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
Conclusion
Now is not a good time to be Nokia. Once the king of the (smartphone) hill with an overwhelming majority of the smartphone market share, the lack of evolving to changing consumer demands in a fast enough manner has seen its smartphone share plummet. With Apple and Google thoroughly beating Nokia in its traditionally weak markets (North America for example), and taking the fight to its traditional strongholds (Europe and Asia), they don’t seem to be showing any signs of slowing things down. In fact, it almost seems too little too late for Nokia with the N8 and Symbian^3. Had the N8 launched at the end of 2009 or the beginning of 2010, before the explosion of Android slate devices and the iPhone 4, the N8 would have clearly been the best smartphone with little competition.
But it’s not all so gloomy. Nokia still commands massive brand recall in a lot of major markets. And the N8-00 is a solid smartphone; hands-down the best mainstream phone Nokia has put forth to date (again, ignoring the outlier than N900 is). In fact, Nokia sells the N8-00 as a ‘mobile computer’ and while I’ve always thought of this as being a marketing gimmick for their Nseries devices, I am fairly convinced that the N8 actually befits this tag. With most definitely the best camera ever seen on a mobile phone, the N8 is a worthy replacement to basic point snf shoots. With excellent media handling capabilities, HDMI out and the very useful USB-To-Go capability, the N8 actually fulfills basic HTPC duties with no fuss. And Ovi Maps, a definitely capable replacement for dedicated navigation devices. As is clear from this review, Nokia has made sure to implement whatever features it has included in the N8, with great attention to detail. And thankfully this time, this attention to detail has also mostly translated to the software side of things…traditionally Nokia’s weakness.
Symbian^3 is a definite and marked improvement over the previous Series 60 5th Edition without any doubt. With Symbian^3, Nokia has finally entered the modern smartphone market and it makes a strong showing here. There still are issues that Nokia needs to fix ASAP—the browser, mail application and Ovi Store being the major ones. If Nokia executes on the continuous and ongoing incremental updates to the Symbian^3 platform that it has committed to, in a timely manner, we may finally have a Nokia device that we can recommend without any obvious compromises or flaws. And with one such update promised for the N8 sometime in Q1 2011, it may be the device to recommend, after the update.
As an interesting side note, the Nokia C7 is a cheaper alternative to the N8. If the top-notch camera in the N8 doesn’t pique your interest and you’re willing to forego half the storage (now 8GB), you will get everything else the N8 has to offer, potentially better battery life, plus NFC-support, for a decent amount less than the N8.
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cheezyuser - Wednesday, January 12, 2011 - link
I'm not trying to sound fanboism, but thats my point exactly, People are just harping on Android, iPhone, apps, and when it comes to Nokia, they are quick to point out the flaws, which in my point, there isnt much (except for thoes synthetic benchmarks). Anandtech is mostly right in what they say, and it gets the job done,Just because my phone has the highest battery life doesnt mean im not gonna charge it for long days, nor does it display web pages faster mean i can tweet faster then my friends.
this android/iPhong hype is going over the top
inaphasia - Wednesday, January 12, 2011 - link
"...the 5110i served me very well for more than 3 years without showing any signs of aging. That was in the mid to late 90’s"Not that it matters but that phone probably came out around 98-99. I remember 'cause '99 was the year I got my first mobile. A Motorola that would take 4xAA alkalines if you wanted! I loved the 5110 but by the time my Motorola died I ended up with my favorite phone ever, a Nokia 6210. Had it for a little over 4yrs! No really!
jonup - Thursday, January 13, 2011 - link
Second on the 5110, which I had. And while not much different I was always a big fan of 6310i but the 6210 would do as one of the greatest ever. But for the pure market share 5110 was the king. Just about every one had one.santu - Thursday, January 13, 2011 - link
I was hoping that Anadtech review talks about signal loss problem when touching the phone. I have gone through three phones and all have antenna problem. Even in the user manual, Nokia recommends the user not to touch the phone in certain places.Luke.mc - Thursday, January 13, 2011 - link
Mithun, one of the gripes with the phone seemed to be the poor browser, but you also said Opera Mobile was an excellent experience. Could you post your tests using Opera Mobile on multiple phones as to give a more accurate hardware picture?mythun.chandra - Friday, January 14, 2011 - link
I'd like to do so. But as of now, I do not have enough devices on hand to put reference numbers. Plus, even out of the few devices I do have, only the Nokia's have Opera Mobile available. But I will make it a point to include reference Opera Mobile wherever possible :).mcquade181@gmail.com - Friday, January 14, 2011 - link
I've had my N8 for 6 weeks now. It replaced a 2 year old Nokia N95. I'm reasonably happy with it although for phone calls my N95 was better.I had previously borrowed a couple of Android phones (both v2.1) to try out and found then bug ridden heaps of 2nd rate hardware (both were HTC's).
I've found the N8 to be quite a bit better than them, however all is not roses with the N8 as I have issues with the N8's front and rear speaker/ringer design and volume.
If you put the N8 on a soft flat surface or carry it in a leather belt pouch the ringer is completely inaudible! The engineers who designed the rear speaker must been straight out of Uni without any design experience! The speakers should have been twin side mounted speakers aka N95.
Another issue that I have is with lack of earphone speaker volume - in a noisy environment the phone is useless - hopefully this will be addresses in a firmware update.
I'm not the only one complaining about these two issues - do a google search for "N8 volume".
noxplague - Saturday, January 15, 2011 - link
I have had the N8 for three weeks now and, while everyone on here who has never used one is all worried about the specs and the tests these, volume issues are far more relevant in day to day use.One thing that frustrates me to no end is the fact that on the home screen using the volume rocker does nothing! To me this should be the quick way to change my ringer volume. Instead you are supposed to use these "profiles", but having a profile with the right volume for each scenario is time consuming when I just want to turn the volume up or down but leave the rest of the settings (there are loads) alone.
The phones that I switch between lately are a WP7 Samsung Focus, a Palm Pre Plus (need to pick up the 2...), and the Nokia N8. The email/exchange experience on the N8 is my main problem. It lags so far behind the competition to be considered barely usable. The fact that you cannot easily contact meeting attendees from the calendar is a huge oversight compared to the WebOS, WP7 OSs. When you move between meetings all day and are running late it is nice to be able to let people know quickly.
My last comment is on Opera Mobile 10.1 - Everyone talks about how great it is but for me it crashes a far amount and doesn't support pinch zoom! This is annoying whenever you are on a full website. I often switch between Opera and Web, but even slow I find Web better just because it doesn't crash and I can zoom around a website.
Fix the exchange experience, the volume experience, and the web and this phone would be a top contender.
The hardware is stunning, preferable to either the palm, focus and camera is worth it alone.
munky - Friday, January 14, 2011 - link
All you people whining about ARM11, MHz, and so-called "standards" have obviously never used the N8. Kinda reminds me of all the armchair photographers who argue about camera specs without ever using it. As a photo enthusiast, the camera alone makes this phone worth considering, and instantly makes all the other phone cameras look like stone age tech.It has 3G on all 5 bands, meaning I can get T-Mobile 3G for $6/month, no contract, as opposed to all your mandatory 2-year contracts with $30/month data plans elsewhere.
The AMOLED screen has great colors and visibility in any lighting condition, something Apple still hasn't "invented."
The multi-tasking capabilities are second to none - try following turn-by-turn navigation while listening to music while taking pictures all at the same time on your phone, and tell me how it goes.
The reception on this phone is even better than previous Nokia's I've owned. The company with a fruit logo is not even playing in the same ballpark.
The web browsing is smooth also, and I can view flash content directly in the browser - I don't need no stinking "app for that."
Now, if all you do is browse the web and download games for your phone, then you don't need the N8. Hell, you don't need a phone at all - get an Ipod Touch and go brag to your neighbors. But if you want a multimedia device with some real capabilities, then don't bash the N8 until you've actually used it.
pandemonium - Saturday, January 15, 2011 - link
Well said, munky.For everyone else needing another perspective on the N8's abilities, you need to read these two articles on gsmarena.com: http://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_n8-review-523.php; http://www.gsmarena.com/display_shootout-review-54...
That site has several well thought out and fair comparisons and reviews of several brands and models.
My personal experiences with Nokia devices in general have taught me that battery life is amazing, hardware quality is the best, Symbian OS is sometimes twitchy but very efficient and adaptable, call and reception quality are better than most, and value is very high compared to cost [against other brands]. You can compare listed specs all day long, but when it comes down to it the function of the OS against the capabilities of the hardware and the utilization and limits of software combined is what makes a great phone great. It's the same as HDTVs; so what if yours has 5,000,000 : 1 contrast ratio? Those numbers are inflated and only relevant within that brand and that brand alone and say nothing about color accuracy, black levels, viewing angle, subfield motion correction, etcetera, etcetera.