Thursday, April 7, 2011

Nokia N8 : Specs | Price | Reviews | Test


Nokia N8 : Specs | Price | Reviews | Test Nokia N8 : Specs | Price | Reviews | Test. Though Symbian enjoys great popularity in other parts of the world, it's not well known in the States and is falling behind the competition in usability and functionality. The smartphone to ship running the revamped OS. It certainly brings some much-needed improvements, such as a simplified touch interface and enhanced multimedia capabilities.

The N8 is also one of the best camera phones we've seen to date, and delivers good call quality and battery life. That said, it still falls short on a number of fronts, including ease of use, navigation, and integrated services. This, coupled with an expensive price tag of $549 unlocked, isn't going to attract the masses. Symbian fans will find much to like in the Nokia N8, but consumers will be better off going with an Android device or the iPhone.

The good: The Nokia N8 and Symbian 3 offer a better and more enhanced user experience than previous devices. The N8 delivers excellent camera and video quality. The smartphone has solid hardware and offers 3G support for both T-Mobile and AT&T. You get free turn-by-turn navigation via Ovi Maps.

The bad: It's expensive. User interface is much improved, but still trails the competition in ease of use. The N8 can be sluggish. You only get a QWERTY keyboard in landscape mode, and there's no user-replaceable battery.

The 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 to date. However, it still has its shortcomings and an expensive price tag, making it a hard sell for the North American market.

Nokia N8 Features Include

  • 3.5″ Multi-Touch and Gestures supported HD AMOLED Screen
  • Symbian 3 OS
  • 12 MP Camera with Xenon flash
  • HD Ready (720p) Vido Recording at 30 FPS
  • HDMI Output, Video on Demand Through OVI Store
  • 3G HSDPA
  • GPS with AGPS support
  • Anodized aluminium casing, available in Color
    • Silver white
    • Dark grey
    • Orange
    • Blue
    • Green

Nokia N8 Specifications :

  • OS: Symbian^3
  • Form Factor: Touch screen monoblock
  • Dimensions: 113.5 x 59.12 x 12.9 mm (L x W x H)
  • Weight: 135g
  • Display and user interface
  • Screen size: 3.5-inch
  • Resolution: 16:9 nHD (640 x 360 pixels) AMOLED
  • 16.7 million colours
  • Capacitive touch screen
  • Orientation sensor (Accelerometer)
  • Compass (Magnetometer)
  • Proximity sensor
  • Ambient light detector

Design

For the most part, 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 4.47 inches tall by 2.32 inches wide by 0.51 inch thick and 2.91 ounces, 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.

Nokia N8 : Specs | Price | Reviews | Test

The Nokia N8 has a very solid construction.

Gracing the front of the phone is a 3.5-inch, AMOLED capacitive touch screen. With a 640x360-pixel resolution and support for 16.7 million colors, the display is bright and clear, and we were able to see the contents of the screen outdoors. That said, it's not as sharp as some of the latest smartphones. Compared with devices like the HTC Evo 4G and the Samsung Galaxy S series, text and images don't appear as smooth and the pixels are more visible. It doesn't hamper the phone's use, but you definitely notice the difference.

The display offers a built-in accelerometer and pinch-to-zoom support. The responsiveness of both features is a bit inconsistent. At times, it can be quick or instantaneous, and at other times, there can be a slight delay. This is also true of the touch screen in general. For the most part, it registered our touches but there were occasions where it simply didn't respond or it was so slow to respond that we thought there was a problem. Also, scrolling through lists and home screen panels isn't quite as smooth or zippy as it is some competing phones.

For text entry, you get an onscreen keyboards in portrait and landscape modes, but you only get a QWERTY option in landscape view. This means that if you want to type any messages in portrait view, you'll have to peck away on an alphanumeric keypad.

Aside from the touch screen, there are a couple of controls to help you navigate and perform other functions on the phone. Below the display, there is a lone key that brings you to the main menu or the home screen if you're in another application. On the right side, there's a volume rocker, a lock switch, and a camera activation/capture button.

Nokia N8 : Specs | Price | Reviews | Test

The right side of the phone features a volume rocker, a lock switch, and camera button.

Other features of the Nokia N8 include a power button, an HDMI port, and a 3.5mm headphone jack on top of the device. The left spine houses the SIM card and microSD expansion slots and the Micro-USB port. On back, you will find the 12-megapixel camera and Xenon flash. Curiously, unlike other Nokia phones, the N8 doesn't have a user-replaceable battery. Though we found battery life to be pretty good, this is still disappointing.

The Nokia N8 comes packaged with a good number of accessories, including a travel charger, a USB cable, an HDMI cable, a USB on-the-go adapter, a wired stereo headset, and reference material. Though the included charger features an international adapter, the phone can be powered by a charger with a Micro-USB connector. The N8 is also available in five colors: dark gray, blue, green, orange, and silver white.

HARDWARE

The Nokia N8 feels great in your hand. It’s mostly made from anodized aluminum which comes in vibrant colors. The chrome accents around the camera lens, camera button, and volume controls get the thumbs up too. There are no wiggly parts and the buttons all feel solid. As expected, the hardware design is top-notch. The build quality is excellent, too. The screen is made of gorilla glass which is damage and scratch resistant. I tried scratching the display with my keys using a lot of force and did not notice any effect.

The Nokia N8 isn’t the thinnest phone in the world, but it sits comfortably in the pocket. It measures 113.5 x 59 x 12.9 mm and weighs 135g. Here’s a quick comparison with a few other devices.

Nokia N8 : Specs | Price | Reviews | Test

Nokia N8 : Specs | Price | Reviews | Test
Nokia N8 vs Samsung Galaxy S vs Nexus One

I have 2 complaints with the hardware. I wish the menu button was placed in the middle instead of the left corner. It requires more effort than it should to reach that button single-handedly. Another problem I had is the microUSB port stopped working after a couple of weeks. I haven’t found anyone else online with this problem, so I don’t think it’s a widespread problem

Internals

Inside the Nokia N8 is an ARM 11 microprocessor clocked at 680 MHz with 256MB RAM. All the latest Symbian^3 devices such as the C7, E7, and C6-01 have the same CPU and RAM. This is an increase from previous Nokia devices, but not as high as the numbers featured in the latest devices from other manufacturers such as HTC, Samsung, or Motorola. Some would argue that Symbian has better memory and CPU management compared to other smartphone OS out there and I have to agree. I haven’t seen any memory full messages, but I wouldn’t exactly say the Nokia N8 as a speedy device. It zips through menus, photos, and apps, but the app that’s not very fast is an important one: the web browser. Large websites like Engadget take so much longer to load on the Nokia N8 than the iPhone or Android devices I’ve played with such as the T-mobile G2 and Nexus One.

Connectors

The Nokia N8 features an HDMI connection so you can easily show off your images, videos and music on compatible televisions and projectors. The USB-on-the-Go adapter is cool as well. You can connect your USB flash drives and access those files directly from the Nokia N8. I’m not clear on what works and what doesn’t, but my 1TB external drive and compactflash reader are unreadable by the Nokia N8. USB thumb drives work fine.

Nokia N8 : Specs | Price | Reviews | Test
HDMI out

Display

The Nokia N8 has a 3.5 inch display with 640×360 resolution. That’s a pixel density of 209.8 according to this PPI calculator. Let’s compare it to other devices using the same calculator:

Nokia N8 : Specs | Price | Reviews | Test

These numbers tell us that the Nokia N8′s display isn’t as sharp as the competition. The more pixels you have in an inch, the more information they can represent, and so the clearer and sharper the picture. The difference in sharpness between the Nokia N8 and the iPhone 4 is huge. You really have to see it in person to understand. The difference between the other devices aren’t that noticeable. On a positive note, the AMOLED display on the Nokia N8 performs really well outdoors even in bright sunlight. It also consumes less power and shows more vibrant colors than the LCD displays used in previous Nokia devices.

Speakers

Call quality is loud and clear on all the calls I’ve placed and received. Listening to music, the speakers are reasonably loud and have nothing to complain about. The location of the loudspeaker is at the back of the phone. That seems to be the favorite spot for new devices even from other manufacturers.

CAMERA

The Nokia N8 is a photographer’s dream phone. The images it produces are awesome and it’s really quick to share what you capture. The cameras on Nokia Nseries devices have always been ahead of the competition, but the Nokia N8 really shines. Nokia combined the largest sensor ever put into a mobile for incredible detail with Carl Zeiss optics and a hands-off attitude with imaging software to produce really natural photos.

Take a look at these two sample photos I uploaded seconds after capturing them.

Nokia N8 : Specs | Price | Reviews | Test

Nokia N8 : Specs | Price | Reviews | Test

Now look at the 100% crops (you can see these for yourself by clicking on the Flickr photos above, then view original size). “Holy Sh#t!” was exactly what I said after seeing the close-up shots.

Nokia N8 : Specs | Price | Reviews | Test

Nokia N8 : Specs | Price | Reviews | Test

Since we’re talking about zoom and crops, I’ll mention that the digital zoom on the Nokia N8 is actually usable. I usually stay away from digital zoom, but I was surprised with the results. Here’s a photo of Sprint CEO Dan Hesse with zoom on the Nokia N8 set to the max. (Click on the photo to view larger size).

Nokia N8 : Specs | Price | Reviews | Test

Another great addition to the Nokia N8′s camera is the Nokia Panorama app available from the Ovi Store. I was in San Francisco when this app came out. I downloaded it in the morning, tried it on the Golden Gate Bridge, shared it online within seconds, and found out later that night it got Explored front pageon Flickr! As of publishing this review, the photo has been viewed over 6,700 times.

Nokia N8 : Specs | Price | Reviews | Test

If you’re not convinced by now, the Nokia N8 also has Xenon flash for those photos at night or low light situations. Cameraphone fans who held on to theNokia N82 because of the xenon flash finally have something to update to. Goodbye blurry night photos! Here’s a sample portrait with the xenon flash firing on the Nokia N8. Thanks to Jeb Brilliant for showing us how the humongous 5-inch Dell Streak looks next to his head when making calls.

Nokia N8 : Specs | Price | Reviews | Test

Video

The Nokia N8 captures HD video at 720p and 25FPS. It uses a system called Active Hyper-focal Distance which means anything from 2 feet to infinity appear in focus. This is great for moving objects and in low light without focus hunting. Digital zoom also works great thanks to the large sensor. For optimal results, don’t pan or move the camera too fast while recording. Here are a couple of samples. They’re viewable on Youtube at 720p.

If you follow me on Twitter, you’ve probably seen these photos and videos already because I like to share what I capture right away. I upload the photos to Twitpic and Flickr, then videos to Facebook and Twitvid directly from the Nokia N8. This is possible thanks to the awesome Pixelpipe app that is free and available at the Ovi Store.

SOFTWARE

The Nokia N8 runs Symbian^3. It’s the same OS on the new devices announced at Nokia World: the C7, E7, and C6-01. If you’re coming from a Symbian^1 device, this latest version introduces advances such as multiple homescreens, visual multitasking, music cover flow, and multitouch pinch-to-zoom. Menu structures are more streamlined and the UI moves at 60 frames per second. You can see lists scroll quickly and fluidly on the music player, contacts, messaging, conversation, etc. The dedicated Broadcom graphics processor is responsible for this. It’s certainly the best version of Symbian yet, but it’s far from perfect.

Keyboard

Typing on our devices is very important, but it seems Nokia did not spend enough resources on this aspect of Symbian^3. One massive letdown is a missing portrait keyboard. Instead, we’re looking at an on-screen numeric keypad. If you’ve been using Symbian your whole life, it’s probably not a big deal, but if you’ve used an iPhone or Android device, it’s a shocker! You have to turn the Nokia N8 sideways to type with the QWERTY keyboard.

This input takes some time to get used to and I strongly feel that Nokia’s designers could have done better by simply moving some of the buttons around. One thing that bothered me is that the backspace button is all the way at the bottom and the return key is to the left of it. Every keyboard I’ve used always had the return key below the backspace. You might think I’m crazy, but it felt like I had to relearn typing with the Nokia N8′s keyboard layout. It took many days for me to finally get used to it. If you’re willing to wait, word on the net is Swype will be releasing for the Nokia N8 soon with portrait QWERTY.

Here’s a photo of the keyboard layout compared to others.

Nokia N8 : Specs | Price | Reviews | Test

Here’s a photoshopped layout of how I’d move the buttons around.

Nokia N8 : Specs | Price | Reviews | Test

Email

Nokia Messaging on the Nokia N8 and Symbian^3 has noticeably improved over previous versions. It’s faster to scroll through emails and faster to open emails. It’s also great to view them in HTML where you can pinch-to-zoom or double-tap like in the web browser. Pro tip: To open emails faster, go to settings – sync content – retrieve – Msgs and attachements.

If you’ve only used Symbian devices, this is the best messaging experience ever. Unfortunately, if you’ve been to the dark side, you’ll notice the email experience on Android or iPhone is a little better. There are two things I like better on the other popular platforms. One example is how they differentiate between old and new emails. The iPhone lets you know by placing a big visible circle next to a new email. The circle disappears after it is read. On Android, new emails are highlighted white with bold fonts. Read emails are highlighted in grey and the font becomes un-bolded. With Symbian^3, the subject and the sender have the same font size and you can only recognize a new email if there’s a really tiny asterisk next to the mail icon. All emails, old or new, have a mail icon that is open or closed. However, the icons are small and have a similar color that you can’t differentiate at a quick glance. Another example that Nokia Messaging is behind the competition is that it is missing threaded emails.

Nokia N8 : Specs | Price | Reviews | Test

Browsing

Browsing isn’t that great on the Nokia N8. You’ll do fine if you open small pages, but prepare for headache when opening large websites like Engadget. I also don’t understand why the Nokia N8′s browser can’t render one of my favorite sites, Techmeme, correctly in portrait view. The right sidebar shows up below the left content, and almost half of the screen is whitespace. I’m shaking my head in disappointment right now, but there’s a rumor that a newer and better browser is coming.

Music

The new cover flow feature in the music player is pretty cool, but instead of collecting music albums or downloading music, I prefer to stream songs. The TuneWiki app from the Ovi Store is a must have! It has an internet radio where you can choose from a huge list of online stations. The app also tells you the number of listeners and the bitrate of the music (128 kbps sounds great). Want to sing along? Some songs will display the lyrics if you’re in the mood for personal karaoke. The headset included with the Nokia N8 is pretty good too. I listen to a lot of hip hop and love the bass that comes out of them. The audio controls with the headset works well with TuneWiki too.

Nokia N8 : Specs | Price | Reviews | Test Nokia N8 : Specs | Price | Reviews | Test

Ovi Maps

I think the Nokia N8 came with Ovi Maps 3.04 preinstalled. There’s a newer, but beta version 3.06 that is so much better. Search has greatly improved and it visually appealing. There’s also a new public transport map layer for subways, trams, and trains in 80+ cities. Sharing a place’s address or location to friends by SMS or email was also added. Voice navigation works fine and is available to all free of charge. Ovi Maps 3.06 can be downloaded from Beta Labs.

Ovi Store

The Ovi Store currently boasts 2.7 million downloads per day and carrier billing makes it easier for you to buy content. My top 5 app recommendations are:

  • Pixelpipe
  • Gravity
  • Joikuspot
  • Nokia Panorama
  • TuneWiki

Games are starting to look good on the Nokia N8 and Symbian^3. Angry Birds in full version just came out and Gameloft released some cool HD games such as Avatar, GT Racing, and Guitar Rock Tour 2. If you’re not looking to spend any money, you might want to check out the cool free action games by Breakdesign. More content keeps showing up, so keep your eyes open.

BATTERY LIFE

The Nokia N8 includes a BL-4D 1200 mAh battery like the Nokia N97 mini, but it’s not easily accessible. You can replace the battery by using torx screwdriver if you really need to. The Nokia N8 can be charged via the microUSB port or the 2mm charging connector at the bottom. Surprisingly the battery life is good. The Nokia N8 typically lasts a little more than a day with my normal usage. Similar usage on a Nexus One kills it by late afternoon.

VERDICT

Is the Nokia N8 for you? The Nokia N8 is a solid and great-looking device that photographers are going to love. If you’re a Symbian veteran, you’ll definitely enjoy the Nokia N8. It runs the best version of Symbian yet, but the OS falls short to Android and iPhone with core apps such as the web browser and messaging. Nokia also needs to work on the onscreen keyboard. Fortunately, there are news of updates coming to Symbian that can resolve these issues hopefully sooner than later. The Nokia N8 is now available for $549 USD before subsidies and taxes.

Nokia N8 price

Latest Nokia N8 price. Click Here  [via eBay]

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