Nokia's reputation as a leader in the smartphone market has been under increasing pressure in recent years, as a string of 'high end' handsets have failed to capture the minds and wallets of the phone-buying public.
So to fix that, Nokia's gone back to the drawing board to bring out the Nokia N8, featuring a new OS and a huge amount of high end tech packed under the hood.
Having announced the phone back in April, Nokia has been holding off on release to make sure the user experience is as good as possible.
But it needs to be very good indeed seeing as most other brands announce a phone then release it within weeks – we've been waiting nearly half a year for this one.
The underlying software has been improved and Symbian^3 builds on the previous iterations of the OS seen on the likes of the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic and Nokia X6, but adds in multiple home screens, widgets and an improved UI.
Hardware-wise, Nokia has pushed the boat out too with the new N8, offering a full metal chassis with anodised scratch-proof paint to give the phone a really high end feel.
It really is scratch-proof - rubbing keys on it produced no ill-effects, although the slider switch on the side can get its paint rubbed off over time.
However, with a 12MP camera with Xenon flash bolted on the back, it's not a super-slim device - it fits in the hand well enough but the dimensions 113.5 x 59 x 12.9 mm aren't going to rival the likes of the iPhone 4 and the Samsung Galaxy S, especially when being forced into more tightly fitting trousers.
The Nokia N8 also doesn't have a removable battery either - the full metal chassis is completely enclosed so unless you've got a very particular screwdriver, you're not getting in to replace any innards.
To that end, Nokia has put two hinged gates on the side of the N8, giving access to the microSD card slot and the SIM card port - both are quite hard to pull open (which isn't a bad thing as you're probably not going to be opening them very often) and clicking cards in can be tricky too without long fingernails.
The rest of the Nokia N8 continues the higher-end feel: the 3.5-inch capacitive OLED screen really pops with colour (although doesn't quite match the impressive sharpness of Samsung's Super AMOLED) and the minimalistic design sees only one rather functional-looking button on the front, eschewing the extra soft keys Nokia has implemented for so many years.
The right-hand side of the phone houses the camera key, which has staggered press levels to allow you to only push it down partway for autofocus. There's also a volume key with raised buttons, although these are fairly far away from each other, so can be hard to hit when you're not looking and trying to work out which one you're pressing.
There's also the slider switch on this side of the Nokia N8 - if you're a fan of physical unlocking, then this is a good example of that, although we prefer the on-screen offering, where a short tap unlocks the phone and works far more easily and effectively in our opinion.
The left-hand side of the Nokia N8 is a little more sleek, with only the aforementioned gates for microSD and SIM, as well as the uncovered microUSB slot, which may perturb some who are used to their Nokia phones having a gate on top to prevent dust creeping in. But has anyone really ever had a dust-destroyed port in the past?
The top of the N8 is where it mostly happens though - there's a mini HD port, the 3.5mm headphone jack and the power switch, which is also used to quickly change profiles when buzzing through the N8's interface.
The bottom houses the charger port - and it's a standard 2mm 'new Nokia charger' port, which initially seems like an odd choice when you can also charge through the microUSB port too, like all other phones, even when connected to a PC.
We can only assume that Nokia has done this so that when you're streaming over USB on the go (more on that later) you can keep charging the phone too.
But as we said before, the Nokia N8 sits in the hand well enough and allows you to access all the functions pretty easily and you don't need to jiggle it around in your palm too much.
In the box
Nokia has thrown a large range of toys in the box with the N8 - an adaptor to convert HDMI to mini HDMI, decent earbuds with an inline remote, a slim line Nokia pin charger and a USB lead with adaptor too to attach hard drives on the go..
Nokia N8 official photos
The Finnish engineers often like to make a point about Symbian being the most resource-effective OS. We’ve seen it run reasonably fast indeed on even slower CPUs. This time though it’s Symbian ^3, so we’ll have to see it again to believe it.
You see, with the Nokia N8 it’s not about who the competition is. Not about the business benefits of a smartphone, not about the available apps. It’s about the best camera in the business. Now, we’ll have to see about that. Again.
Nokia N8 at ours
The N8 already managed to put a dedicated digicam to shame in our recent blind test. But it will take more than that to get the thumbs up at the end of a full review. The camera is certainly impressive but it’s the overall balance and bang-for-buck that count most in our books here so the N8 better have more aces up its sleeve.
We pop the box open after the break.
There's quite a lot going on in the box
The first one plugs in the microUSB port and ends on a female USB jack. As you know, the Nokia N8 supports USB-on-the-go, allowing flash sticks and supposedly even other phones’ memories to be accessed from the handset.
The other cable is a male miniHDMI to female standard HDMI adapter, so you can use a regular cable for connecting your N8 to your HDTV set.
The last items inside the box are the one-piece headset and some leaflets.
A stocky touchscreen bar, it doesn’t have the flair and sex appeal of an iPhone but makes up for it with a full-metal chassis and premium build – not to mention all those unusual colors it’s available in.
Nokia N8 sized up against the Apple iPhone 4 and Samsung I9000 Galaxy S
We do appreciate the solid feel and the hefty 135 grams of weight too. The N8 is neither slim nor lightweight, and has the sophistication of a monster truck. But it’s in no mood to fool around anyway – a sturdy and reliable set, an impressive tool.
For the time of our review we managed to obtain four of the five color options of anodized scratch-proof paint available (we’re only the blue one short of a grand slam).
We can’t force ourselves of course to call them all equally attractive. The Dark Grey and Silver are definitely our favorites but we’re sure that the Green and especially the Orange will find their fans too.
There were obviously enough users who liked them. Each got more than 10 percent approval in the Nokia Conversations recent poll.
Nokia N8 dark gray and orange versions
Nokia N8 green version
The front panel of the Nokia N8 is mostly taken by the 3.5” AMOLED display of nHD resolution. Tapered sides and sloping top and bottom make the handset quite comfortable to handle, both portrait and landscape. Unfortunately, the bezel around the screen is a bit too wide for our taste.
Anyway, 3.5” is a good enough size for a contemporary touch phone. And this one has several firsts to Nokia’s credit. The Finns debuted capacitive touchscreen tech on the X6 but only now is Nokia introducing multi-touch support.
Another first is a Nokia AMOLED display to remain perfectly legible under direct sunlight. Previous attempts were pretty poor on a bright sunny day, but this time they got it right.
The indoor image quality, as is to be expected from an AMOLED unit, is pretty good with deep blacks and nicely saturated colors. Not as impressive as Samsung’s SuperAMOLED screens, but certainly competitive elsewhere.
The Nokia N8 has standard screen resolution. At 360 x 640, the Nokia N8 has 44 percent less pixels than the best Android displays (854 x 480 pixels) and just over a third of the iPhone 4 pixel count (960 x 640 pixels).
The N8 display compared to the iPhone 4 Retina unit
Not everyone needs that kind of pixel density though, and some users probably won’t even be able to notice the difference. We do, that's for sure.
The N8 screen sensitivity is as good as we’ve come to expect from capacitive units.
Vibration feedback does deserve a mention however as it seems impressively well tweaked and does improve the user experience in a surprisingly nice way. Haptics are enabled even when you scroll lists and the icons bump against the end of the screen or when you zoom in on a video using the virtual buttons.
Moving on, we notice the video-call camera in the upper right corner above the display. Near it are the ambient light and the proximity sensors, as well as the centrally placed earpiece.
The video-call camera is in the upper right corner of the front panel
Below the display are the microphone pinhole and the menu key. There are no hardware call keys as on previous Nokia smartphones and we found that a bit confusing. Nothing you won’t get used to though. We do believe though, a hardware back button would have immensely improved usability. The software one is by far not as comfortable, being in a different place at different parts of the interface.
There's only a single button below the N8 display
On top of the Nokia N8 is the power key, which also handles screen lock and the ringing profiles. The HDMI port and the 3.5mm audio jack are also there. The HDMI port is hidden under a small plastic lid to keep out dust and moisture.
The HDMI port sits on top, flanked by the power key and the audio jack
An important thing to note here is that the Nokia N8’s HDMI port supports 720p TV-out. With DivX and XviD support right out of the box, the N8 might just replace your home media player.
The Nokia N8 left-hand side packs a couple of slots (this is where the microSD and SIM cards go) and the exposed microUSB port. USB charging works fine so you don’t have to carry a charger with you all the time.
The two card slots and the microUSB port on the left side
The bottom of the Nokia N8 features nothing but the Nokia proprietary charger plug. The N8 is well covered in terms of charging options. You can you use either the regular charger or any microUSB charger/data cable you might have at hand.
There's a plug for the Nokia proprietary charger too
On the right-hand side, the N8 has the volume rocker, the screen lock slider and the dedicated camera key. The first two are very comfortable, with great grip and tactility.
The camera key on the other hand is probably a bit too stiff and requires extra effort for a full press. This might result in some camera shake blurring when shooting at a lower shutter speeds.
There are three controls on the right: volume rocker, screen lock slider and camera key
The 12 megapixel camera lens is what draws all the attention round back. It doesn’t have a protective cover as that would have added quite a few millimeters more of extra girth. Instead it relies on reinforced glass front lens that Nokia claims is sturdy enough to resist all the abuse the device might get.
The 12MP camera lens, the xenon flash and the loudspeaker grill
The other things of interest here are the xenon flash and the loudspeaker.
The Nokia N8 is powered by a 1200 mAh LI-Ion BL-4D battery that’s quoted at up to 400 hours of stand-by or up to 12 and a half hours of talk time. In real life we managed to squeeze just about two days of moderately heavy use out of the handset. You can find the Nokia N8 full battery test in our blog.
We are impressed with the Nokia N8 – for both looks and build quality. The handset is build to last and Nokia has demonstrated the sturdiness of the aluminum shell on several occasions. The N8 is neither impressively slim, nor delicately crafted. Just the opposite actually – it’s a solid tool, a little rough perhaps, but sturdy and reliable.
The Nokia N8 held in hand
The only things to note are the lack of a hardware Back key and the non user-removable battery.
So to fix that, Nokia's gone back to the drawing board to bring out the Nokia N8, featuring a new OS and a huge amount of high end tech packed under the hood.
Having announced the phone back in April, Nokia has been holding off on release to make sure the user experience is as good as possible.
But it needs to be very good indeed seeing as most other brands announce a phone then release it within weeks – we've been waiting nearly half a year for this one.
The underlying software has been improved and Symbian^3 builds on the previous iterations of the OS seen on the likes of the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic and Nokia X6, but adds in multiple home screens, widgets and an improved UI.
Hardware-wise, Nokia has pushed the boat out too with the new N8, offering a full metal chassis with anodised scratch-proof paint to give the phone a really high end feel.
It really is scratch-proof - rubbing keys on it produced no ill-effects, although the slider switch on the side can get its paint rubbed off over time.
However, with a 12MP camera with Xenon flash bolted on the back, it's not a super-slim device - it fits in the hand well enough but the dimensions 113.5 x 59 x 12.9 mm aren't going to rival the likes of the iPhone 4 and the Samsung Galaxy S, especially when being forced into more tightly fitting trousers.
The Nokia N8 also doesn't have a removable battery either - the full metal chassis is completely enclosed so unless you've got a very particular screwdriver, you're not getting in to replace any innards.
To that end, Nokia has put two hinged gates on the side of the N8, giving access to the microSD card slot and the SIM card port - both are quite hard to pull open (which isn't a bad thing as you're probably not going to be opening them very often) and clicking cards in can be tricky too without long fingernails.
The rest of the Nokia N8 continues the higher-end feel: the 3.5-inch capacitive OLED screen really pops with colour (although doesn't quite match the impressive sharpness of Samsung's Super AMOLED) and the minimalistic design sees only one rather functional-looking button on the front, eschewing the extra soft keys Nokia has implemented for so many years.
The right-hand side of the phone houses the camera key, which has staggered press levels to allow you to only push it down partway for autofocus. There's also a volume key with raised buttons, although these are fairly far away from each other, so can be hard to hit when you're not looking and trying to work out which one you're pressing.
There's also the slider switch on this side of the Nokia N8 - if you're a fan of physical unlocking, then this is a good example of that, although we prefer the on-screen offering, where a short tap unlocks the phone and works far more easily and effectively in our opinion.
The left-hand side of the Nokia N8 is a little more sleek, with only the aforementioned gates for microSD and SIM, as well as the uncovered microUSB slot, which may perturb some who are used to their Nokia phones having a gate on top to prevent dust creeping in. But has anyone really ever had a dust-destroyed port in the past?
The top of the N8 is where it mostly happens though - there's a mini HD port, the 3.5mm headphone jack and the power switch, which is also used to quickly change profiles when buzzing through the N8's interface.
The bottom houses the charger port - and it's a standard 2mm 'new Nokia charger' port, which initially seems like an odd choice when you can also charge through the microUSB port too, like all other phones, even when connected to a PC.
We can only assume that Nokia has done this so that when you're streaming over USB on the go (more on that later) you can keep charging the phone too.
But as we said before, the Nokia N8 sits in the hand well enough and allows you to access all the functions pretty easily and you don't need to jiggle it around in your palm too much.
In the box
Nokia has thrown a large range of toys in the box with the N8 - an adaptor to convert HDMI to mini HDMI, decent earbuds with an inline remote, a slim line Nokia pin charger and a USB lead with adaptor too to attach hard drives on the go..
Nokia N8 review: Director of photography
Introduction
We’ve come to take Nokia for granted in the low end or the business class but it seems it has lost the knack for killer phones, run out of royal blood. It’s up to the Nseries to fix it all up. The Nokia N8 may just turn out to be the right cure. With that kind of hardware, it’s a smartphone you’d be mad to ignore. For a change we are not talking netbook-grade processing power or loads of RAM. Nokia have instead given their flagship an industry-leading camera and stuff like HDMI port and USB-On-the-Go. Nokia N8 official photos
The Finnish engineers often like to make a point about Symbian being the most resource-effective OS. We’ve seen it run reasonably fast indeed on even slower CPUs. This time though it’s Symbian ^3, so we’ll have to see it again to believe it.
Key features
- Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support
- Penta-band 3G with 10.2 Mbps HSDPA and 2 Mbps HSUPA support
- Sleek anodized aluminum unibody
- 3.5" 16M-color AMOLED capacitive touchscreen of 640 x 360 pixel resolution
- 12 megapixel autofocus camera with xenon flash and 720p@25fps video recording
- Camera features: large 1/1.83” camera sensor, mechanical shutter, ND filter, geo-tagging, face detection
- Symbian^3 OS
- 680 MHz ARM 11 CPU and 256 MB RAM
- Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n
- microHDMI port for 720p TV-out functionality
- GPS receiver with A-GPS support and free lifetime voice-guided navigation
- Digital compass
- 16GB on-board storage, expandable through the microSD card slot
- Active noise cancellation with a dedicated mic
- DivX and XviD video support
- Built-in accelerometer and proximity sensor
- Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
- Stereo FM Radio with RDS, FM transmitter
- microUSB port with USB On-the-go support
- Flash and Java support for the web browser
- Stereo Bluetooth 3.0
- Nice audio reproduction quality
- Smart and voice dialing
- Scratch resistant Gorilla glass display
Main disadvantages
- Symbian^3 is still behind Android and iOS usability standards
- No video light
- Camera interface is decidedly outdated
- Relatively limited 3rd party software availability
- No office document editing (without a paid upgrade)
- Video player has some issues
- Battery life is not on par with best in the business
- Battery is not user-replaceable
You see, with the Nokia N8 it’s not about who the competition is. Not about the business benefits of a smartphone, not about the available apps. It’s about the best camera in the business. Now, we’ll have to see about that. Again.
Nokia N8 at ours
The N8 already managed to put a dedicated digicam to shame in our recent blind test. But it will take more than that to get the thumbs up at the end of a full review. The camera is certainly impressive but it’s the overall balance and bang-for-buck that count most in our books here so the N8 better have more aces up its sleeve.
We pop the box open after the break.
Well wired box
The Nokia N8 comes in a rich retail package to give you everything you need to use all the phone features. In addition to the mandatory charger, manual and data cable (which by the way can also be used for charging) you get an extra couple of short cables. There's quite a lot going on in the box
The first one plugs in the microUSB port and ends on a female USB jack. As you know, the Nokia N8 supports USB-on-the-go, allowing flash sticks and supposedly even other phones’ memories to be accessed from the handset.
The other cable is a male miniHDMI to female standard HDMI adapter, so you can use a regular cable for connecting your N8 to your HDTV set.
The last items inside the box are the one-piece headset and some leaflets.
Nokia N8 360-degree spin
The Nokia N8 does seem big for the size of its screen. But it’s by no means a huge slab that pushes the limits of comfortable handling. Nokia N8 sized up against the Apple iPhone 4 and Samsung I9000 Galaxy S
We do appreciate the solid feel and the hefty 135 grams of weight too. The N8 is neither slim nor lightweight, and has the sophistication of a monster truck. But it’s in no mood to fool around anyway – a sturdy and reliable set, an impressive tool.
Design and construction
Sleek aluminum on the sides and the back and a large AMOLED touchscreen up front – there’s nothing to dislike about the N8. If you have a thing for phones made of metal you will absolutely love it.For the time of our review we managed to obtain four of the five color options of anodized scratch-proof paint available (we’re only the blue one short of a grand slam).
We can’t force ourselves of course to call them all equally attractive. The Dark Grey and Silver are definitely our favorites but we’re sure that the Green and especially the Orange will find their fans too.
There were obviously enough users who liked them. Each got more than 10 percent approval in the Nokia Conversations recent poll.
Nokia N8 dark gray and orange versions
Nokia N8 green version
The front panel of the Nokia N8 is mostly taken by the 3.5” AMOLED display of nHD resolution. Tapered sides and sloping top and bottom make the handset quite comfortable to handle, both portrait and landscape. Unfortunately, the bezel around the screen is a bit too wide for our taste.
Anyway, 3.5” is a good enough size for a contemporary touch phone. And this one has several firsts to Nokia’s credit. The Finns debuted capacitive touchscreen tech on the X6 but only now is Nokia introducing multi-touch support.
Another first is a Nokia AMOLED display to remain perfectly legible under direct sunlight. Previous attempts were pretty poor on a bright sunny day, but this time they got it right.
The indoor image quality, as is to be expected from an AMOLED unit, is pretty good with deep blacks and nicely saturated colors. Not as impressive as Samsung’s SuperAMOLED screens, but certainly competitive elsewhere.
The Nokia N8 has standard screen resolution. At 360 x 640, the Nokia N8 has 44 percent less pixels than the best Android displays (854 x 480 pixels) and just over a third of the iPhone 4 pixel count (960 x 640 pixels).
The N8 display compared to the iPhone 4 Retina unit
Not everyone needs that kind of pixel density though, and some users probably won’t even be able to notice the difference. We do, that's for sure.
The N8 screen sensitivity is as good as we’ve come to expect from capacitive units.
Vibration feedback does deserve a mention however as it seems impressively well tweaked and does improve the user experience in a surprisingly nice way. Haptics are enabled even when you scroll lists and the icons bump against the end of the screen or when you zoom in on a video using the virtual buttons.
Moving on, we notice the video-call camera in the upper right corner above the display. Near it are the ambient light and the proximity sensors, as well as the centrally placed earpiece.
The video-call camera is in the upper right corner of the front panel
Below the display are the microphone pinhole and the menu key. There are no hardware call keys as on previous Nokia smartphones and we found that a bit confusing. Nothing you won’t get used to though. We do believe though, a hardware back button would have immensely improved usability. The software one is by far not as comfortable, being in a different place at different parts of the interface.
There's only a single button below the N8 display
On top of the Nokia N8 is the power key, which also handles screen lock and the ringing profiles. The HDMI port and the 3.5mm audio jack are also there. The HDMI port is hidden under a small plastic lid to keep out dust and moisture.
The HDMI port sits on top, flanked by the power key and the audio jack
An important thing to note here is that the Nokia N8’s HDMI port supports 720p TV-out. With DivX and XviD support right out of the box, the N8 might just replace your home media player.
The Nokia N8 left-hand side packs a couple of slots (this is where the microSD and SIM cards go) and the exposed microUSB port. USB charging works fine so you don’t have to carry a charger with you all the time.
The two card slots and the microUSB port on the left side
The bottom of the Nokia N8 features nothing but the Nokia proprietary charger plug. The N8 is well covered in terms of charging options. You can you use either the regular charger or any microUSB charger/data cable you might have at hand.
There's a plug for the Nokia proprietary charger too
On the right-hand side, the N8 has the volume rocker, the screen lock slider and the dedicated camera key. The first two are very comfortable, with great grip and tactility.
The camera key on the other hand is probably a bit too stiff and requires extra effort for a full press. This might result in some camera shake blurring when shooting at a lower shutter speeds.
There are three controls on the right: volume rocker, screen lock slider and camera key
The 12 megapixel camera lens is what draws all the attention round back. It doesn’t have a protective cover as that would have added quite a few millimeters more of extra girth. Instead it relies on reinforced glass front lens that Nokia claims is sturdy enough to resist all the abuse the device might get.
The 12MP camera lens, the xenon flash and the loudspeaker grill
The other things of interest here are the xenon flash and the loudspeaker.
The Nokia N8 is powered by a 1200 mAh LI-Ion BL-4D battery that’s quoted at up to 400 hours of stand-by or up to 12 and a half hours of talk time. In real life we managed to squeeze just about two days of moderately heavy use out of the handset. You can find the Nokia N8 full battery test in our blog.
We are impressed with the Nokia N8 – for both looks and build quality. The handset is build to last and Nokia has demonstrated the sturdiness of the aluminum shell on several occasions. The N8 is neither impressively slim, nor delicately crafted. Just the opposite actually – it’s a solid tool, a little rough perhaps, but sturdy and reliable.
The Nokia N8 held in hand
The only things to note are the lack of a hardware Back key and the non user-removable battery.
No comments:
Post a Comment