Nokia N8 Unlocked GSM Touchscreen Phone Featuring GPS, This phone is for the Symbian lover wanting a new experience, unlike S60 5th edition. And this phone delivers. Construction and hardware wise, it is perfect (no removable batteries my gripe, but oh well). The camera is fantastic and may even replace your stand alone camera. Feels great in your hands too.
The software..its what S60 5th Edition should have been...the music player, only 1 touch tapping, multitouch are ALL welcome editions. Do not use the ovi maps that come with it, go to beta labs and use OVI maps there...it has multitouch etc. Am thoroughly enjoying it...where they can improve is the web browser and calendar. Web browser will get an update in Nov from beta labs...will include better multitouch and a brand new look/feel, much like (n900 etc).
The software..its what S60 5th Edition should have been...the music player, only 1 touch tapping, multitouch are ALL welcome editions. Do not use the ovi maps that come with it, go to beta labs and use OVI maps there...it has multitouch etc. Am thoroughly enjoying it...where they can improve is the web browser and calendar. Web browser will get an update in Nov from beta labs...will include better multitouch and a brand new look/feel, much like (n900 etc).
All in all, this is what we want, something new but keeping the familiarity. do with it (compared to iPhone or Android):
- Navigate anytime with a fantastic GPS module and free life time navigation (including turn by turn voice navigation with street names, lane guidance, speed limit warning, traffic etc.!!). Go buy crap GPS software for iPhone for a huge price (last time checked was more than 50$) and even then that won't even come close to Nokia navigation. Don't forget Nokia owns Navteq (the worlds largest map producer)
- Transmit FM and play it on your car music system (iPhone doesn't even have a FM receiver)
- The best camera (those of u who read the misleading review of endgadget, if u r really reading my review, then u r serious and go ahead to search on google to find zillions of unbiased camera review, comparing N8 even against DSLR)
- Pentaband network support, which would let you use the phone with both AT&T and T-Mobile 3g network!!
- Dolby surround sound output
- USB on the go (which means you could connect your USB device with the phone!)
- Bluetooth 3.0
- The only OS that has a very complete bluetooth stack implementation (perhaps too technical for some of the readers) that allows u to even control ur powerpoint presentation with ur cellphone (using salling clicker). The poor iPhone guys, no ur phone doesn't have that functionality (crippled at OS level)
- The OS that gives superb battery life (anyone using Symbian would testify for this)
- The freedom that comes with an open OS (OK, Android is also open)
- The most configurable and complete enterprise wireless stack (trust me, I never ever had any problem to configure my Nokia phones for the most convoluted enterprise wireless network!)
- A built in completely integrated VOIP support. You won't even notice that u r using VOIP. And trust me, if u know how to use VOIP effectively, u could save a huge amount on your phone bill
- The ability to work as Bluetooth HSPA modem (or even create Wifi hotspot with third party software)
- The TRUE TRUE TRUE multi tasking. Yes that's three TRUEs. No one else (including the upcoming Windows Phone 7) supports true multi-tasking. If u ever use Symbian multitasking, u would hate to use others' sham multitasking
- Many many ... can't list. Feeling tired :( Users are welcome to comment and add additional pros and cons. I am sure there will be Nokia fanboys and iPhone and Android fanboys.
What can't I do (or can't do so well):
- The UI (yes iPhone and Android have better intuitive UI)
- I can't fart with my mobile (but I do have all the apps that I would ever need: e.g. call screening software, office software, pdf reader, flash support, email solution, the entire Oxford, cambridge or a host of other dictionaries etc.)
- Zillions of games that you may avail on iPhone, u may not have on Nokia yet (believe me it's changing fast). BTW, N8 has a faster GPU than iPhone4!
Now some misleading media propaganda:
- N8 has only 680 MHz processor: Believe me Symbian is by born very efficient. If u ever own a Mac and try to run a Windows 7 in a virtual machine then u know how slow it is. Processor doesn't define speed. I started with a 233MHz pentium processor with 32MB RAM which ran Windows 98 extremely fast with all Office applications, a bunch of productivity apps and a host of games. To give a recent example look at Windows Vista, which runs very slow on the same computer compared to Windows 7 or Mac OS X!
- N8 has only 256MB RAM: Again u don't need that much RAM. The Symbian^3 has "Writable data paging" which works like virtual memory. And don't forget, Symbian is built from ground up to be battery, memory and processor efficient. No other OS (including Android) claims that feat.
So, in conclusion, if u r looking for a very modern looking user interface, go for iPhone (or Android). But if u r like me who shops for functionality (and who dreams to carry only one gadget (no GPS, no camera, no Apple remote etc.)) then surely u should give N8 a serious thought. And don't let naysayers fool u with usability issues. Believe me, with just couple of days of use, every unintuitive UI would become intuitive (I am a Symbian veteran and it feels very intuitive to me).
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