N8, An Introduction

The good folks at WOMWorld contacted me just before Christmas offering a trial of the shiny and new Nokia N8, a phone that isn't exactly a toe-to-toe competitor with the iPhone4 (I think the N900 was supposed to play in that sandbox) but which offers one super spiffy feature for photo lovers: a 12MP built-in-camera. The phone does feature a few other notable specifications including microSD slot allowing for 32GB of additional storage (the phone is shipped with 16GB on board storage), universal miniUSB charging/transfer which is much handier than Apple's proprietary charger/transfer cable and perhaps the mother of coolest overkill specs: HDMI output for photos and video (which is captured at 720P quality).

I had to wait a few weeks to request the trial phone as a few months back I quietly purchased an iPhone4 which uses a micro-sim whereas the Nokia (and a number of other phones) uses a regular sim. I ordered my adapter from Micro-Sim Adapter in the UK. It was cheap, quick and highly recommended around the web. I've now installed my microsim into the N8 with the adapter and it works perfectly.

I had some immediate reactions to the N8 and they weren't all as positive as I hoped for.

The good:

- The N8 is comparable in size to the iPhone 4 but much lighter.

iPhone 4 & Nokia N8

- Responsive screen.
- Destop widgets.

Horizontal Home Screen on Nokia N8

- 12MP camera which takes great photos (even though they don't look like much when you take them!)

Snow!

- MicroSD expansion slot for additional memory.
- Updated Ovi Store with many more appliactions than I remember from my N95 days.
- Customizable destop widgets (there's negative here and that is that the widgets are locked so unlike the N900 that allowed you to place your widgets and applications anywhere, you're limited in your customization options).

Edit Home Screen Widgets on Nokia N8

The bad:

- Running Symbian ^3 for Nokia which isn't such a bad thing but which feels old after playing with the N900 for so long and after getting used to the iPhone OS which is its own beast. Apparently, this is the last NSeries phote to be shipped with Symbian which will be replaced by MeeGo which is very exciting.
- Battery life isn't great - full disclosure: this is an issue with all smartphones and not limited to the Nokia but it's still a negative.
- Set-up of Wifi/Rogers Network data switching at home was a disaster (took three hours to figure out).
- Keyboard is tight and hard to type on in landscape mode.
- No full keyboard in portait mode - you just get the old numeric/text phone keyboard.

Keyboard in Portrait Mode on Nokia N8

- Navigating between opened apps is easy but getting to that screen is clumsy.

I wasn't particularly impressed by the phone right out of the box but after installing a few must-have apps (a post on those coming up later), I'm starting to love this phone. Stay tuned for more updates in the coming days.

As per usual, I have also started a Flickr Set with lots of images and screencaps of the N8 in action.

 
 
 
 

Post a Comment 0 comments:

Post a Comment

 
Related Posts with Thumbnails