Nokia’s N8 Prepares For A Niche Market

Say anything negative about Apple, and you hear from the Apple fanboys. This week, I found out that Nokia has its fan club too.

Apple’s fanboys are well known by anyone who ever dared doubt the company. They have a full-time brief, to respond to any criticism of Apple, however muted, with a shrill accusation of bias.

Actually, it’s not full-time. Some of them have to man the queues outside the shops, in case Steve Jobs delivers any new products. I’ve just failed to buy a SIM from the O2 shop on Oxford Street because it is STILL blocked with fans queuing for an iPhone 4, nearly two weeks, and some antena problems issues after its launch.

Nokia fans, likewise, are dedicated to keeping journalists in line, and preventing any doubts or questioning. They don’t get out so much to queue in the shops though. It’s been about a year since Nokia had a “flagship” launch, and that was the N97, which turned out not to be so popular.

If anything, Nokia fans are rougher than Apple-lovers.

Looking at the N8

So last week, I found myself with a pre-production Nokia N8 smartphone to look at. In the last little while, I’ve tried more Nokia phones than any other brand, and day-to-day I’ve used the E71 and before that the E64. So I’m reasonably familiar with the look and feel of Nokia devices.

Even using these phones continuously, I’ve found the phones falling behind the standard of usability of other brands, and I’m moving to an Android – somewhat like the famed blogger, Symbian Guru, but without the emotional investment (the Guru, Ricky Cadden, just got a Nexus One Android phone and stopped adding to his blog, complaining Nokia’s N97 flagship was “craptastic”).

I’m not given to such highs and lows about phones, and I don’t think the N97 was crap. But I wondered if the N8, which dropped into my hands last week, would change my mind about Nokia’s ability to compete against Android or iPhone… or even Blackberry. And four pages of review (or technically, preview) later, I’ve got a fairly succinct summary.

This is a niche product. And phones shouldn’t be niche products.

As with the N97 before it, Nokia has shoved in a ton of features. There’s a 12 Mpixel camera, HD video, and HDMI output. But how many people actually want to cable a monitor to their phone to watch a movie? The USB can act as a host as well as a client – but how many people want to find an obscure cable to hook up a storage device to it?

Nokia’s publicity describes it as “the home cinema in your pocket“. It plays back video on large screens in native mode – as good as that screen can support – not as a clone of what is on the phone screen.

It does sound great. For those who want a pocket cinema, it’s cheaper and incomparably better than the iPhone.

I’d like to think that’s enough to sell shedloads of N8s, but I believe it’s a niche use case.

The comments on my review made it clear that there are many people for whom this is exactly the kind of product they want, and good luck to them.

They also raised some issues which I’ve taken to Nokia for further explanation – on the next page….