The Nokia N8 is a smartphone designed and manufactured by Nokia which runs Symbian OS. The device features a 3.5 inch touch display, up to 16GB of internal storage which can be expanded through microSD and a 12 megapixel camera with Xenon flash.Nokia is known to offer the best available hardware in their N-Series of devices, and they have not fallen short with the Nokia N8. Symbian^3 OS brings features like photo editing and video editing to your smartphone. Adding features like HDMI and USB On-the-Go makes the Nokia N8 a device which is very hard to ignore.
This is a two part review which starts off with a review of the hardware of the Nokia N8 and unboxing the device. The second part will consist of a software review of Symbian^3 and the enhancements it has brought to the Nokia N8.
To start off lets take a look at the key features of the Nokia N8:
- 3.5 inch capacitive touchscreen
- scratch resistant gorilla glass
- 12 mega pixel auto-focus camera
- Carl Zeiss lens
- Xenon flash for low light photos.
- 1/1.83" camera sensor
- mechanical shutter
- geo-tagging
- face detection
- Wi-Fi to connect to the internet on your home or office network
- micro HDMI port to connect your device to your HDTV
- micro USB port with USB on-the-go (OTG) support
- 16GB of storage + MicroSD card slot for additional storage
- GPS Receiver with Assisted-GPS support
- Digital Compass
- Accelerometer for auto-rotating screen
- Proximity Sensor to switch display off during calls.
- standard 3.5 mm audio jack.
- Stereo FM Receiver
- FM Transmitter
- Bluetooth
Device Closeup
Hardware
The retail package of the Nokia N8 is filled with cables, you have the headset, charger, data cable, and a couple of shorter cables along with the manuals and the device.
For the un-boxing video click follows:
The N8 is in a full Aluminium chassis and has a beautiful build quality and weighs in at 135 grams. I enjoyed the cool firm metallic feel in my hand. I cannot tolerate any complaints on the device's size, which is sleek overall even considering the little paunch around the 12MP camera. The metal comes in a choice of five colors of which i received the dark gray (black) for my trial.
The front of the device consists mostly of it's 3.5 inch AMOLED capacitive touchscreen display which is made up of scratch resistant gorilla glass.
While a capacitive display debuted with the Nokia X6 from Nokia, the N8 is the first from the company to feature multi touch, it also trumps the X6 with sunlight legibility. I used the X6 for some time, and hated having to use it under direct sunlight as the screen was nowhere near visible. The N8 has seen this issue resolved with it's clear black display.
The display performs well in doors as well, the colors are pure and distinct. I love the standby clock which comes on when the device is in lock mode. You can easily see the time in the dark with this feature.
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Resolution is something that the Nokia Symbian devices are far behind on, with the N8 features nHD resolution of 360x640, which when compared to the iPhone (640x960) is quite low, but i doubt it will affect general users. Haptic Feedback: the vibration which occurs when you type or click an icon has been well tuned on the Nokia N8, and is a welcome feature which I miss on the iPhone.
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Below the display we find the menu key and the microphone pin hole. The N8 has also done away with the call answer and cancel keys, which makes we wonder if making the device look more and more like the iPhone is the way to go to make a successful smartphone.
The top of the device features the power button. Just like on older Symbian devices, the power button has two stages, one for switching off and the other for ringtone profiles or to lock your device. Next to the power button the HDMI port is protected by a plastic cover, and following we have the 3.5mm headphone jack.
The left side of the device has two slots for the sim card and the microSD memory card. Below them is the micro USB port which can also be used to charge your device.
On the right side has the two stage camera key, which focuses on the first stage and shoots on the second and above that we have the lock slider and the volume rocker.
The bottom of the device is quite empty and only has the Nokia charger port, which gives the N8 more than one way to charge up.
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The 12MP camera is at the back of the device, the lens is not protected, but is reinforced to be scratch resistant. I unfortunately found that fingerprints find their way onto the lens which resulted in some blurry photos.
Camera
The N8 packs the largest sensor on a mobile phone (1/1.83"). This results in beautiful dynamic photos even in low light conditions. The camera has a mechanical shutter, a powerful Xenon flash, a 28mm wide-angle lens which is protected by scratch resistant, hardened glass. It also has an ND filter which compensates for the lack of variable aperture in extremely bright conditions. I was somewhat disappointed with the ND filter, while the N8 shot some of the best photos I have seen on a camera phone, it performed quite badly under direct sunlight, as you will see in my photo samples.
The auto focus kicks in on the first stage of the dedicated camera button, I don't understand why Nokia has not implemented touch to focus, which is a feature I enjoy on the iPhone, but I am happy with being able to take photos with my gloves on during winter.
The large sensor on the Nokia N8 allows very natural pictures, it doesn't have too much noise or excessive sharpening. It looks like Nokia didn't have to process the photos much because the sensor gives the picture a very real feel to them.
My favorite on the N8 is it's Xenon flash. I really enjoyed the N82 because of that, and was sorely
disappointed that Nokia chose to go with dual LED when I reviewed the Nokia N86. Most modern smartphones, including the iPhone 4, try and convince us that the LED flash can provide enough light in low light situations, but you have to use the N8 to know what you have been missing. The Xenon flash provides beautiful photos on the N8 with very little noise as you will see in my first impressions with the device. The N8's flash is supposedly 30% smaller than the one on the N82, but provides an equal output of light.
However at it's default setting i found the N8 provides some very shaky shots when you take low light shots without the flash, I found that you can get by this by increasing your ISO setting. Future firmware updates to the Nokia N8 should continue to improve the quality of it's photographs.
The Marco mode (close up photos) on the N8 was something I was disappointed with. I somehow couldn't get a great quality close up with the N8's camera.
Video recording is another feature that the Nokia N8 does well. The camera allowing capturing video at 720p (1280x720) High Definition at 25 frames per second (fps). I would love to compare the video capturing against the iPhone 4 which captures at 30 fps. I found the video capturing to be a little jerky and I don't know if I should blame it on my wobbly hands or the 25 fps.
The N8 takes advantage of it's 12MP sensor when it comes to it's 3x digital zoom and offers its HD quality even when zooming.
Another feature of the N8's video capturing is it's stereo audio recording, which takes advantage of it's secondary noise cancelling microphone and provides clear stereo sound along with it's beautiful video.
There is one downside to the Nokia N8's video recording, that is the lack of auto focus in video, Once you start recording you may have to make use of the digital zoom to capture your video optimally. This continuous focus may be a problem at times, but it didn't bother me too much.
Overall the camera will not let you down. Many have argued that the iPhone 4 provides great photos and video for it's 5MP sensor, which may be true, but the Nokia N8 will remain the best of it's class. For information on the camera UI and software features related to the Nokia N8's photography will follow in my software review
Connectivity and Storage
While the camera is the main focus, The Nokia N8 is primarily a phone. In terms of connectivity the Nokia N8 does not fall short. It has quad band GSM and five bands for 3G which makes it usable pretty much anywhere in the world.
It has USB version 2.0 connectivity through it's micro USB port, which can be used for charging or transferring data. The provided USB adapter allows you to connect a range of USB devices to make use of the USB on the go feature. There is a limitation here, card readers and other smartphones are not detected by the N8.
The Nokia N8 has a micro-SD card slot which allows you to expand your 16GB memory with an additional 32GB. Additionally the N8 has WiFi with supports 802.11 b/g/n standards, and blue-tooth version 3.0 with A2DP stereo support. The device also has an FM receiver and transmitter. With the receiver you can get stereo FM radio with RDS and with it's receiver you can stream the music on your N8 to any receiver including the car radio while your driving.
Last but not least we have the HDMI port, which requires the micro-HDMI adopter to connect to your HD-TV, Once you have connected your devices with the HDMI cable, the device will stream it's display to the television. You can make use of Nokia's Big Screen app (in beta during the review) to stream a photo slide show.
Conclusion
That concludes the hardware part of this review. The Nokia N8 impresses in every aspect with high end hardware. The processor which is 600MHz can be considered negative by some siting that competitors have 1GHz processors on their devices, but Nokia is known for providing optimal hardware for their phones, and the processor does a good job overall. Users should note that this is one of the main reasons Nokia devices don't get many iterations of their updates. Lets now move to the Software Review of the Nokia N8.
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