Nokia N8 Review
The N8 is certainly one of the more handsome phones released by Nokia for some time now. With 4 colours available in Australia (5 in Europe and the US) the N8 has a diversity of aesthetic appeal not found in its closest competitors. The scratch-resistant aluminium casing is comfortable to hold with its unique blend of curved and straight edges, that draw the intrigued eye and give the impression of a more heavy-duty device than we're used to.
As far as durability goes the Nokia N8 feels like a solid piece of hardware. It’s not overly heavy, but at the same time isn’t as light as a cheap plastic handset. Every slot other than the 3.5mm headphone jack has a sliding cover, which should help protect the phone from dirt and water splash damage. The scratch resistant coating works well against the minor scratches you’d expect from everyday use, but won’t help much against any real damage. The N8 really does feel like it will stand up to a fair bit of wear-and-tear, even from hard core phone-abusers like us.
Nokia is finally catching up with the competition with the Nokia N8. The 3.5 inch, multi-touch AMOLED display is a good start and provides decent picture quality, even if the resolution comes in slightly under-par at 640x360.
By far the most impressive thing about the N8 is the 12MP camera. Photos in the day come out extremely well and, thanks to a xenon flash, night-time photos actually offer quite pleasing results. 720p videos come out surprisingly crisply at a mere 25 frames per second. The video quality here is actually richer than other 720p capable phones we’ve seen, despite the low frame rate. This is due to the camera lens having more room to move around and adjust its focus, providing good image quality using hardware, rather than just cramming more useless pixels in to the photo. As a result the camera does stick out a little bit, which affects the phone’s ability to rest easily on a table, so your gaming/web browsing experience may be hampered by that.
Overall any small concessions that have to be made because of the lens protuberance are more than made up for by the quality of picture and video this phone delivers. Especially when you consider the mini HDMI port, which lets you easily link your phone to most TV or computer screens for better viewing.
As far as interfacing goes the N8 makes great use of its 680 MHz processor. In a world of 1GHz smartphones the N8 surprisingly holds its own in the speed leagues. We won’t go in to the merits and problems of the Symbian^3 operating system, suffice to say it won’t wow you with a lot of its functionality. But if you’re looking for a sturdy smartphone with a sold browser and great camera then look no further than the N8.
It’s great to finally have a smartphone that isn’t black or grey and the 12MP camera is certainly a bonus for any happy snappers out there. Just be warned that with Nokia you're always in for a very different phone experience than with other handsets. If you're a fan of more traditional smartphone systems you might want to play around with the N8 first, just to make sure you find the experience enjoyable.