pros: Nokia N8 offers more enhanced user experience; It delivers excellent camera of 12 megapixel and nice video quality; solid hardware; it holds over the competition are mainly hardware ones: battery life, camera quality and USB connectivity being the three major ones; free turn-by-turn navigation with Ovi Maps.
Cons: Expensive because you can buy a better digital and a smartphone for lesser than the Rs 25,000(approx) price tag; user interface still trails the competition in ease of use; The onscreen keyboard in some ways does not have a QWERTY layout like in portrait orientation, making typing out longish texts and e-mails a two-handed operation as one has no option but to switch to landscape; provided with no user-replaceable battery.
Bottom line: The Nokia N8 excels as a camera-phone, and the improvements of Symbian 3 make it one of the company's best smartphones till date. However, it still has its shortcomings and an expensive price tag.