The world has the Nokia N8 smartphone from the Finnish mobile phone veteran to play with and marvel at. Every mobile phone manufacturer has at least a few smartphones that is the masterpiece(s) of their entire lot. The Nokia N8, without an iota of doubt, is the number one smartphone from Nokia. It is unarguably the best that the Symbian platform has been able to deliver as well.
The Nokia N8 is packed to the hilt when it comes to features and technical specifications. You have the all powerful 12 mega pixel camera device to begin with. The N8 is only the second smartphone device to be fitted with a 12 MP snapper after the Sony Ericsson Satio. Then, you have truckloads of options and applications including On Demand Web TV, free navigation, personalizing and having your own widgets and up to three home screens, integrated social networking and connecting to your home theater system through the HDMI port provided for the purpose.
| Technical Specifications | Nokia N8 |
| Display and Touchscreen | 3.5 inches wide capacitive touchscreen with 16:9 nHD (640 x 360 pixels) AMOLED. And support of 16.7 million colours |
| Dimensions and Weight | 113.5 x 59 x 12.9 mm and 135 gms |
| Operating System | Symbian ^3 |
| Processor | 1 Ghz |
| Memory | On board memory space allotted – 16 GB. Expandable memory with microSD card up to 32 GB. |
| Battery | BL-4D 1200 mAh Li-Ion battery; Talk Time – GSM – 720 Minutes, WCDMA – 350 minutes; Standby – GSM – 390 minutes, WCDMA – 400 minutes; Video play back time – (H.264 720p, 30 fps, maximum): 6 hrs (via HDMI to TV); Video recording time – (H.264 720p, 25 fps, maximum): 3 h 20 mins; Video calling – 160 Minutes maximum |
| Internet & Connectivity | 3G, HSDPA – Cat9, maximum speed up to 10.2 Mbps, HSUPA Cat5 2.0 Mbps, Wi-fi, WLAN – IEEE802.11 b/g/n, GPRS, EDGE, bluetooth technology.HTML, XHTML MP, WML, CSS mark up languages; HTML and JavaScript support ; TCP/IP, Flash Lite 4, support for steaming videos |
| E-mail and Messaging | Easy-to-use email client with attachment support for images, videos, music and documents .doc, .xls, .ppt, .pdf, .zip; Windows Live, Yahoomail, Gmail, Mail for Exchange, IBM Mail for Travele, Push E-mail and Nokia Instant Messaging |
| Camera | Dual cameras – 12 MP camera at the rear with Fullscreen 16:9 viewfinder with easy-to-use touch screen parameters, auto focus, image stabilization, Carl Zeiss optics and 3x digital zoom for video recording, geo tagging, Xenon flash; video recording at 720p HD recording codecs H.264, MPEG-4.and Dolby Digital Plus Surround Sound Secondary VGA camera at the front for video calling |
| Media Player | Nokia Ovi Player with audio formats – MP3, WMA, AAC, eAAC, eAAC+, AMR-NB, AMR-WB, FM radio; Ovi Music Store |
| Application | Calendar, Contacts, music player, internet, messaging, photos, Ovi Store, Maps, Videos, Web TV, Office document viewers, Video & photo editor, Mail, Radio; PC Applications: Nokia Ovi Suite, Nokia Ovi Player |
| Navigation | Integrated GPS, A-GPS receivers; Ovi Maps with free car and pedestrian navigation; W-fi positioning; Compass and accelerometer for correct orientation of display; Ovi Suite for Maps of different countries |
The best of Symbian
Nokia has to eat humble pie as its operating software, the Symbian platform has been found wanting and falling short on more than a couple of fronts when it came to competing with rival platform likes the Apple iOS and the Android. Without an iota of doubt, the latest Symbian version ^3 plugs several of the loop holes found in Nokia smartphones like 5800 XpressMusic, Nokia X6, etc. Though it could have been more robust. Still, it is very healthy improvement on the earlier iterations.
It is now time for us to look into the individual features of the Nokia N8 in some detail
Calling and Contacts
Overdoing a thing also can prove to be problematic and this is exactly what happened with some of the earlier Nokia models. We are referring to cramming up your phone books with all kinds and categories of contacts that left a lot of users bewildered to say the least. Now, who would have thought of having an Assistant's option under contacts but Nokia. Well,this multiplicity of the options under contacts have not only been simplified in the Nokia N8 but also actually expanded as well.
The rest of the syncing or transferring all your Google and social networking contracts is easy and but not straight forward. As is it rather time consuming with the user requiring to press the back button every time you want to add a new contact. Nokia would do well to speed up this process in say the Nokia N9.
But on the other hand, calling quality is one of the best in the business with noise reduction option available. Then, there is the video calling facility as well to try. It is something that is similar to what Apple iPhone 4.0 has.
Camera
This brings us to one of the star attractions of the Nokia N8. Its mighty eight mega pixel camera with all the works. The Nokia N8 has the distinction of being the first ever camera phone using which a full-fledged movie has been made. The Commuter, starring Dev Patel has been shot entirely using the N8 camera only. The camera has Xenon Flash and is fitted with Carl Zeiss optics. There is geo tagging, auto focus, image stabilization and what not. Video recording at 720p high definition is very much possible. The quality of pictures, it has be said, is excellent. The technology site Techradar, in fact, has observed that the quality of sound recording obtained with the N8 camera is better than what is obtained with the Samsung Galaxy S and the Samsung Wave.
Internet & Connectivity
A key area where the Apple iPhones and the Android run smartphones from HTC and Samsung score heavily is the super fast mobile net connectivity that these operating software along with able support from the web browsers are able to deliver. We must say here, that in the Nokia N8 it is a tremendous improvement from what we got to see earlier. The presence of Flash Lite 4 that is able to make web pages that work on all web pages made on Flash up to the version, in particular, is a good value addition. In fact, this is one area where Nokia actually scores over Apple iPhone .40 has it does not support Flash and even future iPhones won't as well.
Nokia can look into expanding social networking options
Talking about net connectivity, where Nokia can improve is to add a few more social networking options to the already present Facebook and Twitter. There are quite a few users who may like to do a bit of socialist on say Flickr, MySpace and Orkut, etc. We feel, this is something that Nokia can immediately incorporate without much trouble. It only requires basically accommodating a few more widgets on the social networking home screen.
Media Player
The Nokia N8 has the time tested Nokia music player and it is not at all a bad idea to retain this one. As most of the time, all most users want is to browse through popular playlists and identify tracks and play them. That is done pretty well and effectively with the audio quality is one of the finest anywhere. The equalizer helps in getting the audio in its right timbre and volume.
The video play back is also more than satisfactory. You can play any number of video clips and the loading and uploading time are all within acceptable limits and the quality of the video footages also will surely leave a smile or two on your faces. For audio, you can have full Dolby 5.1 surround sound, and the video encoding is done on 5.1 support.
You can view video files formatted in – Xvid, DivX, MP4 and AVI.
Battery Life**
Even with a 1200 mAz, the Nokia N8 is able to last for two full days without charging. And this includes, full wi-fi scanning on, a bit of browsing and listening to music. We are sure this is due to its powerful and robust processor and the OS.
Connectivity Features with Nokia N8
Nokia N8 comes with more than its share of connectivity ports and plugs in for sharing media and data. These are – Bluetooth 3.0 with A2DP, Wi-Fi up to 802.11n, assisted GPS, 10.2Mbps HSDPA, mini HDMI port.
It really works well and you do get excited to see your video clips shot in HD transferred to a compatible TV set and get to view them with all its features and depth in colour, etc intact. This becomes better if you have both 3G and Wi-fi.
With the Ovi Suite in place, syncing your phone content with a PC is also provides a much better outcome.
Applications
Besides the Ovi Office, with access to Word, Excel, etc, the Ovi Store does give a decent variety of games, and other stuff to choose from. You are certain to, at least, get across to Angry Birds if nothing else. There is a video editor app too. Though this won't let you view a preview of any video footage that you have changed somewhat unless you have save it. All the same, it is a nice application to have. It is as good as the iMovie app on the iPhone.
Navigation and Maps
The Ovi Maps is also quite handy and does come up with features like the possibility of locating a region and putting on the same on Facebook. Then the GPS also works smoothly enough. You also have additional pointer like Lonely Planet ratings, Michelin Advide and Qype to look forward to.
Price is within affordable limits
The network service providers, especially, O2, Orange, T-Mobile, Talk Mobile and Vodfone all offer Nokia N8 contracts that offer the smartphone device for free under say a £ 20 per month contract. There are several such monthly plans that even offer the handset for free for plan that requires even less. The SIM free prices start from £ 330 onwards.
Conclusion
A lot of negativity has unavoidably surrounded all Nokia smartphones. But honestly, we do not find anything wrong with at least the smartphone under consideration, the Nokia N8. It delivers quite effectively on all the fronts that an average user normally is worried about. And we have covered all of them. We assure it is one of the finest smartphones in the market at the moment.
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