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
Down to the numbers
Nokia has packed the N8 to the gills with features and this trend continues on with the connectivity. The N8 boasts support for 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 3.0 (both powered by a TI WL1271A chip), and yes, the N8 is a quad-band GSM and penta-band 3G/3.5G phone. What this means is that you will have complete voice and 3G/3.5Gdata coverage practically anywhere in the world. Looks like Brian has had his prayers answered! And if set so, the N8 can automatically switch between GSM and UMTS bands, depending on availability.
| Nokia N8-00—Network Support | |||||
| Penta-Band UMTS | 850 / 900 / 1700 / 1900 / 2100 MHz | ||||
| Quad-Band GSM/EDGE | 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 MHz | ||||
| HSDPA/HSUPA | 10.2Mbps / 2.0Mbps | ||||
But in spite of packing in so much hardware, the Nokia N8 put out some decent battery life numbers. And this is a bit surprising considering the fact that the N8 comes packed with the same 1200mAh BL-4D battery as the decidedly lower end E5!
*Just like with the E5, the N8’s default browser would stop loading the AT test suite pages (only over WiFi) after a couple of iterations without closing the browser and manually restarting the test.
Although I couldn’t test it specifically, the GSM-only talk time battery life of the N8 seemed a decent bit more than the 3G battery life, as I was able to get away with moderate non-3G voice and data usage for about 2.5 days without having to recharge.
Now down to the performance numbers. As mentioned earlier, the N8 unfortunately has the same browser as the E5 and as such, shows similarly poor performance.
Update: As pointed out in the comments by astute observers, the version of Opera 10 tested from the Ovi Store is incorrectly labeled 10.1 when it is in fact 10.0. We've installed and tested Opera 10.1 on the N8 and updated the graphs below to reflect the correct results for both 10.0 and 10.1. Browsermark shows an improvement of nearly 94%, and SunSpider has gone up almost 9x, which is a nice improvement to say the least.
As Brian pointed out in his GLBenchmark article, we’ve included some numbers for the N8. GLBenchmark does not yet officially support Symbian^3, and the version I ran on the N8 was for S60 5th Edition. Although I didn’t have any issues running other S50 5th edition apps, the Egypt test in the GLBenchmark suite refused to run on the N8. It would show the loading screen for some time and then exit to the home screen. I have included numbers for the PRO test below.
As you can see, while no SGX 540, the BCM2727 in the N8 is almost on par with the Adreno 205 and SGX 535 GPU’s, though the test runs at 640x360 on the N8 compared to 800x480 on most other devices we have numbers for.
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mythun.chandra - Wednesday, January 12, 2011 - link
Sorry you didn't find the review as useful.Regarding the CPU, not sure where the confusion lies:
"This MCP (Multi Chip Package) allows Samsung to stack different memory types (DDR, NAND etc.) along with non-memory logic in the same low-power package. So for basically the same footprint as a single memory chip, Samsung is able to integrate the DDR memory (256MB), NAND (512MB) and a CPU (TI ARM11 applications processor)."
What that says is that Nokia uses a Samsung MCP which stacks DDR and NAND memory, along with a TI ARM-11 based application processor in the same package.
thartist - Wednesday, January 12, 2011 - link
They'd better pull off "an AMD" before they completely sink the ship. Btw, quite a late review!tipoo - Wednesday, January 12, 2011 - link
I like AMD, but...What? Is that really the best choice for a come-back story? Staying under a quarter of the marketshare, and even less of the revenue?zodiacfml - Wednesday, January 12, 2011 - link
nevermind the internet which i could do at home..always wanted to carry a camera all the time, it's good enough as any P&S in 2003-05. I wonder if it could have manual controls..especially manual use of flash.
very nice it could read usb storage devices, i was thinking of buying a netbook for backup/ net upload of photos taken while on a vacation.
it could read mkv and divx, awesome.
call it quirky but not to me as having a quirky Sigma dp2 digital camera.
now, where could i get one....
Voldenuit - Wednesday, January 12, 2011 - link
You can control ISO (100-800) and EV (+/- 2 EV in 0.5 stop steps). You can set the flash to on/off, auto, red-eye and slow-sync (or a close simulacrum thereof) by invoking the night portrait mode.There is a macro mode, although it does not do anything close to 1:1, but it's better than nothing.
Exposure on the N8 is uncannily good, although I'm coming from m43 and DSLR where the exposure algorithms are not as advanced (some would say idiot-proof) as compact cameras. Flash exposure is also very good (considering the power limitations).
Noise reduction is very well balanced - Nokia has stated that they erred on the side of detail over smoothness, and it shows (in a good way). Should you want to PP away more noise, the onboard editing app has a NR filter.
My big gripe is there is no touch-to-focus, but that's nothing a little focus-recompose can't get around.
I imagine someone could eventually write an app to enable touchscreen focus, shutter speed control, ND filter use and/or RAW output, but I've found the existing controls more than sufficient for my needs as a backup camera. If I need more than that, I should be packing my DSLR anyway.
PS If you want to pair a USB drive with the phone, avoid the ones with virtual/security partitions. It doesn't like them that much (won't work with my Sandisk Cruzer, no problem with my vanilla flash drives).
Voldenuit - Wednesday, January 12, 2011 - link
OK, scratch that last thumbdrive comment. I just checked my thumbdrive and it seems I formatted in NTFS, which the N8 doesn't support. My bad.zodiacfml - Thursday, January 13, 2011 - link
thank you for all that information. good luck with it!inaphasia - Wednesday, January 12, 2011 - link
There were NO 12Mp 28mm P&S' in 2005... let alone 2003!There were hardly any in 2007!:)
mrgreenfur - Wednesday, January 12, 2011 - link
"basic point snf shoots" on page 8...uselessguy - Wednesday, January 12, 2011 - link
That is one ugly phone!