Nokia N8, Does it Live Up to the Expectations?

Nokia’s N-Series is back with a bang. The N8 is finally here and comes with a promise of revitalizing Nokia’s high-end segment with its funky new age look, updated OS and whatever else comes with that. But the Twenty Six Thousand Rupee question is, will it deliver on the promises Nokia has made with flying colors or be just another high-end smartphone, a face in the crowd? Take a closer look.

Form Factor
The N8 is packed neatly inside a sleek, elegant yet funky looking anodized aluminum alloy shell that’s available in a wide range of color options. Viz. Dark Grey, Silver White, Green, Blue and Orange. It’s comfortable to hold and convenient to use and carry around. The singular menu/home button below the 3.5-inch (360 x 640 pixels) OLED capacitive touchscreen tucked safely away behind a scratch proof Gorilla Glass, may seem a little iPhone-ish, but is nevertheless conveniently placed for quick access. A light sensor and front facing camera are located just above the display. It also comes with Dual microphones (front under the display and under the camera lens) for added voice clarity via active noise cancellation technology.

A dedicated camera button is on the same side as the display lock slider switch and the volume/zoom keys while hot swap slots for the SIM and microSD cards are located on the opposite sides just above the micro USB port. Incidentally, The N8 can also very easily be charged via the USB port or the standard Nokia pin charger socket located at the bottom. The Power button, Mini HDMI port (adapter cable provided) and 3.5mm handsfree socket are located at the top. The N8 comes with 16GB of internal memory so there’s plenty of space for all your media, photos and any other data you deem fit to tote along with you on the go.

The only protrusion that tends to make the otherwise sleek handset just a tad bulky is at the rear of the device for the camera. The lens with Carl Zeiss optics and Xenon flash for the 12MP camera is raised a bit but doesn’t really get in the way or make it difficult to slip in or out of your pocket. There’s no removable battery compartment, which is actually neither here nor there. The Apple iPhone has successfully proven that it’s not necessary. However, should your device hang, a hard reboot by removing the battery is not an option here. Let’s just hope it doesn’t ever come to that. At just 135g its weight is very well proportioned and overall the N8 comes off as a very well designed piece of mobile hardware.

Features and Performance
Interface
This is the first of Nokia’s devices to come with Symbian ^3 OS. To be blunt, there’s nothing really spectacular about it. It’s pretty much the same with a few added tweaks like multiple desktops (which even non-smartphones have) and customizable widgets for these desktops. Some of the other tweaks include tap and hold functionality (about time) that bring up settings for a variety of features, and an option to simply tap and access missed call/message/Wi-Fi and other icons at the top of the display making it so much more convenient than going through the menus.

Like other smartphones, keeping the menu/home key pressed will bring up a list of running apps which can also be closed from this display. With its ARM 11, 680 MHz processor and 3D Graphics HW accelerator, multitasking is a simple task. I had over 15 apps open simultaneously and had no issues with speed. The accelerometer worked like a charm but multi-touch could have been a little smoother. Copy pasting data from one place to another could have been a little easier.

The only issue I have with the new OS is that it’s boring. It’s almost the same as any of the previous high end devices like the N97 for example or the X6 with a few minor changes. The icons are the same and so is the layout. I guess Nokia just believes that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Media
The N8 is designed to cater to those hardcore Nokia fans who have been clamoring for a more media functionality. I’d like to say it lived up to all the hype that was created around it but it fell just a little bit short in my book. Let’s start with the music player. While the interface has been tweaked a bit to suit the new age album art, cover flow style look, the core player is essentially the same. It comes with Stereo Widening and a Loudness option as well as a few (very few) EQ presets. Here’s the shocker, there’s no option to customize the presets or create your own like you’d find a standard Symbian smartphone. Audio quality was exceptional but at a rather low decibel level.

On the plus side, the N8 comes with DivX and XviD video support so gone are the days when Nokia had large screen devices for which you’d need to laboriously convert videos to view on. Just drag and drop for instant playback. Better still, thanks to the handset’s HDMI out and Dolby Digital Plus audio video playback on a big screen was a whole other experience with 720p videos. But, like the music player, it has one flaw; it doesn’t bookmark the videos where you left off. You can keep it paused in the background while you’re doing other things, but if you use the ‘Back’ option you’ll have to start all over and forward to the point you left off.

The radio worked out quite well providing decent reception almost everywhere I was. Nokia has also thrown in an image editor to spruce up your photos and a video editor for creating slide shows from your images or joining videos and adding music etc. There’s a also an audio recorder that has a pretty good range. WebTV is also a pre loaded application with a few pre-loaded channels like Nat-Geo and CNN but the service is still not quite active in India, at least I was unable to get it to work successfully. Hopefully you won’t have this issue with an out of the box device.