That Russian Nokia N8 Was Lost Too

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Today, Nokia officially announced their next flagship smartphone, the Nokia N8. Yesterday, a Russian blogger posted an in-depth hands-on preview of the device that wasn’t so positive. Turns out, that was a prototype N8 that wasn’t supposed to be out in public hands. Guess that’s been happening a lot lately.

I wondered why a little-known Russian blogger had gotten this exclusive scoop on this high-profile phone. I assumed he had been granted a review unit and broke his NDA early by posting before the phone was officially announced. But Nokia told MobileCrunch that it was a prototype development unit, which explains some of why the Russian blogger – Eldar – may have found some of the software unappealing.

One of the big complaints that Eldar had was on the new Symbian^3 operating system. He said that the changes from Symbian S60 were “cosmetic only” and said the OS “felt premature”. Nokia’s comments to MobileCrunch are as follows:

Buried deep down in the blogger’s salacious headlines about the software not being ready, was the most important point. This is a very early, pre-production prototype with dated software that is not yet ready. So the site’s comments that the software ‘felt premature’ is probably one of the more blindingly obvious things you will read this year.

Nokia says they’d just like their N8 phone back now that the phone has been officially announced. After all, what company wouldn’t want a pre-release phone back. Nokia says:

However, whilst we are determined to protect our intellectual property and maintain the surprise when a shiny new gadget is introduced, we are not going to do so at the expense of the working conditions we enjoy here at Nokia. We are not the Secret Police, and we want to maintain our culture of openness.

So, we’re willing to give Nokia the benefit of the doubt that the “Nokia X8″ prototype that Eldar previewed was unfinished, hence the poor performance of Symbian^3.