Mobile

N8, the new Nokia flagship, was released yesterday by Nokia in five chick colors Dark Grey, Silver White, Green, Blue, Orange. There are few things that really stand out in this device besides it’s awesome looks and colors, the first obvious thing is the 12 megapixel autofocus with Carl Zeiss optics and Xenon flash, this is Nokia’s first 12 megapixel camera. The second thing is it’s running Symbian^3, Nokia’s first device to be running Symbian’s latest optimized platform. The third thing is Nokia has finally come to sense and re-introduced Graphics processor (Yay!!!).

Here are some specs -

• N8 has a 3.5 inch OLED capacitive screen with 640×360 resolution, the camera is with Carl Zeiss optics and Xenon flash; video recording at 720p resolution (1280×720) and 25 frames per second.
• Integrated A-GPS with location support for GPS, A-GPS, WLAN and Cell-ID.
• HDMI out (via Nokia Adapter Cable for HDMI CA-156), including support for Dolby Surround sound
• 3.5 mm Nokia AV connector for audio in/out and TV-out
• FM transmitter and FM Radio (with RDS)
• BL-4D (1200mAh) Li-Ion battery.
• WiFi; WLAN IEEE802.11 b/g/n
• 135MB of internal memory, 16GB mass memory and microSD card slot (supports sizes upto 32 GB)
• 256 MB RAM; 512 MB ROM
• Processor listed on Forum Nokia as ARM 11 @ 680 Mhz with 3D Graphics HW Accelerator with OpenGL-ES 2.0 support (i.e. graphics co-processor).

This video pretty much explains what the user interface/ experience is going to be like -

What I think about the device -

I think it looks really great, it is sleek and slim and is mostly made of metal, it has all the hardware keys that are needed. I expected a bigger screen and a better screen resolution, a 3.7 inch screen with a resolution of 800×480 would have been really awesome, still 3.5 inch  360×640 screen is good enough. I’m not into the megapixel race but that won’t stop me from admiring the 12 megapixel Xenon equipped camera that N8 has. Nokia makes awesome camera phones, it’s a no-brainer so I have no doubt that N8 camera would be the best yet. There is no camera cover and that worries me, I hope the lens would be recessed so it won’t easily scratch with normal usage. Only 16GB storage? Ever since I started using N97 the 32 GB storage has become a need for me, I cannot live without 32 GB storage, in N97 I could have 64 GB of storage space but in N8 I can have only 48GB storage, It’s not a huge problem, most people don’t need such space anyway, still it’s a setback. Thumbs up to Nokia for re-introducing graphics processor, it would make the device faster and games better.  N8 has 1200mAh battery…. will it be sufficient to power the device, Nokia says yes…. the new Symbian is said to be more power efficient so it will work fine with 1200mAh battery, N97 has 1500mAh battery and they are considered to be the best, it would have been better if N8 also had 1500mAh battery. 135 MB of phone memory will be available for users, we all know about the N97’s phone memory situation, that makes me think it would have been better if N8 had 512 MB or at least 256 MB of phone memory, but N8 might not have the N97 situation as most of the Ovi services like Ovi Maps, Messaging, QT etc. which insist on being installed in phone memory would be preinstalled. 256 MB ram also surprised me, 512 Mb of RAM would have been more welcome.

That said, I’ve mentions in many places that it would have been better if N8 had more memory, RAM etc. You got to understand what I said is what I would have wanted in N8 . . . . the current memory, RAM, storage N8 has doesn’t make it a weak Smartphone. Having the highest specs doesn’t make the phone necessarily better, it is the way the software and hardware interacts and gets along with each other that matter. Symbian is a very optimized platform, it doesn’t require much power or resources to perform well. Symbian^3 is said to be more optimized so it requires even less power and resources to deliver great performance.

I’m quite excited about N8, some of it’s features like USB–on–the-go are simple awesome, innovative and unique. The €370 / £320 / $499 price make it a cheap phone, OK. not exactly cheap but it’s an affordable Smartphone.

I’ll wait till the phone is actually released before I pass any verdict on it. But I have no doubt that N8 will be a real success.