Nokia N8 Review: Nokia's New Flagship
by Mithun Chandrasekhar on January 12, 2011 1:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Nokia
- N8
- Symbian
- Mobile
What’s HAPPening at Nokia…
It’s all about the applications now. Ever since Apple pushed the concept of apps and app development to the mainstream in 2008, companies such as Nokia have been caught off-guard. This is the one area where Nokia still has a lot of work to do. The N8, as with almost all Nokia devices in recent history, has a very inconsistent and frustrating app ecosystem. As with the E5, the Ovi Store app doesn’t even come installed by default on the N8. Instead, clicking on the Ovi Store shortcut in the menu opens up the browser and takes you to a page where you are required to setup an Ovi Store account and download the app. This is ridiculous enough in itself, but to make things worse, I could not get the app store working no matter what I tried on the N8.
(Left, Center) The Ovi Store was a pain to get up and running on the N8; (Right) when the Ovi Store works
Each and every time I tried opening the Ovi Store, the browser would be launched and it would open up a blank page with the Ovi Store icon on top. Nothing would happen after this, no matter what I did. Searching on the internet, I found that this was in fact a well-known problem that multiple people were facing with the N8 and apparently had to do with a particular version of the Ovi Store app having problems with Symbian^3 devices. Deleting and trying to re-download the app didn’t help. Finally, the only thing that seemed to work was to log into the Ovi Store via the PC, searching for the Ovi Store app, and sending a download link for it to the phone via text. Really, Nokia?
And it’s not just the Ovi Store app that had issues either. The default email app basically doesn’t work the way it should. Unlike the E5 where there was a definite (if non-obvious) procedure to getting push email working, on the N8 there is no set procedure. Accepting or declining Nokia’s terms and conditions while setting up your email account decides whether or not push notifications are enabled. With push notifications enabled, the N8 refused to sync my Gmail inbox after a couple of hours. Deleting an email from the N8 would have no effect on my Gmail inbox.
Worse yet, the push-email system on the N8 does not let you select the folders you want to sync. Since the N8’s email client didn’t have an “Archive” option, I was forced to mark and move emails to the “All Mails” folder, only to find out that this folder is not available for sync with push notifications turned on. Since this was absolutely essential to the way I used Gmail, I decided to forego push functionality and set up my email accounts again, declining the terms and conditions and with a polling interval of every 10 minutes.
Although you do have control over the folders you want to sync via this method and the N8 does faithfully poll the Gmail servers every 10 mins as configured, no matter what I did, I could not get it to sync my emails properly. To elaborate, if I marked an email as read and deleted it, upon the next sync, it would still show up as unread in my inbox. If I manually “moved it to trash”, after syncing, I would still see it as an unread email in the “All Mails” folder. Again, a quick search on the internet reveals that I’m not alone.
(L-R) The inconsistent email app, clunky default browser, browser menu, Opera Mobile 10
The last bit of software that Nokia needs to upgrade, pronto, is the lethargic webkit-based browser on the N8. Hoping that this would have definitely been one of the updates to Symbian^3, I was disappointed to find that apart from tweaking the UI to be touch more friendly, not much has changed with the browser. The GPU-accelerated UI definitely makes things more responsive, and the vibrant 3.5” screen is a marked improvement over the 2.36” in the E5, but the browser itself is very slow and inconsistent in its rendering. It cannot hold a candle next to Mobile Safari, or the Android/WebOS Webkit browsers.
Once again, Opera Mobile 10 mitigates these problems, picks up Nokia’s slack, and makes surfing the web on the N8 a decent experience. But it is an absolute shame that Nokia did not update the browser in this release of Symbian^3. Thankfully however, Nokia has promised to update the browser with the next update, and I sincerely hope they live up to this promise.
(L-R) A very good Nokia Swype app; the photo browser app makes good use of the GPU; the excellent Ovi Maps
Other apps worked as they should, including the excellent Ovi Maps app. The N8 uses its integrated GPS, A-GPS and WiFi-positioning for navigation duties and also sports a compass. You can have a look at a more detailed discussion of Ovi Maps in my E5 review here. I did however notice with the N8 that it took an awful long time to get hold of a cold GPS signal, and Nokia made a questionable decision of not including maps on the N8 out of the box.
One feature that I found very interesting was the “Turning Control” that could be used to silence a call or snooze an alarm, simply by flipping the N8 over on its front. The N8 is now my official snooze tool! The music player uses a Cover Flow-esq design that works very well with the GPU driving the fluid animation. And although I couldn’t test the video calling function out-of-the-box (and with Skype not having implemented Video Chat capability on the Symbian platform), I did manage to make a few test calls with Fring and it seems to work just fine (although a friend of mine did say that she couldn’t see my video on her iPod Touch 2G).
(L-R): Video call on Fring; Skype on S^3; some of the interesting Nokia Beta apps
Also, I encourage you to look up Nokia’s beta apps portal, as there seem to be some really interesting albeit experimental apps in there. I found an excellent Swype keyboard implementation, a cool photo browser that makes very good use of the GPU, and the very interesting “Nokia Bots” applications in there, amongst others.
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sumeetm90 - Sunday, January 16, 2011 - link
I have been using N8 for a month now and have discovered following pesky issues:1) You cant mark multiple messages in your inbox. If you want to delete say 10 messages in a go you need to individually delete them. (Dont understand how can nokia make such a blunder)
2) Cannot utilize full screen to view pdf documents in Adobe reader provided by nokia. This is really ridiculous. You are forced to use 75% of the available screen to read pdfs.
3) I was surprised to find that there was no stopwatch feature included with the new phone. Yes you can download an app but when I pay Indian rupees 23600 (approx $500) for a smartphone, I expect nokia to put a stopwatch/countdown timer in phone.
4) You need to download a scientific calculator. The default calculator is pretty lame and embarrassing. If you search the ovi store you will realise it is not so easy to download a scientific calculator.
I gotta agree with Mithun about the issues with browser, mail application and ovi store. I have been a vivid Nokia fan and thats why I bought N8. But clearly nokia has lot of issuses to address. I cant recommend this phone to my friends. Lets hope nokia is listening and comes up with a descent update soon.
Johnmcl7 - Sunday, January 16, 2011 - link
Nokia have a licensing agreement to stick the Zeiss name on their phones, that's all there is to it as the lenses most certainly are not a Zeiss design by any stretch of the imagination despite the laughable 'Tessar' branding on some of them.Voldenuit - Sunday, January 16, 2011 - link
That doesn't mean that Zeiss does not have a say on which lenses their branding goes on and provide input on lens designs etc.This is very similar to the arrangement Panasonic have with Leica - Panasonic design and manufacture the lenses themselves, but Leica has the final say on whether or not the lens is good enough to receive their branding. In fact, while my Leica R4 had genuine Leica lenses, the body itself was a copy of a Minolta SLR, so Leica branding has been a 2-way street.
Similarly, the Sony Alpha Zeiss and compact camera lenses are designed and built by Sony. And my Pentax SMC Takumar (ca. 1970) was manufactured by Asahi Optical Company. This is not news, it's been the modus operandi of the camera/lens industry for decades, and very similar to the ODM/OEM relationship in electronics.
afwjam - Wednesday, January 26, 2011 - link
Actually Carl Zeiss designs the entire camera module. There is an interesting youtube video with one of their engineers explaining the resolving capabilities of the lens. Apparently its far superior to most SLR kit lenses.afwjam - Wednesday, January 26, 2011 - link
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtIFBMbiaPoLavkesh - Monday, January 17, 2011 - link
The new firmware is coming in Feb with improved browser, portrait qwerty keyboard with split screens. You can see the Beta version of the firmware running on Nokia N8 herehttp://how2i.com/743/nokia-n8-symbian3-caught-runn...
fneuf - Tuesday, January 18, 2011 - link
Hello Mithun,I'm a little surprised by the anemic result of the Nokia N8 WiFi performance.
Both Droid X and N8 use the same chip, the TI WL1271A (from Texas Instruments) that handles WLAN, Bluetooth and FM connectivities.
Considering the Droid X result is 4 times higher than the N8 one despite being built on the same hardware I really wonder where does lay the N8 fault. Anyone have an idea ?
bitflung - Wednesday, January 26, 2011 - link
i just looked up nokia+gpu and hit this article:http://www.nokiaviews.com/2010/01/nokias-gpu-story...
they claim that all of the following had dedicated GPUs:
Nokia N93, N95, N82 and E90 - all having their 'golden days' back in 2007
i know for sure my old N95 had a GPU - that was back in 2007. i recall running some 3D accelerated apps that performed very well:
http://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_n95-1716.php
in fact, it uses a similar core as the iphone still uses today:
http://www.symbian-freak.com/reviews/n95/n95_revie...
that article states that the n95 of 2007 used the powervr MBX core (also used in original iphone), while the iphone 4 (and ipad, ipod touch etc) use the powervr sgx core.
the N8 is surely not the first nokia to ship with a GPU. where did this misinformation come from?
naco - Wednesday, January 26, 2011 - link
I truly cannot understand (or withstand) blind ignorance. Comments like: “wifi pathetic”, “screen res below what I would call the current industry standard”, “99 cent ARM 11 chip” are simply a clear proof that the longest time spent with an N8 was in front of a demo booth at BestBuy ... or who knows what other retailer.I have been using N8 for almost 3 months now (after using a N95 for 3 years, an Android phone for almost 2 months (HTC Desire) and a Blackberry Torch for another 2 months) and I find it to be well rounded, very responsive, fast (except for the web browser), reliable and versatile – in short, if you can live with the few current nudges, Nokia N8 is a respectable smart phone and definitely a good choice – but, hey, show me the perfect phone and I’ll buy YOU one right now. Furthermore, those few nudges, being software related can potentially (hopefully) find solutions either in a future firmware update or in adopting/installing 3rd party solutions.
POSITIVE:
- The battery, although at “only” 1200mAh lasts throughout the whole day even when used extensively,
- Fast and responsive even when pushed to the limits despite featuring “only” a 680MHz ARM processor (due to the new Qt O.S. NOT as resource hungry as Android or iOS)
- the screen is one of the best for both outdoors and indoors and for most users the resolution would never be a problem (or even noticed to be lower),
- the Ovi Maps is getting better and better and is becoming a solid, reliable (OFF LINE) navigation tool, at NO extra cost (bundled with any newer Nokia phone)
- the camera is by far one of the best out there, easily at par with most point-and-shoot standalone cameras.
- Exceptional media handling (large photos & HD videos)
- Local sync support (MS Outlook) as well as on the cloud (Google)
- Folder & sub folder support (after so much bashing, Android wants to implement it!!)
- The new OS, Qt is the bridge between Symbian and MeeGo – which means both, backward and forward compatibility.
NEGATIVE:
- Slow web browser, no reflow and not really adapted to touch screens (yet, Opera 10.1 is an excellent alternative, virtually resolving all native browser’s issues)
- Music player features, strangely downgraded from Nokia’s S60 5th edition.
- Calendar – no agenda view
- The speaker placement in the back of the phone is quite a nuisance (as the slot gets covered the sound is considerably attenuated)