N8 Phone Could Miss Nokia’s London Show

Sites offering the N8, Nokia’s next flagship phone appear to have revealed a delay to the device, which could push its launch to after Nokia World, the company’s two-day event in London in September.

Two UK websites taking pre-orders for the phone, the first to run the the Symbian^3 operating system, have altered their delivery dates, with one site quoting 8 October. Nokia hs refused to comment on pre-launch speculation.

N8 to arrive after Nokia World?

Nokia needs a strong smartphone to fight back against the iPhone and Android, and its Nokia World event in London would be the ideal time to present it. The N8 has a new version of the open source Symbian operating system, a 12 Megapixel camera, HDMI video output, multi-touch, 16GB of memory and other features.

Although its launch has been pushed back to the third quarter of this year it looked likely to arrive in time for the show – which features talks from Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo and the inventor of the Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee.

Two sites seemed to confirm the phone’s arrival on time, by offering it for pre-order, SIM free. MobileFun had it for £419.95, with a quoted release date of 26 August, while Play.com offered it for £419.99, with a release date of 31 August.

However, MobileFun has now changed its promised delivery date to 7 September, just before Nokia World, while Play.com doesn’t expect to ship it till 8 October, weeks after the show.

Symbian^3

The N8 is the first Nokia phone to use Symbian^3, the latest version of the newly-open-sourced Symbian operating system, but doubts have been expressed about the phone and the OS. Gartner analyst Nick Jones said Symbian was like the Titanic, and criticised Nokia developers for spending “too much effort on stuff that really doesn’t matter,” while failing to make the user experience as good as Apple or Android.

Early reviews of the N8 suggest it is very feature-rich, but there is little evidence the Symbian user interface has been improved by much. The company has added to the confusion by saying future phones in the N range will not use Symbian, instead using the Meego Linux version it is developing with Intel. However, Nokia execs then commented that the next generation but one of N-series phones might switch back to a future version of Symbian.

Nokia is losing market share, but still has a massive lead in phones generally as well as smartphones. The company is reported to be looking for a new boss, so this year’s Nokia World might be Kallasvuo’s last.