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
Third time’s the charm
As mentioned earlier in the review, the N8 is Nokia’s first device to be based on the new Symbian^3 platform. Before we dive into Symbian^3 and how it works and what new features it brings along, let’s have a quick look at Symbian’s evolution in the recent years.
Evolution of Symbian; S60 1st Edition, S60 3rd Edition, Symbian^3 (L-R)
Although Symbian can trace its roots back to the 90’s and the days of Psion (known as EPOC OS back then), Symbian as we know it today only took shape earlier this decade with Nokia and Ericsson’s involvement. The basic design principle for Symbian OS was that of maintaining absolute simplicity, and making conscious and efficient use of the (then) spare resources available on mobile devices. As a result, the ‘OS’ itself did not come with a user interface of any sort. It simply included the (EKA2) nanokernel packaged with a few basic primitives, libraries and device drivers to extend it to the realm of a microkernel.
After an initial reference design, further development of the frontend itself was left to the device manufacturers, leading to the likes of the Nokia Series 60 UI, UIQ etc. Over the course of this decade, mainstream Symbian moved from version 6.0 to the version 9.4 used in Nokia’s last S60 update. Over the course of years, Nokia added features and updates to its S60 UI resulting in various editions and feature packs. The last major update made by Nokia was to add support for high-resolution touch screens resulting in S60 5th Edition. However, sometime in 2008, Symbian went open source and along with the OS, now came packaged the S60 UI, creating what is known as the Symbian Platform. It was also during this time that Nokia started pushing the use of Qt as the framework of choice for Symbian development.
The Symbian platform includes code not just from Nokia, which was the primary contributor to the code base, but also from other companies (Sony Ericsson being one of them) as they decided to withdraw from using and developing Symbian. The platform as such now also includes parts of other releases such as UIQ, MOAP etc. The first product based on Symbian Platform was Symbian^1, which was a mildly reworked S60 5th Edition. Symbian^2 was an insignificant release with only a handful of Japanese vendors releasing handsets based on it. What we see today, Symbian^3, is Nokia’s boldest move forward, bringing significant and much needed updates to the platform. It is also going to be the last major Symbian release for a while, with Symbian^4 having been cancelled and its code base and feature set having been rolled into Symbian^3.
On first look, it may seem like not a lot has changed between Symbian^3 and previous iterations, apart from an improved UI. But Symbian^3 is Nokia’s first OS built from the ground up for the high resolution touch-screen interface paradigm and it is a marked improvement over its rather poorly implemented (and received) S60 5th Edition touch interface. The OS is now finger-friendly and multi-touch capable (except the on-screen keyboard), not requiring a stylus, and makes use of single-tap interaction throughout, thereby eliminating the need to dig through layers of menus. Welcome to the party Nokia, better late than never!
(L-R) The slick screensaver that makes use of OLED’s ‘free’ black color, Multitasking in S^3, the Dialer app, a typical S^3 menu
Another significant update to Symbian^3 is the introduction of the GPU accelerated UI. While Symbian has never really been slow to respond to input, this was more a result of the fact that it was almost completely devoid of any animation or effects and as mentioned earlier, Symbian’s inherent thrift when it came to using available resources. Although functional, it looked outright prehistoric compared to most modern mobile operating systems, and having to deal with multiple menu hierarchies to change even fairly obvious settings and options didn’t win it any favors either.
With Symbian^3, Nokia has tried to make a clean transition to the present day and age and for the most part, Symbian^3 and the N8’s BCM2727 media processor is able to pull it off reasonably well. The N8’s response is quick, whether it be navigating the menus or switching between applications. The transitions are smooth with no lag; the phone doesn’t get bogged down even with multiple applications running in the background. It also responds to taps and gestures consistently without needing to double tap or repeat gestures. Overall, using the N8 is a fairly smooth experience with nothing to complain about.
Home screens in Symbian^3(first three), S^3 Widget Manager (Right)
Very similar to Android, Symbian^3 now also allows for multiple home screens (three to be exact), with the switching between them facilitated by a simple side-swipe gesture. The current home screen you are on is indicated by one of three dots at the bottom. It is very easy to customize each of the home screens with application shortcuts, notifications, and widgets such as weather, email, social networks, calendar, etc. This is facilitated by a long-press anywhere on the home screen, which initiates the widget manager.
The widgets themselves afford a decent amount of customization. You can also easily switch the widgets online and offline by selecting a single option, unlike the last time I used Symbian where this had to be done on a per application basis. And this logical simplification of actions runs deeper than just the home screen. For example, managing data connections is much simpler on the N8 than it was on the E5. Although it still makes use of “Destinations” to manage your data networks, which isn’t the most straightforward or efficient method to handle data-network related settings, at least all the options are now housed on one page. Symbian^3 also makes some updates to the network stack and it is now 4G ready, should Nokia decide to launch such a device.
There are some quirks in Symbian^3’s current incarnation. For one, the dialer app does not work in landscape mode. Secondly, there is no QWERTY keyboard in portrait mode. Also, using the keyboard in landscape mode takes up the entire screen. So if you are entering your name in a form on a site, clicking on the text field will open up the keyboard with a white text area up top; you cannot see the site itself. As I quickly learned on the Nokia Ovi Store registration page itself, it becomes very irritating when trying to enter CAPTCHAs. You either have to memorize the entire CAPTCHA, or switch back and forth between the website and landscape keyboard view. And finally, the battery indicator on the N8 is a fair bit off from the actual remaining battery life as reported by the N8 itself!
(L-R) S^3 lacks a QWERTY keyboard in portrait mode; battery indicator shows 3/4th of the battery is left, even though it’s not true; the landscape keyboard takes up the whole screen
I’d mentioned earlier that Symbian^3 is going to be Nokia’s last major OS release for a while and this is true. But this does not mean that Nokia plans on pulling on with this release in its current form for another decade. With the closing of Symbian^4 development, what Nokia is actually trying is to do is roll out regular, incremental features and updates to the Symbian^3 code base, instead of branching it off to a new OS release. This is needed for two reasons: to keep Nokia devices such as the N8 competitive, as well as to maintain forward momentum and consumer interest in the Symbian platform. Nokia has promised to make one such significant update to Symbian^3 in early 2011 and some of the updates are much needed.
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chick0n - Wednesday, January 12, 2011 - link
do u know how much it cost for the "outdated" Apple 3gS without contract? lmao.Have you ever use a N8 yourself? I know I have one. ohhhhh now u gonna say im just a fanboy & trying to defend my purchase. mind u N8 is not the only phone I have, I got both Desire HD, & Nexus S. but I rather use N8 as my primary phone. sure it has its own weakness, but its not as bad as the review saids.
I can get N900 for much less than 429. I don't know what have you been looking but you do sound like a moron.
anactoraaron - Wednesday, January 12, 2011 - link
yeah I can aquire one on ebay for about $100. Off contract sale of this phone through AT&T doesn't exist (at least not in the US). And I'm the moron... What the hell does the average person need 3 phones for? Well most ppl don't have that much money to WASTE on phones (and the provider contracts to boot) I pulled the $429 off the same place as voldunuit got for the N8- Newegg. Apparently Amazon is better @ 350. But if you are shopping around why not look for NEW hardware to spend your money on?But still my point stands... A NEW (that's right, N-E-W) flagship phone should sport NEW hardware, better battery life, better browser, etc. no one can debate this, as this is a trend ALL TECHNOLOGY should follow. No matter what you think of me my point is still valid.
anactoraaron - Wednesday, January 12, 2011 - link
one last thing... why buy ANY phone now with dual-core phones on the cusp of release? Maybe, maybe I am missing something. Maybe this is a test run from a design sense before Nokia releases an updated (from a hardware sense) version of this phone sporting a dual core cpu.Alexstarfire - Thursday, January 13, 2011 - link
If by screen res you mean the physical size of the display.... perhaps. A lot of people think 4+ inches is too big for a phone. If you mean by the actual resolution of the screen itself then it's got pretty much the exact same DPI as a 4 inch 840x480 screen. Why put in a likely far more expensive screen just to up the DPI? Doesn't seem very cost effective since the current screen in phones like the Galaxy S look fantastic as is. (No I don't care if you don't like how the SuperAMOLED screen looks).I'd agree the WiFi does looks pretty abysmal in throughput, but then again I don't think even the best phone on that list is doing a very good job considering the specs of 802.11g/n. I also don't think it's as big a deal as it looks like. 4.5 Mbps is certainly fast enough for any web page on a mobile device. The biggest and best reasons to use Wifi are power consumption and lower latencies. Don't know about it's power consumption since it's not in this review and I'd assume the latencies are just fine since nothing was mentioned. The browser might make it worse, but IDK. I don't have this phone and I don't use Opera.
The 3G talk time could end up being a problem but I wonder if they can make an app that just uses 2G for talking and 3G for data. IDK if they even have a program like that for Android, but it'd certainly be nice since 3G for voice is largely useless.
CPU is only an issue if there are lag problems. Again, don't know if there are any since I don't use the phone. My guess is that there shouldn't be any since most everything is GPU accelerated.
The battery is certainly something they skimped on. Couldn't say why, but it seems to be an issue no matter how you look at it. Why put such a small battery in a high-end phone? It just doesn't make sense.
bitflung - Wednesday, January 26, 2011 - link
wow - seriously, you're jaded.you want a faster processor, i get it. i want a better camera, apple doesn't want to give me one. see, different opinions, but i won't go calling the iphone a turd just because of that.
you're not a nokia hater, you owned a bunch of nokias in the past, as recently as 3 years ago? yay for you. you're still a hater.
let's talk facts, not opinions:
- the CPU is adequate. not stellar, not blow your socks off, but adequate. the N8's selling point is not the cpu, so they didn't invest heavily on that component. of course, the CPU isn't the bottleneck for the eyecandy everyone loves to compare with. that's the GPU, and the N8 doesn't skimp there, "The conclusion is surprising, the Nokia N8 dominates, by far " (source: http://www.thenokian8.info/comparison-of-graphics-... )
- price: $600 is a common starting price. if it was woefully under spec'd, then it would seem a bit much. that's your real argument, after all, that it is woefully under spec'd; iOS and Android devices are only cheaper when subsidized (personally i cant stand the carrier lock-in that comes from subsidies, so i never buy in that fashion - i'd rather pay retail and remain free to leave a bad carrier. and they are ALL bad in their own ways).
- screen res: not a retina display? good, so iphone 4 has a leg-up on screen res. yay for them. N8 has gorilla glass, yay for n8. iphone has better multitouch, yay for apple. n8 has better outdoor readability, yay for n8. on and on and on. you can't cherry pick the best of iphone and compare just those features to state categorically that everything else sucks. doing that, the ONLY thing you'll compare favorably against is another iphone. btw, iphone 4 and 3GS have the EXACT SAME GPU, as well as the iPad. so take another gander at the benchmarks for opengl performance i linked to above and reconsider you statement that, "Yeah it stays cool at the lousy res since anything higher will stress the 'great GPU'" - you know, since the broadcom chip on the n8 outperforms the powervr core apple licensed for the A4 SoC.
- wifi performance: really? people have complained about this? my wife's N8 works great on wifi. i don't know what goes wrong for other users, maybe performance varies based on the SNR in the area? i've only tested at home, where there is no real source of noise nearby, and her N8 slurps data over wifi just as fast as my laptop does when wired into our router (~16Mbps).
- battery life: this just confounds me. my wife's n8 lasts for 2 days solid, 3 if she's lucky. she talks on it about as much as any typical 20-30 year old woman i've seen. my boss has an iphone 4 and has a similar usage pattern, and he complains about the battery barely lasting 1 day, and NEVER lasting a full 2 days. i haven't had the opportunity to directly test them side by side, but for months i keep hearing my wife, getting into bed, saying "oh, i forgot to plug my phone in - i'll just do it tomorrow"; and my boss worrying during lunch meetings, "can we use your phone for this call, i don't think my iphone will last".
- web browser, data speeds: yes, iphone's browser is 'better'. less complete, but far better at doing what it does do. N8's browser is very poorly executed, but more complete. don't let the browser's performance fool you though, data speeds between the devices are exactly the opposite. nokia integrated the pentaband 3G hardware exceptinally well and, as usual, side by side with the iphone (3GS and 4) the N8 holds a 3G signal better than either device, and pulls more bandwidth then either device. running a speed test (speedtest.net website on the n8, native apps on the iphones) the N8 pulled down ~3Mbps consistently in my office, while the two iphones barely eeked out 1Mbps each (~1.18 for one, the ~1.4 - both average across 3 tests). we're talking about all three devices within 1 foot of each other and running the speed tests simultaneously. i would have run the EXACT same tests, but the iphone's cant render the flash based speed test website, and obviously the native iphone apps won't run on a (non-iphone) n8.
-regarding this statement: "Sure it's got a great camera. Which is why nokia went out of their way to say it over and over so everyone would overlook everything else." ::: you've got it ALL WRONG HERE. that's like me saying, "sure the iphone has a great screen, that's why apple said it over and over so everyone would overlook the crappy camera and lack of bluetooth profiles, and poorly integrated antennae, and miserable data bandwidth comapred to similar devices, and poor battery life, and...and...and...(listed these so you don't discount my use of 'everything else' were i to have said it)". no. apple focused on the 'gorgeous' retina (actually, ALMOST a retina) display because, well, it IS ONE OF THE REASONS TO BUY THE DAMN THING. nokia focused on the camera because IT IS ONE OF THE REASONS TO BUY THE DAMN THING. there is no other mobile phone in the world that can compete with the iphone's screen resolution. there is no other mobile phone in the world that can compete with the N8's camera (sensor size, resolution, optics, flash, everything about it). that's why nokia focuses on the camera in marketing, because nokia ALREADY FOCUSED ON THE CAMERA IN ENGINEERING too.
and you honestly think you're not a nokia hater? that's like listening to some jackass say, "i'm not racist, i just don't feel comfortable around black ppl". you don't like nokia. fine. know thyself. i like nokia. i also like apple. i hate walled-gardens. i hate vendor lock-in. if not for the intent of walled gardens and vendor lock-in, i'd probably own an iphone by now. would i like it more than my n900 (i dont have the n8, that's my wife's)? i don't know, i'd probably hate the lousy network performance, but love the apps. i'd probably hate the camera but love the screen. i'd probably be contradicted within myself when attempting to say which was better; because they are both great and the both suck in their own ways.
you think the N8 is a turd. you proclaim it to be truth while saying you're not a hater because you owned some nokia devices 3+ years ago. yay you. and i'm not racist because i had black friends 3 years ago. doesn't that make me sound, well, like an ass? yup. so you go on now, you non-hater; go ahead and proclaim your lack of bias while asserting the truth in knee-jerk disgust of any feature that can be seen as less than iphone worthy. go ahead. in the meantime i'll happily take nokia's unlocked pentaband beauty on my travels, pop in local sim cards and use voice and data services without paying disgusting rates for leaving the walled garden of my primary carrier. i'll play the same high quality games and even hook my phone up to a big screen TV. i'll even take some pictures down by the lake late at night after the party quiets down, so my iphone toting friends can share the memories of when we all got together without the blurry-cam effect ruining everything.
melgross - Wednesday, January 12, 2011 - link
Please don't make too much of this camera. I've seen photo's from it, and it's nowhere as good as an S95 class camera. Not close. The lens is ok, but not really that good. There's no real zoom as compacts have. The pics are very noisy compared to the S95.The rest isn't worth commenting on directly, as this seems to be a phone stuck in a time warp. Great for Nokia, Meh for anyone else. Interesting that for Nokia junkies, this has been their best selling smartphone yet, and that may be a problem. If Nokia actually thinks that this model hit the spot, they're in even bigger trouble then they know.
Voldenuit - Wednesday, January 12, 2011 - link
The S95 suffers from softness wide open and noticeable chromatic and purple fringing.Whereas the N8's lens is crisp even at the pixel level. It may be that Nokia is running a CA-removal algorithm like Panasonic and Nikon does on their system cameras, but the end result is a much crisper image.
There are advantages to a prime lens, and not just in size. Many people (myself included) prefer to shoot with primes. The Ricoh GR-D was one of the most popular street shooting compacts, and had a 28mm lens. So does the Sigma DP1. The Leica X1 also has a fixed lens (35mm eq.). While a prime may not suit everybody, neither does a zoom, and I would rather be able to fit my phone in my pocket than have a physical zoom which I will rarely use.
Yes, the N8 is noisier. Not by much, and they have stated that this was a conscious decision to retain detail and give more options to the user in post. As I have mentioned somewhere, the on-phone editing software has a NR filter. Having been dismayed by too many compacts with heavy handed NR resulting in watercolor pics, I am actually happy about this.
In fact, the N8 camera requits itself very well:
http://thehandheldblog.com/2010/10/04/shootout-nok...
Yes, the 550D is let down by a poor kit lens, but that the N8 is in contention at all is pretty amazing. The 100% crops are especially impressive. Other cameraphones just don't compare.
raulr - Wednesday, January 12, 2011 - link
Just a quick note on the CPU. ARM11 is was Apple used on the original iPhone 2G and iPhone 3G, so more than 1.5 year old tech (when did the 2G come out, 2007?). The iPhone 3GS uses an ARM Cortex A8. And a number of Android phones were launched with Cortex A9 Dual Core based CPU's at CES last week.ARM11 is something you would only see in the low end Android phones and it really is quite shocking that Nokia would that into their "Flagship" phone.
anactoraaron - Wednesday, January 12, 2011 - link
I completely agree. My point was this-The iPhone 4 improved the 3GS (the former 'flagship') by:
Improving the scree res
Improving battery life
Improving the camera (and adding a front facing camera)
Improving cpu/gpu
Hence the 3GS is now "outdated".
Lets use another example:
The Droid X improved on the original Droid by:
Improving the cpu/gpu
Improving the camera
Improving battery life
And so on, and so on and now the Droid is "outdated"
Funny how an "idiot" would have to simplify this for the benefit of those calling others "idiots"- now that's irony.
All fanboys are the same. So should Nokia get a free pass while Apple does not (in regards to the MBP keeping core 2 for so long)?
Neither do in my book.
Exodite - Wednesday, January 12, 2011 - link
You make a good point, though it's not really fair to compare mobile platforms to something like a laptop.Mobile devices are service-enabling platforms, not software-execution platforms.
If a 680MHz ARM 11 is enough to allow the N8 to provide the services it enables it's not really an issue.
Once you get into the realm of desktop software underlying hardware and OS matters a whole lot more, sadly.