Selling New Gadgets

Here comes another 'flagship' phone from the Nokia stable. But I am pretty apprehensive about it. Why? Bad experience in the past, essentially. Remember the Nokia N95 8GB? Nokia called it their flagship phone, it was selling well, and then they inexplicably chopped it off their line-up. Unbelievable!

The successors came and went- N96, N97, N97 mini and even the N900. Even though N900 had the Maemo operating system, it surprisingly didn't create the waves it was supposed to.

Now it is the turn of the Nokia N8 to burden the responsibility of being Nokia's next flagship phone! Nokia has a lot riding on the new Symbian^3 smartphone, in the face of some very serious competition from the Android phones as well as the iPhone. Let's find out how good it actually is.


Packaging and Contents

The N8 came with a smart looking charger, an HDMI adapter, a USB adapter, a decent headset and a lot of booklets. You get to download unlimited music from the Ovi Music Store for one year on this device. The charger plug has a slide out top pin, which can makes the entire charger slim enough to comfortably pack and carry.


First Impression

Take the N8 out of the box and you will be immediately impressed by the build quality. The anodized aluminum body comes with a nice finish, and the phone I had dark grey one, although the phone is available in multiple colors. Nokia have done a great job with the body- making it scratch less. In case the surface does get scratched, just wipe it with a cloth, and the scratch disappears!

The 3.5 inch screen is accompanied by one single button on the front panel- the Menu one. Well, there is a front facing video call camera, but that is safely hidden away from sight. One side panel has the volume control, the camera and the screen lock buttons, while the other side has the sim-slot as well as the slot for the memory card, The microUSB port is also on this side.

The rear panel has a monster 12 MP camera, and just to fit the camera in, Nokia had to raise the area around the camera just a little bit. What this does is open the camera to a risk of scratches when you place it on the table or even keep it in the pocket with other stuff like keys and pens.

Also, Nokia has tried to give the phone a powerfully rugged feel by making two screws visible on either side panel. It may look good to some, but seems like an unfinished product to me. The multiple color options are also a thoughtful addition, something which widens the scope for more buyers who can now choose the phone depending on their color preference.

Nokia N8 Unlocked GSM Touchscreen Phone Featuring GPS with Voice Navigation and 12 MP Camera--U.S. Version with Warranty (Gray)

Performance

The ARM11 processor powering the N8 clocks at 680MHz, and I believe that is more than sufficient if the loaded operating system is efficient. The OS this phone comes loaded with is the Symbian^3, which makes this the first phone in the world to do so.

The 3.5 inch capacitive touchscreen is a delight to use, and I have to admit, I did not expect it to be this good. Plus, the fact that it is AMOLED also lends a really high quality feel to it. Nokia have really come a long way since the pathetic touchscreen efforts of the N97 and the 5800 XpressMusic. The N8 responds instantly, pinch and zoom works well and the screen is a delight to watch multimedia content on. The touchscreen quality is superb, in a nutshell.

Moreover, this touchscreen is the Gorilla Glass type- which does not get scratched, no matter what you do with it. Good thing, since most phone buyers don't bother buying a screen protector and the screen inevitably gets badly scratched.

The 12MP camera is just the biggest camera we have seen in a smartphone, so much so that Nokia had to give it an elevated platform on the rear panel to allow it to fit in the device body! Images are great and comparable with any compact camera- as far as a brightly lit environment is concerned. In the dark, this one too becomes a bit temperamental, just like most phone cameras. HD video recording is smooth as silk, and I had no complaints there. Basically, the camera is the best thing this phone has, by a very long way.

The 680MHz processor, in the opinion of a lot of people, is a tad underpowered for a smartphone. Most Smartphone these days come powered with a 1GHz processor. I don't agree with this logic, however. For me, 680MHz processor is more than enough, if the phone's OS is able to manage the power properly. If the N8 is able to play 720p videos successfully, then the processor is more than adequate- And yes, the N8 handled HD videos perfectly. No stutter, phone freeze or the general jerkiness. No complaints about the processor speed, at my end!

Another testament to the fact that the processor is more than adequately powerful is that a gaming session playing the NFS Shift (downloaded, for Free, from the OVI Store) unveiled a smooth gaming experience and absolutely no jerkiness.

16GB built-in memory and the ability to expand to 48GB more via the external memory slot is a feature worth it for people who click and store a lifetime of memories in the photo gallery and keep the entire soundtrack of their lives in the Music folder!

The HDMI out is a thoughtful feature. I connected this to my Samsung LCD television and watched a couple of HD videos off the phone, and it was perfect quality. Even more so that if someone just walks into the room and does know that the video is being played off the phone, he/she will certainly imagine it's some device like the WD TV media player or a BluRay player. Apart from this, when the phone is connected to a television, you can see on the TV everything you can see on the phone screen. Viewing a picture album with friends and family will be a breeze now, just be careful not to let your personal messages show up on the screen!

The N8 also comes with USB input, which allows you to access, read and copy contents from a USB drive (Pen drives or powered external hard drives). Very useful for copying/accessing data to/on the phone on the move, and not be tethered to the Ovi Suite software only.

Coming back to the interface, the on screen keyboard is extremely comfortable to use. The portrait mode shows the standard alphanumeric keyboard while the landscape mode shows up the full QWERTY keypad. Both are very comfortable to use, and the amazing screen quality really makes typing out SMSes fun.

The N8 has 3 home screens which you can customize according to your need, but the widgets are bound down by size limitations. Unlike Android where widget sizes are free and not bound down by any pre-set bureaucratic order.

The battery life of the phone is a much better than most Android smartphones. This one will last you a couple of days on one charge. Symbian 3 handles applications better than Android, and allows you to completely close them via the new visual task manager (can be accessed by long pressing the Menu button), something Android does not do very well. Full marks to Nokia on the battery life issue- something which Google and to an extent Apple have not been able to address successfully.

However, the phone is not without its share of flaws. Out of the box, you will be greeted by a software interface similar to the earlier Symbian phones you have been used to till now. And that is not a good thing, particularly since Android and Apple are trying to reduce the steps a user needs to execute to reach where he wants to- and the Symbian's previous version was not very good in terms of simplicity. The Symbian 3 menu is still in the same format as the previous edition Symbian phone- lots of sub-menus.

The second really annoying drawback of the complete mess Symbian 3 has made of the entire social networking scene. The N8 comes with one app which allows access to both Facebook and Twitter which is decent enough to use, but the accompanying widget is not very good. The widget shows up one update at a time, and if the FB and Twitter timeline is very active, it'll be a pain to scroll back up to the latest updates after you have read all the updates. This is essentially due to the widget size limitation I had mentioned earlier.

The N8 needs to have the Ovi Suite desktop software installed to allow any contacts/media sync between the phone and your PC. Despite having PC Suite on my laptop, I was forced to install the Ovi Suite.

When you click on the Ovi Store icon on the phone for the first time, it asks you to download the entire application. Not only is this a waste of time, but also costs a lot in the mobile bill (data usage charges), if you don't have an unlimited data usage plan or are not using Wi-Fi at that time. Why can't Nokia just ship their phones with the app pre-installed? Users don't have to download the Android Market on Android phones or the App Store on the iPhone or even the Marketplace on Windows Mobile handsets.


Conclusion

For a price of Rs 26k, the N8 is a phone which has its share of positives. It will essentially retail in the market for about Rs 25k (am getting reports that some dealers are offering it for Rs 24k already), which makes this a good phone to buy. Simply put, this phone is not an iPhone killer, which people assumed it would be. It is just the most efficient smartphone Nokia have produced in a while, and it's just that- Another efficient smartphone with a new OS.

The N8 has a great camera, no doubt, as well as a solid and expensive build quality. The hardware is great and this is truly the smartest looking smartphone from Nokia. Symbian 3 does show up some reliability issues from time to time. But expect the first software update for the OS to solve these problems. If we can gain some experience from the past, even the Nokia N95 8GB was pretty buggy at first, but a couple of software updates later, it was the hottest smartphone in the market.

Specs:

Quad-Band GSM
3G Capable
680MHz ARM11 processor
Symbian 3 mobile operating system
3.5 inch AMOLED type capacitive touchscreen
Gorilla glass touchscreen for scratch resistance
16GB built-in memory; expandable to 48GB
12MP camera with 720p video recording
HDMI out for TV connectivity
USB input for file transfer
Wi-Fi and Bluetooth
3.5mm audio out for headphones
1200mAh battery


Pros:

- Solid build quality with the brushed aluminum (scratch resistant) finish
- Excellent touchscreen response
- Gorilla glass ensures no scratches on the screen
- Great camera for a phone
- Smooth 720p video playback
- Excellent battery life]
- Video playback via HDMI out is of excellent quality
- USB drive connectivity on the move is very convenient for data copying

Nokia N8 Unlocked GSM Touchscreen Phone Featuring GPS with Voice Navigation and 12 MP Camera--U.S. Version with Warranty (Gray)

Cons:

- Symbian 3 can be a bit buggy at times; issues will get sorted out with the first software update
- Social networking app widget limited by OS's widget size restrictions