Monthly Archives: November 2010

Available from Clove for £364.25

I normally write two part reviews for new smartphones, but in the case of the Nokia N8 I will keep things to just one. The reasons, as you will see, are largely based around the software onboard and not the hardware.

In the box

The box is a very unusual shape, being flat and much larger than the normal cube style smartphone boxes we are used to seeing. Inside you get the following-

* Nokia N8 mobile computer
* Nokia Battery BL-4D
* Nokia Connectivity Cable CA-179
* Nokia Stereo Headset WH-701
* Nokia Compact Travel Charger AC-15
* Nokia Adapter Cable for HDMI CA-156
* Nokia Adapter Cable for USB OTG CA-157
* Nokia Stylus SU-36 (selected markets only)
* Quick start guide

I have to say that I was marginally impressed with the headset this time. Nokia has a habit of bundling extremely poor quality headsets, but has made an effort here to include various ear buds and remote controls on the wire- it still isn’t going to replace your favourite pair of headphones, but is a turn in the right direction.

The inclusion of an HDMI adaptor is also welcome and the entire bundle feels complete and of a quality expected in a high-end smartphone. Overall the unboxing and package contents get the experience off to a good start.

Design / Build Quality

The N8 feels almost industrial in design with a nice cold metal housing that offers a sense of good built. The tapered top and bottom fool the user into thinking that the phone is smaller than it really is and it does have the look of a 2010 smartphone. The screen is clear, even with some washout in bright sunlight, and it all goes together very nicely. The main Symbian button on the bottom left is slightly tricky to use at first because of the tapers and the fact it is placed so near the bottom edge. I found myself using it two-handed when needing to use this button.

The other buttons are perfectly placed with secure covers for the SIM and card and expansion card slots and a highly usable, but not too easy to accidentally hit, camera button. The volume keys are, unusually, on the right and the charging / sync port on the lower left.

Everything about this phone screams quality from the moment you pick it up and Nokia has certainly does an excellent job with the hardware, and the consideration given to how the owner will want to use it.

Camera

The camera is, as expected, superb in every detail. I wouldn’t say that it is the easiest to use or that it completely fulfils the need for a ‘snap and go’ smartphone camera, but it beats any other smartphone camera on the market today for quality of output. I am not an adept snapper and tend to view smartphone cameras as a nice to have feature that can prove useful from time to time, but the iPhone 4 changed my view somewhat and is now my main camera. The Nokia N8 camera should be considered as a compact camera in its own right and when you factor that thought it, the value of the N8 starts to feel even higher.

Here are a couple of example photos below, but for a full overview check out part 2 of Steve Litchfield’s excellent review of the Nokia N8 which highlights, in great detail, how well the N8 camera performs.

Standard shot- no flash

With flash at night (slightly washed out)

Software

So, the hardware is great, the camera is stellar and now straight back down to earth courtesy of Symbian^3.

The debates and arguments continue over which is the best smartphone in the market and why iOS is better than Android, why Symbian is dying etc. etc., but it seems that Symbian^3 polarises opinion to an even greater degree.

Here is a comment posted on All About Symbian by Fradget- “I think a lot of the dismissive reviews calling Symbian^3 unusable are the most ignorant rants I’ve heard in years. The “Battle against Symbian” has become political and has to do with defending American national interests. There’s a huge ecosystem that depends on the success of those American operating systems’ continued success. Giving up even an inch of that market share to Symbian which already dominates the global market is just too much of a threat. The Nokia bashing going on is the definition of insecurity.

What’s disgusting is when blogs outside the US simply parrot the views of these biased Americans without even giving it any thought.”

If I may take some of those points before I discuss Symbian^3- disclaimer: PDA-247 is not an American site and I don’t do politics at all when it comes to smartphones. When I review a phone I consider it on its own merits and will at times compare it to others phones to see how well it stacks up against the competition.

“I think a lot of the dismissive reviews calling Symbian^3 unusable are the most ignorant rants I’ve heard in years.”

Well, get used to it. I have had in my possesion for the last week the N8, a Bold 9780, an LG-E900, an HTC Desire Z and an iPhone 4. Symbian^3 is by far the most complicated to use OS of the bunch and is at times unusable unless you are a hardened Symbian user who is completely familiar with the way the system works. It is not even close to defendable and in direct comparisons to iOS, Android, Windows Phone and even BlackBerry OS 6 it feels like an OS from 3 or 4 years back.

“What’s disgusting is when blogs outside the US simply parrot the views of these biased Americans without even giving it any thought.”

When I review a new smartphone I consider how new smartphone users will adapt to it as well as hardened smartphone buyers. Remember that these phones are now the models that fill the windows of mobile phone shops across the country- smartphones drive the industry and feature phones are hidden inside on shelves should someone only want the basics. Consumers go out and buy these phones and when I consider how they will view Symbian^3 in the first few days of ownership, it takes me back to the experiences of friends who bought Windows Mobile devices a few years back. They were complicated, unnatural to use and offered little consideration to how a person would actually use the phone- that’s how Symbian^3 still feels to me.

There are stacks of apps included in the OS- BBC iPlayer, Photo Editor, Video Editor, Social Networks, Here and Now, You Tube, Radio, QuickOffice, Dictionary, Adobe PDF, Calculator, FM Transmit, My Nokia, Ovi Sync, SW Update, Web TV, Ovi Store and the list goes on and on. Some of these apps are very useful, and indeed work brilliantly, but I felt like I had borrowed the phone from someone else who had loaded lots of random stuff on there before I got hold of it, someone who doesn’t know how to logically layout apps. This is, in some ways, similar to how Android is presented to new users, but to an even higher degree.

As I traversed the multitude of menus which still exist in the OS, I realised that little has changed in the way that Symbian behaves and this is disappointing in a world where everyone else is starting to realise that computing should be less complicated and that the key to success is in hiding the technical side and making things easier for the user. I admit that I got to the point where I could not persist and write any more about it because I got so frustrated, and I am more than familiar with how smartphones work. I don’t even want to consider how newbies would feel using this phone.

Conclusion

Nokia must spend millions creating excellent hardware and world beating cameras. The N8 is a perfect example of that philosophy. The time has come, however, to realise that Symbian is not going to be retrievable to the point that it can compete with the rest. The N8 feels like someone has spent two years building an Aston Martin and then stuck a Vauxhall Corsa interior inside- the hardware is wonderful, the OS is shocking.

In all my years reviewing phones I have never come across a device that excels so much in one area and fails so badly in the other, but the N8 is that phone. No matter what Nokia does in the future with the hardware it needs to look elsewhere for a platform. Samsung created the Samsung Wave on the back of Bada OS and that is a brilliant smartphone and many others are doing the same using Android- maybe the time has come for Nokia to realise that it is at the top of the pile when it comes to hardware and just concentrate on that side. Stick any other OS in the N8 and it would be a fantastic smartphone, but Symbian^3 manages to take away all of the goodness and confine it to the ‘could have been great’ pile of which many have trodden before.