Nokia N8 review

I received a trial pack from nokia so here is my small review of Nokia N8 new nokia´s flagship

Hardware
In N8 beats ARM1176 processor with a frequency of 680mhz and its combinated with the 3D chip with OpenVG 2.2 and OpenGL ES 2.0 support. This allowing an external calculating of graphics things. Finally, there is support for high-quality 3D games such as Need for Speed or Avatar HD, but more about that later. RAM is now 256MB, phone memory is 256MB, mass memory is 16 gigabytes so there is enough space for a few hours of movies in 720p.

    Memory can be extended with microSD with capacity up to 32 gigabytes. With 256mb RAM memory i tried to switch on 30 aplication in the same time. Speed of N8 was the same as the speed of phone without running applications. I applaud.

Symbian ^ 3
There are several major news, but otherwise it's just a rejuvenated Symbian 5th. New multitasking is there, now we have a better overview of the applications. More home screens. New icons. Modified keyboard. It's a lot of things but the list would be long. It is also great that nearly every application from old 5th symbian works well on N8. Also there is a big step to clarity. You can see buttons went down and there is more place for icons.

Design
Phone design is simple, charming and yet very effective. Nokia made a point to which they are nice details such as silver frame around the camera and volume buttons. I was also pleasantly surprised by scroll lock key. I dont have to find for nail hole. The button is easily catchable because of grossy surface. I like the design slightly rounded at the top and bottom. These parts are made from plastic because of antena. And the middle part is made from aluminium. You can see the small differences in colours.

At the bottom of the phone is a charger connector and a space for the string. At the top of the N8 is a standard 3.5 mm headphone jack, the HDMI covered connector and power button. On the left side of the phone. There are two small doors which hides the SIM slot and a memory card slot. It can´t be open easilly, but it has a good reason. Since the phone has a 16GB mass memory and you also dont putting out the SIM card often so it's good that the door is tight and dont moving. On the left side is also a small LED, that indicates charging and  microUSB connector. From personal experience I guess that it will become very dirty, since it doesnt have cover doors.

On the right side are the already mentioned buttons for volume control(also usable for zooming), key lock slider and camera button.

On the back is a exserted part in which are camera lens and xenon flash hidden. Also there is a loud-speaker. This part is again nicely framed with silver frame. It doesnt have the back cover because the battery is inbuild. The phone comes in five colors orange, blue, green, gray and black.

Display
When you first switch on the phone you will really feel the step forward. The colors are outstanding. In viewing angles you don´t see any distortion of colours. The display quality is also slightly increased compared to the last Nokia 5800 and you can see the difference especially when browsing on the Internet.

 

Display is the first Nokia's capacitive display which supports multitouch. Sensitivity is great, just on the edges is sometimes long delay or no response. Maybe it will solve the new firmware, which comes at the end of January. Resolution is the same as the 5800 so 640x360. I really like the new style of screensaver clocks. Clock that gently light lights up in complete darkness. It is very effective but also efficient. For comparison, here display 5800 vs. N8 In N8 is the real progress.

Menu is also slightly changed, there are new graphical icons. The display can be easily unlocked by pressing the “unlock” after click on menu button

Homescreen

HS also went through a some change. Widget app shortcuts is now completely transparent. Two more pages for other widgets are added. Now you can add up to 18 widgets which is more than great, everything you want is quickly in your hands.

Widgets can be used several times, it means that if you have a widget of music player there, you can easily add the music player again on another page. The app widget shortcut can be use more times in same pages so you can have up to 72 aplication shortcut.

Because there is a button to switch between HS pages. Dial button moved  on the right. So you cant put shortcut on right key anymore. But because there are ability to add up to 72shortcuts, it doesnt matter. In addition, on each screen you can add different background.

 
Calendar

Calendar remained nearly identical to previous version of symbian. There is new possibility to add a file (video, sound or image) and also add comments directly from notes, so if you already have something written, simply assign it to a meeting in the calendar quickly and easily.

Internet

Web browser is only slightly improved. The biggest plus is probably support for Flash version 10, which will be useful for someone who wants to play flash games online, but for this you need a keyboard. I tried my keyboard over USB-OTG but as you can see it didnt work. When website is fully loaded, viewing is quite brisk. It can be smother but it seems good to me.

Hope improve browser will solve it. Worse it is, when the page has a flash content. Than the phone is too slow.

There is the inbuilt youtube app, but unfortunately not utilize the potential of the new processor, videos is not available in HDs.

OVI store

The new version of Ovi store is much faster. Better controls and smother. Categories are sorted better.

It is done good, because if you want some app you will get it fast. When you are downloading your application, you can view and choose from thousands of other titles that Ovi store offers on N8.

 

Connectivity

N8 is the first Nokia which using bluetooth in version 3.0. It features file transfers in speed up to 24Mbps but for now this feature is not supported on other devices so its useless. Furthermore, there is a standard WiFi connection, and also two new gadgets. Connecting to a TV is now going through the HDMI connector. In the package you will get reduction from thicker HDMI cable to bigger (usual) one. Furthermore, there is a USB-OTG.

 

This new function allows you to connect harddrive, flash disk, keyboard and mouse over the reduction. I tried to connect my Nokia 5800 and it works like a mass memory. I think that that sooner or later programers will come with more drivers for other equipment.

Music, Radio and movie player

    I'll start with radio, the change did not take place here. Still supports RDS. When you turned on radio, it will automatically scan for available stations. You still need the headphones connected to listen to radio.

Music player is improved more. It looks stylish and organized. Picture album, artist and album name. Nothing more, nothing less in portrait mode. It's really prettier than before. The landscape looks even better. Between albums, you can smoothly scroll and click to choose a song. In portrait mode if you click on some album, the upper part of the screen is rotable and in the lower part there are lists of albums.

Equaliser has several presets such as Bass, Rock, Pop and the others. Unfortunately the is no create your own EQ. I love that you can finally control music volume when the screen is locked. You can listen to music through headphones in the package or you can connect your own headphones through 3.5mm jack . Music can also be broadcasted via FM transmitter directly into the radio. The quality of transmission seems to me better than it was in Nokia N97.     Headphones that are included in the package with the phone, has finally some potential to be usable for music listening, the bass reproduction is finaly really better. I can say that you dont need your own headphones, because included headphones is also equipped with player controls.

You can also play music through a built-in speaker, not stereo now. In comparison with 5800 is N8 a bit quieter. You can hear some bass element here which is good because as I remember N97 hasnt got any bass. If you will listen to it maybe you nearly dont see the difference in reproduction. The speaker is located unfortunately on the back. This means that it is often covered when your phone is lieing on the table. I also tried to connect the older extra speakers Nokia MD-6. The are working without a problem. Movie player finally supports Avi format and you can also play the mkv files. I tried the 720p (2gb) video and it works without lag. You can see in the video it can also play wmv video

Messages

    Keyboard in the message editor went through changing too. In the portrait mode is now more space for text and control icons moved to the bottom. The two ways of writing gone. The hand-writting and a mini QWERTY keyboard on the screen, most likely because of capacitive touchscreen.

After rottating the phone, keyboard switched to a QWERTY keyboard in three lines. There is also change to better. The useless things moved to the bottom and everything is now more clear.

You can now add animated emoticons to text message.

If you receive a message, it will automaticly opened  in a nice conversation like icq. This means that you can immediately answer in a few clicks.

From my experience, writing on N8 is better than on my Nokia 5800. Its faster and you cant easily click on wrong letter. In previous resistive display it was like a norm.

Settings 
I will focus only on the changes. In themes setting was added the option to switch on animated homescreen, however the theme must support it.

 
In screensaver setting you can set different modes. Music Player means the display of the date, time and the current playing song. 

 

Animation - you can set any animations of your choice. A slide show its showing you choosen or random photos. There is also ability to switch off a screensaver and for me probably the best is the big clock screensaver. They look very good by setting up analog or digital display shows the current time and date.

 
Setting of a wallpaper is moved to a new icon “Phone setup” where you can log into your Ovi account and name your phone or set up a basic ringtone

    There is also “Power saving” mode. I remember how there was Power saving in the Nokia N96 where it really helped the phone to last much longer.

Applications
There is a simple application for setting email. You define your inbox and the phone will remember it and will use it in reports and in settings of the email widget.

    File Browser is quite same but the menu that appears when you long press on the item is great thing and it also save some time.

    The dictionary is the only in the English language, you need to install another languages.

    Quickoffice - on your first QO will ask if you want to register. If you refuse it will switched off automatically. Shame that it can be used only for reading documents. If you want to edit documents you need the full version.

    Adobe PDF Reader is doing same thing as QO. Its also trial

    The calculator is the same as in previous versions of Symbian. Don´t look for an advanced features in it, you won´t find them.

    Photo Editor has much more features. You can add animation or make funny faces. You can also change colours, sharpness, lower noise or add any color effect. A clipart or a frame can be also added. Indeed many, many functions. I can say that Nokia has added a smaller version of Photoshop. Just do not understand why the program is not well optimized, and sometimes freezing.

 
Video editor. In this program you can become a real director. You don´t need a PC to make a short film.

 

Camera and Video Recording
The camera as the first in nokia has a 12MPx resolution and it's really not chasing to have more megapixel but it is real progress. The camera lens is the largest ever in the cell phone. Dimensions are 7.1 x 5.3 mm which is almost more than have some cheap compact cameras.

There is a 2x digital zoom. The Nokia has now the popular thing, face detection.

There are many shooting modes. To take photos of objects from 10 cm is there close-up mode. Probably this is the last symbian Nokia that has macro. Other new models such as C6, C7 and latter new flagship E7 haven´t got macro. More modes are portrait, landscape, night and more. You can also define your own settings. All other functions are identical to the previous symbians.

Shoot a video on N8 is a real happiness. Now you can shoot movies in high-definition with  resolution 1280x720 in 25FPS. But now there is an application for increase rate to 30fps. The video is really good. Video can continuously autofocusing during shooting, but only aplication can add this. Unfortunately, you can´t find this function in basic phone. But you will find video stabilization ability setup. Basically, one second video is approximately 1.2 megabytes size. The camera also allows you to adjust color and white balance. I made a comparison with the N97, N82, 5800, and also with compact camera Canon SX210is which has almost the same numerical parameters as N8.
You will see some comparsion in another review ;-)