Nokia N8 Smartphone: Review

Remember: It’s a pre-production phone

So in some ways the N8 is a big deal, though it may turn out to be more of a footnote to smartphone history. Even if its ends up being a great phone that people love, there won’t be any more N-series Symbians.

So, first things first. What I reviewed is a pre-production model. Many of the things I saw will be tightened up and improved before it goes on general sale – which could be three to six months from now.

But the general principles of the thing won’t change. I think I’ve seen pretty much the Symbian^3 that the world will see, and more or less exactly the N8 the world will be encouraged to buy.

And the big things I looked at are

• a 12 megapixel camera
• a web browser that handles flash
• HDMI TV output
• the new Symbian OS version.

Hardware

The hardware is – as you’d expect from Nokia – just fine. The phone is pretty much the same size and shape as an iPhone or an HTC Desire – 2.9 mm thick

There’s a Cal Zeiss 12 Mpixel camera which sticks out a couple of mm at the back – which feels subtly “wrong” when I put the phone down – but overall I can’t fault the size and shape.

The styling is very mini-tablet like. The two ends have a symmetrical tapered design, making it feel natural in portrait mode. The phone re-aligns easily to either orientation.

It’s also pleasingly more solid than the N97, made of aluminium and available in five colours (in my case, a coppery-orange).

Turning it on, the basics are well catered for. It makes calls crisply and clearly, and stores and uses numbers in a friendly way. The 3.5in OLED screen is big and clear.

The N8 also has capacitive touch, which means that Nokia finally allows multi-touch gestures, like the iPhone. For too long, the company has offered resistive touchscreens, which work best with a stylus. Nokia used to argue that capacitive was better for Far Eastern markets where non-ASCII input was required, but I’ve never been convinced.