Nokia Touts N8 Capabilities With New Video

Nokia has posted a video guide for its upcoming N8 smartphone, which could be the first device to run the Symbian^3 (S^3) open source operating system.

The YouTube video walkthrough is hosted by Nokia senior product manager Chris Bennetts, and besides showing off some of the capabilities of the Nokia N8, such as messaging, Internet and maps, also provides some insight into the new Symbian^3 operating system.

It is already known that the Nokia N8 will offer multiple personalised home screens, single tap and multi-touch gesture support, improved memory and graphics and a more responsive user interface. Nokia has also revealed that the N8 is carved from a single piece of anodised aluminium and includes a 12-megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics and Xenon flash.

Nokia Widgets

In the video, Nokia’s Bennetts discusses the N8’s connectivity capabilities, as well revealing that the device will come with “a brand new email application.” This new email application has been “redesigned top to bottom to make it just like the email experience you get on your desktop PC at home,” said Bennetts.

It allows for multiple email accounts, and each email account can be filtered to the user’s homescreen via a widget. Essentially, the interface of the N8 is based around home screens populated with widgets. Up to six widgets can be placed on each screen, and there are four home screens to play with, which means that user have a maximum of 24 widgets in total.

Bennetts also said that the N8 will ship with a “new simple and fast web browser”, and had a subtle dig at Apple over its position of Adobe Flash. “The new browser will allow you to access all your websites as you would your PC, and we do this via integrated Flash,” Bennetts said.

Like many smartphones, the N8 will also be used as a navigating device, with Bennetts promising free lifetime access to Nokia Maps as well as access to premium services, such as the Lonely Planet and Michellin guides.

Reactions to the Nokia video have been mixed, with some concern expressed that Nokia is not taking a bold enough step to leapfrog the functionality of the Apple and Android handsets.

“All the new ‘intuitive’ apps and speccs. Several phones has had those for years already,” wrote hyox3. “I can’t see what the big fuzz is about. It’s just same old symbian with a androidish feel to it. And this is supposed to be a intuitive flagship?”

Nokia’s iPhone Answer

The Nokia N8 has long been touted at the Finnish giant’s answer to the Apple iPhone. However previous Nokia attempts such as the N97 did not overly excite the market, and the N800 and N900 handsets came with Nokia’s Maemo (Linux-based) operating system.

Apple’s widely leaked iPhone 4G is expected to arrive in June, but Nokia has delayed the launch of the N8 (originally slated for May), until late July.