Nokia N8 preview: First look
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- Wheez
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- 08 Oct 2010
nicksti, 08 Oct 2010How is Symbian^3 for you? Have you used Android and can giv... moreI have quite limited experience with Android phones, so I can't make straight comparisons. Stuff like the poor battery life and the few pretty bad bugs (although they seemed to have been fixed with 2.2.) have been holding me off from even thinking about getting one. Also somehow the UI just doesn't make me go any more wow than Symbian does.
As said, I'm very satisfied with Symbian^3, though. No lagging or hanging so far, stable, does a myriad of things, it's easy and logical to use, I've yet to have opened the manual to get stuff to work.
If you want to see what I would like to change/what faults I find in the Symbian^3, you could check here: http://discussions.europe.nokia.com/t5/Nseries-and-S60-Smartphones/N8-Symbian-3-Suggestions-for-future-software-updates/td-p/768718
Apart from those mentioned, which are pretty minor things for me, I'm very, VERY satisfied with the device. And this is no blind fanboyism.
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- nicksti
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- 08 Oct 2010
Wheez, 08 Oct 2010Personally for me, the camera on the N8 was like the smalle... moreHow is Symbian^3 for you? Have you used Android and can give your personal comparison between the 2?
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- koushikp
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- 08 Oct 2010
Killersmith, 08 Oct 2010Nokia cannot even dream of sidelining symbian...it's their ... moreLol...lighten up man..its a blog..u have something to share..do share, and be kind enough to support it with logic, so that it enriches the discussion..unless u r a Nokia employee with stock options and I really hurt ur feeling by my negative comments..my sympathies if so..the stock is going only one way...down.
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- 08 Oct 2010
follower, 08 Oct 2010USB OTG and FM transmitter are not useful for everyone but ... moreTrust me, not nearly enough people in here are as sensible as you. There are quite a few people in here saying the N8 is the best phone and everyone needs to get rid of their (other phone) for one.
Any chance follower you are not in the USA? I find FM Radio in phones are more popular in other countries. In the US people tend to listen to alot of internet radio. Also, cars have become so fancy now with bluetooth, docking stations, hard drives, and usb ports. And from my experience, FM transmitters can work well or poorly depending on car antenna design, and saturation of radio waves in area.
But if you find good use from it then it is a good technology for you. For me I do not want a 4.3" screen in a phone so I like the screen size in the N8. I like the camera too. Unfortunately, I have not liked what I have seen and read about symbian^3 and have been burned by Symbian in the past.
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- Killersmith
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- 08 Oct 2010
koushikp, 08 Oct 2010U mean N8 is not a high end smartphone then? bummer...I tho... moreNokia cannot even dream of sidelining symbian...it's their bread and butter and will always be....
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- 08 Oct 2010
nicksti, 08 Oct 2010The masses, as shown by sales, have moved past simple camer... morePersonally for me, the camera on the N8 was like the smallest of my reasons to get it and I'm loving the thing, loving it alot. My expections weren't let down at all, actually quite the opposite. My every expections were exceeded! I'm loving the N8 more and more as each day goes by as I learn and find new stuff from the phone.
Naturally I'm very happy with the camera too, it's awesome have a point and shoot quality camera always in your pocket.
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- nicksti
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- 08 Oct 2010
[deleted post]The masses, as shown by sales, have moved past simple cameraphones. Your phone needs to have a whole lot more substance than that to be popular.
People are into fancy screens now. S-LCD, S-AMOLED. 3.5" and bigger.
People are into smartphones now. Android and iOS.
People are into apps now. Lots and lots of apps.
So Nokia will have to offer a good OS and lots of apps. I just think Symbian^3 has a long way to go. Even Windows Phone 7 looks better.
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- 08 Oct 2010
koushikp, 08 Oct 2010U mean N8 is not a high end smartphone then? bummer...I tho... moreFuture high end phones.
Symbian^3 will be on SO many cheaper phones by the time a single Meego devices hits the market, that I don't have any doubts that they wouldn't continue to support it.
Not to mention that having used N8 for over a week now, the by far biggest issue with it is the browser, which is already on it's way. It's in a VERY VERY good shape right out of the box. Of course there's always minor bugs that could be fixed, but nothing gamebreaking. Now that I found a way to open new windows/tabs in the current browser in a controlled fashion, I dont have much to complain about that either.
With just the new browser, I wouldn't mind going the whole lifespan of the N8 (which is like 2 years/phone) with no updates. Theres basically only quality of life-type of improvements to make.
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- follower
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- 08 Oct 2010
nicksti, 08 Oct 2010You are right, I misread the FM Transmitter. The SE W980 ha... moreUSB OTG and FM transmitter are not useful for everyone but I do use my transmitter daily and I would really like to have USB OTG.
FM transmitter is the reason I bother to listen music in the car. I even had a separate transmitter before but finding & plugging a cable into the phone, turning on the transmitter etc. was still so much of a hassle I didn't really bother on shorter trips plus it kept running out of batteries. Now all I need to do is one click on a phone desktop widget and off I drive. I'm happy.
USB OTG usage depends a lot on the person of course. I like the idea that I could bring my whole music & movie collection on a single USB harddrive on a trip and watch the movies on the Hotel TV through HDMI for example.
I don't think anyone here is arguing N8 is the best device for everybody. But so far it does seem like awesome multimedia & camera phone.
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- 08 Oct 2010
Wheez, 08 Oct 2010Symbian isn't dying. Although Meego will take over in the h... moreU mean N8 is not a high end smartphone then? bummer...I thought it was! sorry about the snide remark, but do you really think it will be in Nokia's interest to support Symbian^3 when their Meego device come out later in 2011? I don't think it will be..they will drop prices and stop software improvements, just like they have done earlier..e.g. N72..the Ovi store doesn't work in that..why? it has the same OS as the E71..Nokia has released N8 and other Symbian^3 devices this year just to support this year's earnings, mark my words, they will drop it like a hot potato as soon as (if) Meego becomes successful.
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- 08 Oct 2010
koushikp, 08 Oct 2010As much as I would like to say I would love to buy this pho... moreSymbian isn't dying. Although Meego will take over in the high end smartphones, they said Symbian^4 will probably be on some N-series devices anyway. Not to mention Symbian will be on pretty much ALL of the non-N-series, which is still majority of Nokias phones. Like the E and C-series are extremely good, most people even think E-series devices are better than N-series devices.
Symbian isnt going anywhere, like it or not.
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- q8phantom
- pVP
- 08 Oct 2010
nicksti, 08 Oct 2010You will not achieve a whole lot doing that.
Fact: Nokia... moreYes why am not achieving anything,
When I come in here to read the comments, May be I'll find something new, I'm a kind who likes to read a lot before making a decision, but am not getting anything useful here, just the same in every page!
I agree with you nothing perfect, Even myself I decided on the N8, I was hoping a better processor and a resultion.
At the end, I haven't seen a company that planned to make a perfect phone! But phones with different needs, I'm still a Nokia E72 user for a reason is the battery hold on the whole day with active 3G data and Nimbuzz!
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- dipu791
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- 08 Oct 2010
q8phantom, 08 Oct 2010Let's now come to final solution which phone is better acco... morelolz gud one my frnd!....all manufacturers n OSs hav their own sets of +ves n -ves...lets nt fight about which one's gr8r..coz smthn more gr8r is bound to surface now or then...dats jst how technology works!...
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- 08 Oct 2010
As much as I would like to say I would love to buy this phone, I wouldn't..and I have used ONLY Nokia phones for the last 9 years, since my first phone which was the 3310..my reasons are:
- nice camera? maybe, granted..but already have the Sony NEX5, so a non issue
- My primary reason for not buying Nokia are their dishonest attempts to sell us products which are not ready because customers like me trust them..explanation below:
-Why do I buy Symbian^3? Nokia knows Symbian is dying and it is one last dishonest attempt to sell phones to us on a dead platform. Nokia has gone on record to say these are the last Symbian Phones on their earnings calls..their next round of smartphones will use Meego (not kidding, google it)..why should I support Nokia for their laziness of sleeping on past laurels when everybody else were innovating thick and fast..
- most featured phone? definitely, but its not the features themselves that count, its the implementation of it..My latest phone, the E72 gave me so much problem for the last 6 months that it felt like a piece of junk; again not kidding..go look up the Nokia forums..and why did I face that? because Nokia thought lets just release feature pack 3 without testing it..just so that they can use it as a marketing tool to sell E72...so that this phone gave me "not enough memory" error with 2 apps running with 256MB of RAM..
- I am tired of frequent crashes, unstable software, useless segmentation:
- My old phone, the 5800 won't scan business cards with a 3.2 MP camera..why? the E71 does it with a 2MP camera - segmentation! I can't just pay for that app and get it!
- Mails I am sure, will look horrible on the N8 (havent seen it, but I am skeptical), because they need to sell E6 positioned as a business device.. it will have big fonts with bad colour scheme..just like they did in the 5800..again no reason, just plain stupid segmentation..
- truth is, Nokia just got cocky, they (like many of you) discredited apple as a niche competitor, when the truth was, Apple had the power of content on their side, without softwares, the precious handsets are a piece of brick..
- After using my ipod touch for a year, and using it over wifi for exchange email syncing, I realise it is far far better than the flagship business device E72 that I am using for productivity purposes, PDF support is far better without an official app from adobe, u dont need exchange server 2007 for full HTML emails for Microsoft exchange mails on the itouch, Nokia does, the business card scanner app on the iphone (5 USD) is waaay better than the one on the E72, and lets not even talk about browsing..Nokia's browser was one of the worst among the smartphones, even Blackberry is far better at both rendering and speed..the Bloomberg app on the E72 is by far the worst among peers, and lets not even talk about the facebook app...point is as long as u have good apps, u can use ur handset any way u like, for emailing, for playing games or for reading books, as long as the software is available..
- I wanted the N8 to be successful because I was a Nokia loyalist..but its clear from the initial videos its just a stop gap iteration of the Symbian V5 than something revolutionary..this time I will stop betting on the losing horse..its up to Nokia to pick up the pieces from here and deliver a quality product,
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- nicksti
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- 08 Oct 2010
q8phantom, 08 Oct 2010Let's now come to final solution which phone is better acco... moreYou will not achieve a whole lot doing that.
Fact: Nokia N8 is a high end phone with high end features.
False: Nokia N8 is the best phone ever. Better than Droid X, iPhone 4G, and Galaxy S.
False if only because there is no such thing as a best phone. False because even if there was in the high end world, the N8 does not have all the best technology. No phone does.
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- nicksti
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- 08 Oct 2010
Anonymous, 08 Oct 2010*sighs*. Symbian is OPEN-SOURCE [since AT LEAST several mon... moreMy point about Nokia not wanting to use a free OS in Android is not me saying Symbian is not open source and free, it is that it will not cost them anything to push out an Android phone.
And for full clarification, Android is under GPL and has less limitations than Symbian's EPL. EPL has a patent retaliation clause.
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- q8phantom
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- 08 Oct 2010
Let's now come to final solution which phone is better according to all the commments :
N8 is better because it has HDMI
NONONO
iPhone 4 is smoother and has higher resoultion
nono Samsung has SuperAMOLED and android it's better
idiot, Nokia is well known and has better signal and symbian is a light os and is more effecient,
but the iPhone looks cool in the hand, OMG it have iOS and applications more than anything else
But the N8 support usb flash drive, wtf are you guys talkin about
this must be the real comparsion iPhone has 1GHz processor so it's faster
-hey it doesn't mean N8 is not fast Symbian can use 680GHz and works very fast watch N8 on youtube!
N8 is better because it has HDMI
NONONO
iPhone 4 is smoother and has higher resoultion
nono Samsung has SuperAMOLED and android it's better
idiot, Nokia is well known and has better signal and symbian is a light os and is more effecient,
but the iPhone looks cool in the hand, OMG it have iOS and applications more than anything else
But the N8 support usb flash drive, wtf are you guys talkin about
this must be the real comparsion iPhone has 1GHz processor so it's faster
-hey it doesn't mean N8 is not fast Symbian can use 680GHz and works very fast watch N8 on youtube!
N8 is better because it has HDMI
NONONO
iPhone 4 is smoother and has higher resoultion
nono Samsung has SuperAMOLED and android it's better
idiot, Nokia is well known and has better signal and symbian is a light os and is more effecient,
but the iPhone looks cool in the hand, OMG it have iOS and applications more than anything else
But the N8 support usb flash drive, wtf are you guys talkin about
this must be the real comparsion iPhone has 1GHz processor so it's faster
-hey it doesn't mean N8 is not fast Symbian can use 680GHz and works very fast watch N8 on youtube!
N8 is better because it has HDMI
NONONO
iPhone 4 is smoother and has higher resoultion
nono Samsung has SuperAMOLED and android it's better
idiot, Nokia is well known and has better signal and symbian is a light os and is more effecient,
but the iPhone looks cool in the hand, OMG it have iOS and applications more than anything else
But the N8 support usb flash drive, wtf are you guys talkin about
this must be the real comparsion iPhone has 1GHz processor so it's faster
-hey it doesn't mean N8 is not fast Symbian can use 680GHz and works very fast watch N8 on youtube!
.... 500 pages later
N8 is better because it has HDMI
NONONO
iPhone 4 is smoother and has higher resoultion
nono Samsung has SuperAMOLED and android it's better
idiot, Nokia is well known and has better signal and symbian is a light os and is more effecient,
but the iPhone looks cool in the hand, OMG it have iOS and applications more than anything else
But the N8 support usb flash drive, wtf are you guys talkin about
this must be the real comparsion iPhone has 1GHz processor so it's faster
-hey it doesn't mean N8 is not fast Symbian can use 680GHz and works very fast watch N8 on youtube!
but in diffrent languages, hehe this is way cool why not summrize everything
N8 Advantages over Both :
HDMI and 5.1 Dolby output
USB on the go - Plug in USB flash memories.
12 M.P Camera ( HD recording with 3x very smooth zoom )
FM Transmitter ( Go and find how it works on youtube this is not FM Radio! )
Free Navigations, Don't tell me OVI Maps is useless, Used it 10 days in three countries with zero problems ( Germany, Austria and Italy )
Dedicated GPU, Graphics Processor Unit
MicroSD Support
iPhone 4 :
High Resolution Screen
iOS App Store (Symbian^3 is open source consider it again)
Faster Processor and more RAM
Samsung Glaxy S (NOT FAMILIAR TOO MUCH) :
SuperAMOLED gives most beautiful colors our of the three!
Android and it's nice community!
Feel free to add things!
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- nicksti
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- 08 Oct 2010
follower, 08 Oct 2010Poor fella, you really want to hate Nokia right?
Call q... moreYou are right, I misread the FM Transmitter. The SE W980 has one, I used that phone. With phones coming with 3.5mm audio jacks that feature is not so great.
Audio support out the box. Of course in the wide world of apps you can get anything you need for some OSes.
USB OTG is not a game changer. Run me through some real world examples on how you just cannot do without it. And have you seen the iPhone's sales? Clearly its dependancy on iTunes has not hurt it to the point where it cannot sell more than other phones. Many people actually buy music and that is where they win.
There are good reasons to own an N8. One can present reasons why someone should own a Droid X, Evo 4G, Galaxy S, etc. The only point I am trying to make is that the Nokia N8 is not a game changer. Not like the N95 was. Not like the Apple iPhone was. Even with the N8's class leading camera. Because people have moved on from the camera phone craze. That was 2 years ago.
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- Anonymous
- Pv9
- 08 Oct 2010
nicksti, 08 Oct 2010That analogy does not even make any sense. What he is sayin... more*sighs*. Symbian is OPEN-SOURCE [since AT LEAST several months ago].
so free?, yes it is!
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- Wheez
- nS%
- 08 Oct 2010
nicksti, 08 Oct 2010Wheez - my post is a comment on people saying the N8 has &q... moreYea I actually noticed that later that the guy you were originally replying to almost as bad as some random nokia hater and while I love the N8 and suggest is to just about everyone, I do not agree and encourage saying stuff like the N8 is the best.
Best for me, but possibly the worst for you.