I love the fact that most of the new devices have enough onboard memory that I'm able to use one device for everything. I love having music at my fingertips and the N8 is an easy one to load. I'm not a big fan of the Nokia desktop software and am not even sure it'll run on a Mac but transfering music proved to be pretty easy. I connected the phone to the computer as a harddrive (you have to select a the USB setting: Settings --> Connectivity --> USB --> Mass Storage) and simply dragged the music over into the "Sounds" folder. One thing I noticed is that not all of the CD covers moved as well which may have something to do with my specific settings rather than the phone. I found them later in the photos file of the phone.

The built-in music player is easy to use and navigate with options to organize by song, album, artist or genre. There's no horizontal mode for the player but it does have a similar album cover scroll option which the Apple devices uses. It's not the prettiest layout but it's functional.

I do like the album view which gives you both the album cover and the list of songs contained in the album.


The desktop is also quite handy and gives quick access to the music library which I like.


One feature that I absolutely love is the Playlists wich features one of the best things I've seen recently: a "Recently Added" playlist which is automatically updated when you add new music. This is a feature I loved on the Zune which I miss dearly on the iPhone and which makes an appearance here.

With all the good stuff the music player has going for it, it's lacking a few features which I can't live without. The first is real-time scrobbling. This feature is also not available on the iPhone directly but I found a few apps that did the trick. Searching through the vault of Symbian apps hasn't uncovered an app with similar capabilities. There also isn't an option to create playlists on the go which is something I miss dearly from the N900.

Though it doesn't wow, music on the N8 is functional and easy to use. Just wish it had a few additional bells and whistles to make it a show stopper.

Though my initial impressions of the Nokia N8 weren't all glowing, the phone did have a few cool features but after a bit of digging and some time cruising through the app store, the N8 is slowly transforming into a great phone.

Since my first brush with the Ovi Store, Nokia's version of the App Store, there have been a great many improvements notably the addition of thousands of new apps that allow you to do pretty much anything.

I rarely use my phone for talk and use text messaging and social media for communication with a few other tools to keep in touch with those around me. The phone's built in text messaging and conversations applications are already quite good but for those who prefer something else, there are other options including WhatsApp. It's worth noting that WhatsApp is free in the Ovi Store but costs in the Apple Store (I think I paid $1.99 for it).

One thing that's a must download is SWYPE, a new way of typing by swiping your finger over the tochscreen keypad rather than hunting and pecking for it. I was a little skeptical about this when I first saw a video of it in action last year but after two days of usage I swear by it. Can't wait until it makes its way to the iPhone.


I'm Twitter obsessed and though the N8 comes pre-loaded with a social networks widget, I found it slow and hard to use. Searching around and testing a number of other free apps, I have settled on the fact that Gravity is still the best twitter app for Symbian. It's expensive at $9.99 but if you tweet as much as I do, it's well worth the cost. I'd purchased it for my N95 and have downloaded a 10 day trial version for the N8 which is as user friendly and sleek as I remember it.


The last much have app for video and photo lovers is Pixelpipe. I have friends who swear by Shozu but I could never really get it to work on the N95 and at $4 in the Ovi store, it's not really worth it for my 10 day trial of the N8. Pixelpipe on the other hand is completely free and as a bonus, there are a number of plugins that allow you to, in one step, upload photos and videos to all sorts of different social media accounts. I've been using it for all of my Flickr uploads and it works like a hotdamn. VERY awesome. It's not particularly difficult to set-up and I already had an account that I use with my iPhone so I just had to login but if you're looking for a step by step on the setup, aymontano has an outstanding step-by-step install and steup on the Nokia Forums.

Some other apps I've been using include Opera Mobile which has an interface I'm familiar with having used it on a number of my devices and works great here (the built in browser is OK but nothing to write home about), Foursquare for checking into various locations, and for all of my screen capturing, of which I've been doing a lot, I downloaded ScreenSnap. A note on this is that you can assign a hotbutton for taking a screenshot but since the N8 only has a few buttons, this isn't particularly helpful. There is, however, a delay which is great because you can set it, navigate to what you want and it takes a photo. A 10 second delay seems to work for me.

Up next will be some thoughts on the maps and navigations feature, the music and photo/video taking and editing. Stay tuned!

Lots more screen caps in my Flickr Set.

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.



- Responsive screen.
- Destop widgets.

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


- 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).


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.


- 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.