Nokia N8's Complete Review

I got an early (but short) access to a pre-release test unit, so here comes an introductory preview of the long awaited and highly anticipated Nokia N8. As this time I was able to test the N8 during just three days, I don't think it is sufficient to draw any final conclusions or judge every possible detail, especially that the tested unit wasn't a final one, i.e. still subject to changes and optimizations. Therefore, this article is meant to be an "introductory preview" presenting the general look and feel of the device and the most important changes it brings when it comes to hardware and the new Symbian^3 platform, and the final, full review will follow very soon, most probably within just one or two weeks, once I get the promised final device.

First impression.....

is just THRILLING. It surely is the BEST BUILT Symbian smartphone from Nokia, if not of all Symbian devices from all manufacturers. It was cold outside when the courier delivered the package and when I was taking the phone out of its box I felt that the casing was cold. "Metal!" I thought and I was right. The casing (but the small parts on both ends) is metal. Everything fits perfectly and makes a 'monobloc' impression, like if everything was made from just one piece of material. And while it actually consists of several parts, they're all tightly joined and non-removable. That's right, the battery cover is NOT meant to be opened by end-users and while a small T screw holding it is available and accessible from the outside, it is not supposed to be touched, so it's kind of Apple way. On one hand, such a solution is surely a drawback as it does not let one use spare batteries, but on the other hand it's probably the only way to ensure such a tight and precise build quality where all parts fit like a glove, don't move or squeak. Whether not being able to replace batteries on the move is a disadvantage or not will depend on how good the battery life turns out to be, something that I wasn't able to reliably test during just three days. More about this the next time, in the upcoming final review.

The next thing you see is obviously the screen, taking up almost the whole front side of the device. It's the second (after the X6) capacitive touch screen from Nokia, but the first with multitouch support and of 3.5" size (compared to 3.2" on the X6). Whether it's made of real glass... I don't know for sure, but it definitely feels so. It's very hard and seems to be highly scratch resistant - at least I didn't manage to scratch it. Its hardness and how it sounds when tapped with a hard object VERY closely resembles glass, so it must be it. It's an AMOLED screen, so it's extremely bright and vivid. If you know the Samsung Omnia HD then you may expect the same quality.

Another advantage of the AMOLED screen is its power efficiency. It's been many years since real screensavers (i.e. the ones shown ALL THE TIME when the device is not used) disappeared from smartphones, as they were consuming too much power and required backlight in order to be visible. The N8 brings such true screensavers back and you can have it shown PERMANENTLY when your phone is on standby. You can choose between large digital clock or Music player screensaver, which will be shown during all time of inactivity. Two remaining screensavers (animation and slideshow) use full backlight so they are limited to 60 seconds max and then switch to blank screen. AMOLED screen's power efficiency also allowed to extend the screen time-out to 30 minutes (backlight goes off after 60 seconds max but screen contents remain visible). Of course, the shorter time-out you use the longer battery life you'll get as the screen is still one of the biggest battery-eaters.

 

Multitouch - a magic word so far reserved for users of smartphones based on iOS, Android or WM, with the N8 comes to Symbian, too. N8's screen is a multitouch one and gestures like pinch-to-zoom are supported in all applications that can make use of it, including e.g. the web browser or the image viewer. The screen is as sensitive as the best capacitive touch displays on the market, so there's really nothing to complain about here. Pure enjoyment! And due to N8's very fast hardware, scrolling or zooming is really nice and smooth.

Following the recent trends, the number of buttons and controls has been limited to the minimum. There are no Call/End buttons (you use virtual buttons on the touch screen for that) and the only button on the front is the "S60 Menu" key. Press it to open the Menu, press and hold in the Menu or in any application to open the Task Manager (scrollable list of thumbnails representing running applications; tap the one you wish to bring to the foreground or tap its "X" icon to close it). On the right there's the Camera button, Volume/Zoom +/- key and screen lock slider, on top you can find the Power/Profile button, the HDMI port (under the protective cover with HDMI logo) and 3.5 mm audio jack, and on the right side there are SIM and memory card slots (protected with covers) and microUSB port (not covered). And... that's it.

As mentioned, the tested unit is not a final one, so it didn't come in a retail box. I only got the phone and two adaptors this time. One of the adaptors is a HDMI-mini to the full-size HDMI, and the other one is a micro-USB to full USB, letting one connect USB accessories (the N8 supports USB OTG and thus can use e.g. pendrives or other USB based mass storage media).

Hardware

Nokia N8 is powered by the ARM1176 processor running at 680 MHz. This is the second fastest processor ever used in a Symbian device; only Sony Ericsson Vivaz/Vivaz Pro use a faster and more advanced one (ARM Cortex-A8 @ 720 MHz). Additionally, it contains a Broadcom VideoCore III GPU (hardware graphics accelerator) for superior graphic performance.

OK, so if it has a slower CPU than Vivaz then it should be slower, right? Well, it isn't. On the contrary, it is the Vivaz that feels like running at a snail pace compared to the N8. How come? Well, it seems that it's Symbian^3 that brings new life to Symbian smartphones, including a series of optimizations and improvements. It is also N8's VideoCore III GPU that seems to be considerably faster than the PowerVR SGX530 GPU used in majority of the remaining Symbian devices, including the Vivaz (and also e.g. the Omnia HD).

Just three days wasn't enough to run detailed tests but even just GLBenchmark 1.1 provided very interesting results. In almost all graphic tests the N8 performed about twice faster than the Vivaz, which in turn in most cases was up to twice faster than the Omnia HD. If the N8 outperforms the Omnia HD in graphic applications by up to four times then you can surely imagine how much faster it is in this regard compared to other Nokia S60 smartphones mostly using ARM11 434 MHz processors...

Operating memory. The N8 is the first Symbian smartphone from Nokia to *FINALLY* include 256 MB SDRAM. Gosh, why did it take them so long? All other manufacturers of S60 phones like Sony Ericsson (Satio, Vivaz, Vivaz pro) or Samsung (Omnia HD) clearly understood long ago that 128 MB was far from being enough. Only Nokia kept using such a small memory configuration until now.

 

Why is it so important? Because SDRAM is the operating memory of the phone, i.e. the memory needed by programs to run. Insufficient memory means limited, compromised multitasking not letting one run too many applications at once or restricting the number of possible web browser windows opened simultaneously. On S60 5th Edition devices with 128 MB onboard only about 40-50 MB remains free as the rest is used by the operating system. Compared to this, phones with 256 MB SDRAM leave about 140-150 MB free for the user and 3rd party applications, i.e. three times more. And so it looks with the N8. Shortly speaking, on the N8 you get three times more RAM than on e.g. the N97 or the C6. You need to push the device MUCH harder to ever see the infamous "Insufficient memory. Close some applications and try again" message. During my tests, I haven't seen it at all.

Storage. The N8 has about 170 MB free internal memory (disk C:) and 16 GB of built-in storage (disk E:). Additionally, it has a memory card slot supporting memory cards up to 32 GB, thus allowing storage memory expansion up to a total of 48 GB.

 

USB OTG. As aforementioned, the N8 supports the USB-On-The-Go mode, which basically means that you can connect other USB devices to it like you do it on your computer and the N8 will act as a host and will power these devices. It comes with an adaptor "converting" its microUSB port to a full USB connector. Of course, a smartphone is not a desktop PC so there are certain limitations. First of all, being a phone it cannot supply as much power through the USB port as computers. Nokia suggests that in case of any device drawing more than 200 mA of power, an external power supply should be used. And that's correct: the 2.5" hard drive I tried to connect to it (without external power supply connector) couldn't even start rotating. On the contrary, all USB storage memory devices (like pendrives) worked just fine and without any problems, getting instantly recognized and accessible. Once you connect a pendrive, File Manager launches automatically and lets you browse/manage the connected storage device. I also managed to successfully connect a digicam and get access to all images on its memory card. Just for fun, I also tried it with other USB devices including e.g. a USB gamepad, but I got a message about unsupported USB device and a request to disconnect it. I guess the rule is that all "fully plug&play" devices will work OK, while devices requiring installation of specific drivers will not be recognized, just because of lack of drivers... A memory card reader that needs a driver in Windows didn't get recognized on the N8, but another, fully "mass storage" complaint one, worked perfectly. All in all, out-of-box you get support for pendrives and other devices like e.g. memory cards in digicams properly connecting as mass storage without requiring specific drivers. Support for other devices depends on driver availability.

Multimedia. The N8 has a 12 Megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss Tessar f/2.8 28 mm equiv. lens and supports HD 720p (1280x720) video recording at 30 fps. It's Nokia's first (and Symbian's second after the Sony Ericsson Satio) Symbian smartphone with this camera resolution and also Nokia's first Symbian phone with HD video recording (a feature already brought to Symbian by Omnia HD, Sony Ericsson Satio, Vivaz and Vivaz Pro).

For now (due to very short access to the device) I can only provide a handful of samples (below) but expect a plethora of them in the upcoming final review. Long story short, the quality is really EXCEPTIONAL, both for video and stills. And the same can be said about the performance: focusing is EXTREMELY fast, even in very poor lighting conditions (where the red AF assist light helps it), I'd say one second or so, like on high-end digicams. What's more, it is also highly reliable. Even in poorly lighted room at night, I had to try really hard to get a missed focus. And in good light during a sunny day it is simply instantenous and 100% on target.

 

 

Both videos and stills are also EXTREMELY low noise, again, on par with the best digicams on the market. Even in low light, you can safely disable flash and the device will automatically use higher ISO sensitivity to ensure sharp shot, yet the resulting image will be almost free of noise. Really impressive!

Oh, and I almost forgot to praise the camera for its very strong Xenon flash and its tiny, internal, automatic cover (under the protective glass) that opens when you launch the camera app and automatically closes when you shut it down (or when the camera switches to standby) to protect the lens and the imaging sensor.

All in all, in the imaging and video recording department, the N8 turns out to be really EXCELLENT, in the strict top. And it's NOT any worse when it comes to video playback. Connect the N8 (using its HDMI mini slot and the budled converter or your own HDMI mini cable) to a HD TV and enjoy true HD quality on a Blueray level. And it's not just a gimmick; as the N8 supports DivX out of the box it'll surely be used as a portable movie player quite often. There's really not much else I can say here: multimedia quality is simply stunning, take my word.

Maybe the only thing which still can be described as good, just not exceptional, is the audio playback. The N8 has stereo speakers, but located next to each other and sounding through one common "hole" located below the camera lens. While their output is directed in opposite directions, for my liking it's too little for real stereo effect. But who really expects true stereo from phone's built-in speakers? It's got the 3.5 mm audio jack connector so you can connect some decent headphones or an amplifier to it, or in case of video content you can send the audio digitally via HDMI. And in such case you get audio of really good quality. I'm not an audiophile so I won't give any final judgement on it as it's very personal thing, but I don't thing anyone will be disappointed with audio quality.

Connectivity, data transmission. The N8 is the first Symbian device with Bluetooth 3.0. The first thing you notice is how fast it is. A rocket. Of course, it supports stereo audio and the whole set of profiles, including A2DP, AVRCP, BIP, DUN, FTP, GAP, GAVDP, GOEP, HFP, HSP, OPP, PBAP, SAP and SPP. Is there something missing? Unlikely.

Quad-band GSM/GPRS (850/900/1800/1900 MHz) and full choice of WCDMA bands (850/900/1700/1900/2100), 10.2 Mbps HSDPA, 2.0 Mbps HSUPA and WLAN b/g/n should not disappoint anyone, either. Needless to say, the N8 obviously also has a secondary front-facing camera for video calls, Assisted GPS receiver (well, apparently less sensitive than the one on phones with OMAP3 processors like the Omnia HD, the Vivaz or the Maemo-based Nokia N900; unlike with them, I wasn't able to get fix indoors and had to place the phone much closer to the window), accelerometer, proximity and light sensor, as well as compass (magnetometer) sensor. It also has two microphones for improved voice quality and noise cancellation and FM transmitter.

Have I forgotten something? If I did, please drop me a note in this thread on ourSymbian ^3 Discussion Forum - all questions posted there will be addressed in the upcoming final N8 review.

Software

As you surely know, the N8 is the world's first device powered with the newSymbian ^3. What is Symbian ^3? Basically, it is an EVOLUTION of S60 5th Edition (also referred to as Symbian ^1) towards Symbian ^4, or in other words an intermediate step between Symbian ^1 and Symbian ^4 allowing for smooth transition and providing developers with time needed to switch to Qt development.

Symbian ^3 includes Qt support (preinstalled runtimes) but also still supports "old" S60 software and APIs, so - as mentioned - it is a bridge between the old and the new system (which will be Qt-only). Good for developers, you may say, but in fact it is also good for us USERS. Thanks to such an 'intermediate' platform release, this time a situation was avoided that badly affected the Symbian ecosystem several years ago during the Symbian pre-9 to Symbian 9.x transition. In that case, there was no such intermediate step and as Symbian OS 9.1 broke compatibility with previous OS releases, early adopters of Symbian 9.1 phones initially had no 3rd party software (maybe except for Java midlets) to use on their new devices. This time, thanks to Symbian ^3, while developers slowly switch to Qt and start releasing Qt-based software, you can still use all 3rd party applications and games released over the last years for S60 5th Edition phones.

But that's not all. Symbian ^3 also brings a number of improvements and optimizations compared to previous OS releases and on the N8 it also adds support for multitouch gestures. Considering the impressive performance mentioned in the hardware part of this preview (e.g. being noticeably faster than e.g. the Sony Ericsson Vivaz despite its faster and more advanced processor) the system software must have also been tweaked for using the hardware more optimally or taking advantage of hardware graphics acceleration.

What's really nice for a person who has used Symbian phones in the past and wants to upgrade to the N8 is that the UI is both different and very similar. It is different because a number of annoying things about the S60 UI has been removed providing much better user experience, but at the same time the UI retained the same "logic" and similar layout, so it does not take getting used to from the scratch.

Two changes that I enjoy the most is getting rid of that annoying double-tap-or-single-tap inconsistency troubling and annoying all S60 5th Edition users since the introduction of the touch-enabled S60 version, and moving the location of virtual buttons in the landscape display orientation.

An overwhelming majority of operations now requires just one tap. Which means that you'll no longer find yourself in a situation (well known to every Symbian ^1 user) where you tap an icon or a menu/list entry and instead of seeing how it opens/launches it does... nothing as it requires double-tap. Or you double-tap something and it turns out that it only required one tap and your second tap was recognized as a click on something on the screen that opened after the first tap. The well known S60 nightmare. Not anymore.

Of course, that single tap vs. double tap on S60 5th Edition wasn't meaningless and it was distinguished that way intentionally. Some items required double-tap to be launched/opened because after one tap they offered some options or settings available via the menu under the left function button. So it had to be substituted for somehow on the new system. And it is, by tapping-and-holding. Tap and hold an item for a menu to pop up under your finger providing options to choose from, like e.g. on UIQ phones or on Maemo. Shortly speaking, just like it is on majority of other systems and like it should have been on the S60 right from the beginning, too.

 

The second warmly welcome change is that virtual buttons in the landscape mode are finally located where they should have always been: at the BOTTOM of the display, and not on its right side where they were taking (for nothing) some 20% of screen area. It always puzzled me how they were shown the proper way (i.e. at the bottom) on the home screen but were wasting so much precious space on the right of the display in all other screens and applications. Again, no more. On Symbian ^3 in the N8, in horizontal mode the buttons are ALWAYS shown as a thin bar (with clock and some status icons in the middle) in ALL screens and applications, leaving FULL SCREEN WIDTH to the user. I just wish the upper status bar (with screen/application name and network signal/battery level icons) was made thinner/shorter, too, providing even more of USABLE display space. If the battery bars need that much, why not display them horizontally? The font used for the title can also be made smaller, it almost hurts my eyes.

Another function that got tweaked is the Application switcher ("Open applications"). On the N8 it shows apps running in the background as large thumbnails showing the current state/view of an application, between which you can scroll by swiping your finger over them (like everywhere else, scrolling is kinetic). Tapping a thumbnail brings the selected application to the foreground so that you can instantly start using it. Each thumbnail also has a large "X" icon in its upper right corner which can be used to close applications you no longer need. Scrolling the list, switching between applications and closing them is instantenous.

The N8 has three fully separate home screens and each of them can hold completely different content. Swipe over the screen to switch (again, with kinetic scrolling) between the home screens in a loop, i.e. when you reach the leftmost one then the rightmost will come next, and vice versa. Which screen is currently shown is indicated with a "three dots" icon between the two virtual buttons at the screen bottom.

 

Three separate home screens provide really A LOT of space for content, so you surely won't find yourself spending time on hesitating what's more important to place there, taking place that could be used for something else. Feel free to add whatever you like: widgets (a really nice selection comes preconfigured), shortcuts to applications, contacts, quick notifications about events, missed calls or messages, summary for calendar entries, new messages, music player widget, your favourite social network or IM widget, etc. Such three screens also make it convenient to separately group items you need for work, at school, or privately. Unless you switch to that screen, private items not needed at work (or vice versa) won't be visible.

 

Like on other S60 devices, the Power button also provides access to changing Profiles. On the N8, however, it also contains an additional option, "Enable Power Saving". Basically, it lets you quickly switch the device to a mode that still lets you operate it, but focuses on as low power consumption as possible. Screen brightness is switched to a lower (but still sensor-controlled) level, the processor operates in a more power-efficient mode (lower performance but also much lower power consumption), unused connections (e.g. Bluetooth) are switched off, all menu transitions and effects (kinetic scrolling, transparencies, etc) are disabled so that they do not put additional load on the CPU and/or GPU. You can instantly switch to normal mode anytime, just by selecting "Disable Power saving" from the Profiles menu.

 

As mentioned earlier, the N8 and its capacitive multi-touch screen provide support for gestures. Such a support is present wherever needed/useful. Things like swipe-to-scroll are available throughout the entire UI and kinetic scrolling is implemented everywhere: home screens, menus, lists, images in the Gallery, web pages, documents, etc. Whenever some content supports rezooming (e.g. picture, PDF document, web page), you can use pinch-to-zoom to enlarge or decrease it. If you zoom in or out, double tapping the screen quickly reverts the standard size. The following screenshot shows the "cover flow" screen of the Media player.

Back to multimedia capabilities partially described in the hardware part, yes, the N8 does play DivX. Again, less than three days weren't enough to test it with all popular codecs, bitrates, etc. as there were a lot more things to play with to be able to write even just this introductory preview, but that couple of DivX files I managed to try it with worked out the box. As I wrote, playback quality is simply STUNNING, both on the phone screen and - even more - on a HD TV via HDMI. That's what the N8 really excells at.

A bridge between device's superior video recording and playback capabilities is provided by the preinstalled Video editor application, letting the user easily create videos from pictures and video clips. It offers rich editing functions: transitions, adding text and soundtrack.

The Camera application provides both fully automatic and highly customizable manual mode where you can freely set the following parameters:

• Scene mode: automatic, user defined, close-up, portrait, landscape, sport, night, night portrait
• Face detection: enable/disable
• Grid: enable/disable
• Self-timer: off/2/10/20 seconds
• Colour mode: normal, sepia, black & white, vidid
• White balance: automatic, sunny, cloudy, incandescent, fluorescent
• Exposure: from -2 to +2 with 0.5 EV step
• ISO sensitivity: automatic, low, medium, high
• Contrast: multiple steps controlled with a slider
• Sharpness: hard, normal, soft
• Flash: automatic, red-eye reduction, on, off.

In the video mode the following options can be manually customized:

• White balance: automatic, sunny, cloudy, incandescent, fluorescent
• Colour mode: normal, sepia, black & white, vidid
• Scene mode: Automatic, Low light, Night.

Video can be recorded in three resolutions: HD 720p (1280x720), VGA (640x480) and low resolution 3GPP for multimedia messaging. Images can be taken in the following resolutions: 0.3 MPix, 1.3 MPix, 3.0 MPix, 9 MPix and 12 MPix. During video recording, autofocus works continuously.

Other preinstalled applications include among others: WebTV (access to IP TV services like Sky News, Viasat, BBC, India Today, Al Jazeera, etc., 35 channels/services preconfigured on the tested device), multilanguage dictionary with downloadable languages (known from other S60 phones), QuickOffice (the new version with Office 2007 support), Zip, Adobe Reader LE 2.5, Multiscanner (text scanner / card reader), Message reader (reads text messages aloud), Ovi Sync, Nokia Chat application (Google Talk, Messenger, Yahoo, Ovi, Jabber), Social, Photo Editor, Here And Now (weather, movies, events in your neighbourhood), YouTube (linking to the mobile version on the tested unit), F-Secure antivirus software, Psiloc's Traveler, Search (all-device search), and more.

All applications and detailed functions will be described in detail in the full review as at this moment they are still subject to changes and improvements.

 

OK, I praised a lot of things and actually haven't criticized anything so far. So isn't there anything that deserves criticism? There surely is. It's just that I want to reserve most of the criticism for the full review, based on a final unit. The current sample wasn't a finished product.

However, what I can criticize already now is the 2.0 mm charger connector and the device shipping with 2.0 mm charger. Yes, it does also have microUSB port and it does support USB charging, so it's not a huge problem. But I really hoped that after Nokia used microUSB chargers in a number of their phones the proprietary port was gone for good. For unknown reasons, it has returned, not only on the N8 but also on e.g. the C6. Has Nokia manufactured too much chargers for the 2.0 mm connector and tries to get rid of them?

 

As mentioned earlier, I am still not sure what to think about the non-removable battery. I've always criticized Apple for that (and highly valued the possibility of having a spare battery on my previous Nokia phones) so I'll consider it a drawback unless the battery life proves to be really excellent.

Thirdly, while Symbian ^3 on the N8 provides uncomparably better experience than Symbian ^1 thanks to numerous improvements and tweaks, I'd warmly welcome some further optimizations. For instance, it would be really useful to be able to close/dismiss a dialog by tapping anywhere outside of it, instead of having to tap the "Cancel" (or similar) button.

I am also desperately waiting for Nokia to improve the web browser, which (except for improvements resulting from the multitouch screen, like e.g. pinch-to-zoom) hasn't actually changed at all. What annoys me the most is that there is still no option to manually open a new window.

Other preinstalled applications, like e.g. Calendar, Messaging or Contacts, haven't changed, either. They're the same as on S60 5th Edition. Some call them nice and easy to use, others consider them dumb and too simple, so it's up to everyone to judge it.

The last thing I would like to mention that such a beautiful screen simply cries for higher resolution. Maybe it's just me, as I really got used to N900's 800x480 display, but WVGA has actually became a standard on all high end smartphone platforms. N8's nHD (640x360) looks a bit dated in this regard.

And that's all for now. Full review is coming soon and will include much deeper insight into hardware and Symbian ^3, as well as a nice selection of image and video samples.

If you have any questions you'd like me to address in the final review or any comments regarding information contained in this preview, please post them on our Symbian ^3 Discussion Forum.

Summary

Undobtedly, the N8 is the most powerful Symbian smartphone ever created. The smoothness and performance of the UI is simply stunning (at least on a fresh, not "stuffed" device), the display is marvellous, and the build quality is exceptional. Numerous improvements and optimizations make the Symbian ^3 system much more enjoyable to use, and support for both S60 and Qt makes it a bridge between old and new Symbian providing bi-directional compatibility. I wish the screen was WVGA and I'm not sure if non-removable battery is the way to go, but I don't want to judge it before some longer tests. What still needs to be improved is the built-in web browser and some of the standard applications, which haven't changed since Symbian^1.

What I liked:

• ARM1176 CPU @ 680 MHz + Broadcom VideoCore III GPU provide fantastic performance and smooth user experience
• 256 MB SDRAM (with about 140 MB free) means three times more operating memory than on Nokia's S60 5th Edition phones
• great capacitive multitouch AMOLED screen, support for gestures like pinch-to-zoom
• top notch build quality, metal casing and (probably) real glass display, best built smartphone from Nokia ever
• 12 Megapixel Carl Zeiss camera, HD 720p video recording - fantastic quality, almost noiseless
• USB On-The-Go, works well with e.g. pendrives and digicams
• All connectivity and data transmission technologies you might expect: Bluetooth 3.0, WLAN b/g/n, HSDPA 10 Mpbs, USB 2.0 Fullspeed
• HDMI connector, HD quality playback on HD TV
• USB charging
• very useful "Power Saving Mode" providing quick and easy way to switch the device to low power consumption mode
• Symbian ^3 UI improvements: more consistent control, buttons in landscape mode moved to the bottom providing much more usable screen area, three home screens, improved application switcher

What I didn't like:

• battery cannot (or at least isn't supposed to) be replaced by the user
• majority of built-in applications (web browser, calendar, contacts, messaging) haven't changed
• 2.0 mm charger by default, even though USB charging is supported
• nHD seems to be too small resolution for such a great screen. WVGA is now a standard and should be used in the N8, too.