Nokia N8 Review: Is Nokia's Symbian^3 Flagship Smartphone Worthy of the Hype

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There are probably a few boxes any discussion of a serious interloper in the Big Two’s smartphone playground should tick. Not the least of which is the way this state of affairs came to a head, because for people who aren’t completely mentally divorced from the market events of about four short years ago, the complete reversal of Microsoft and Nokia’s fortunes in that space still can’t help but simultaneously shock and educate. Both are now rallying and attempting to retake what they’ve lost and it’s Nokia’s effort that we’ll be looking at today, personified in the N8, a strapping example of which we’ve been furnished with by Three UK.

The unboxing belies the phone’s high end aspirations, as it’s the same packaging you’ll find on Nokia’s lower tier efforts, such as the C3. Then again, we’ve never understood the whole fascination with the packaging, unless it’s something like the Nintendo DSi had a while back, where the box contained lights that shone on you and a small speaker that played cheering sounds when you opened it. If it doesn’t do anything special, it’s just a box as far as we’re concerned. The first thing that hits you is the heavy, angular, 90’s cathode ray tube TV aesthetic. It’s not a handsome device by our admittedly subjective yardstick and the bulk of the massively impressive camera’s huge sensor really lends itself to the impression that you’re picking up more of a compact shooter than a phone, but as we’ll see later, that’s also its main strength.

The 3.5” OLED affair is surprisingly usable in sunlight, but the differences between it and the SLCD fallback which makes up most of HTC’s line since the famed AMOLED shortage that truly matter pretty much stop there. On the matter of what covers the screen, we have a few admiring nods to dispense as what you’ll see arrayed before you is nothing less than Gorilla Glass, which you’ll probably recall is to scratches pretty much what Bruce Willis is to terrorists named Hans. Now we didn’t really go to town on it, mostly because of our non- violent nature, but trust us when we tell you it can take punishment of the scratching variety like a champ.

It appears Nokia are picking up on Apple’s more disreputable habits, as in a departure from regular Nokia policy, the phone features a non-removable (but still kind of removable) battery. And despite its bulk and off-putting look that slopes and angles all over the place, it seems well balanced, even more of a feat when considering it’s visibly bulkier on one side due to the camera bulge. The aluminum body feels solid and reassuring and we understand the paint is scratch-resistant as well. Nokia is following the admirable path of  building this phone to last and more than that, to last in style.

The centerpiece of any handset worth its salt these days is the processor, one area where Nokia smartphones have been severely lacking since, well, ever. And while the Gigahertz barrier has been shattered into pulp for a while now, with even 2 Ghz devices on the horizon, some might take the 680 Mhz locomotive pulling the Nokia N8 along as a sign of weakness. Some, though, would perhaps not be aware of the Broadcomm graphics processor playing second fiddle and Symbian^3’s apt usage of said sidekick. Yes, the OS has been optimized to make good use of the little fellow in all endeavors pertaining to graphics, such as UI animations and flourishes and no less a task than mkv playback. Yes, the N8 comes with native Matroska support, which coupled with the HDMI out probably just made your day several different shades of sweet, presuming you’re a movie buff eying this particular slab of Nokia action. 256 MB of RAM might rain on some parades, but we haven’t encountered any particular situations where additional memory seemed a vital necessity.

The laundry list of additional perks, like Bluetooth 3.0 with A2DP, GPS, FM Radio (!), compass and accelerometer is certainly welcome, as is the inclusion of both BT 3.0 and FM Radio, which are stand-out features and deserve a mention, but there is nothing ultimately groundbreaking here apart from the sheer variety of options available.

The OS is one of the two prongs of Nokia’s strategy with this handset. The largest and sharpest one is definitely the camera, but there’s a bit of a gleam to this one as well. It’s no secret that even though Symbian has the largest install base of any smartphone platform out there at the moment, it’s losing ground fast due up to now to a firmly backwards-facing policies affecting both app distribution and the all-important OS interface. And while the latter has been addressed to a level that puts it on par with its adversaries, the first one still needs a bit of work.

The strides Symbian^3 has made interface-wise ensure there is nary a trace of necessity for a stylus or anything of the sort, it’s all touch this and widgets that and for the most part it’s exactly what everyone expected in terms of  general Symbian interface overhaul, with only the barest hint of the past in some menus.

The downside is this nasty habit Symbian^3 has of forcing you to download and install a .sisx file for each and every app, including the Ovi app store, which is just a plain bad idea and hobbles the store app itself, a surprisingly pleasant bit of software on its own. Navigation seems a bit slow, with screen panes taking a bit to scroll, but we rather suspect it’s to do with the OS rather than a performance issue, as the animation is smooth, it just takes a while for the transition.

The central problem of the Nokia N8′s OS, however, lies with its competitors. The enormous mindshare both Android and iOS have in today’s market (and which Nokia desperately wants) is staggering and so is their users’ choice of apps. Whatever new app your favorite supermarket is putting out, whatever new mobile game sweeps smartphone users off their feet, chances are you’ll be getting it months late if at all. Not to mention Twitter and Facebook apps, which  don’t have a full and proper implementation at the moment. Add to that unique advantages like Android’s Flash, which allows for a much fuller Internet experience, or the iPhone’s Retina display and the price you’re paying for that camera starts to look pretty high.

Let’s get one thing straight, if you’re going to buy this phone, you’ll be doing it for the camera. Almost anything else here can be had elsewhere, apart from the OS, which, let’s be frank, isn’t exactly a huge draw right now. And forget the 12 MP figure for a minute, that’s impressive, sure, but wouldn’t mean much if the heavy lifting were still done by the software. What we have here is something a lot more special, namely the largest camera sensor ever placed into a mobile phone, a 1/1.83-incher, a Carl Zeiss autofocus lens with mechanical shutter and a whole lot of awe from would-be photographers when they get a look at the finished shots and their potential for tinkering. Hopefully the menagerie my wife has set to guarding my Xbox games will edify you on the subject of image quality:

Now, we’re no professional, or even amateur photographers by any stretch of the imagination, but you don’t really have to be to appreciate the extent to which the cause of mobile phone cameras has been advanced here. The staggered press camera button which allows a would-be photographer a natural way to use autofocus also adds to this phone’s impressive photography credentials. Videographers are also covered, with a robust 720p recording mode.

We like to think that somewhere down the line we’ll be able to skip the whole reception is good, no distortion was audible, 3G signal was smashing bit in reviews, since in this day and age, why shouldn’t a certain level of quality in those features be a given? Well, Nokia’s camera with a phone attached has definitely seen fit to support us in our dream, since we’ve experienced no dropped calls, audio quality was perfectly clear and Three’s 3G signal held up even in crowded venues.

Ultimately, not a bad sort, this. Not easy on the eyes, which is to say our eyes, your own may be able to bear heavier burdens. Your pockets as well, as both the dimensions and heft are quite generous. The specs aren’t blistering, but you’d be hard pressed to find anything inadequate here, not to mention the raft of features, which covers almost anything under the sun apart from a physical keyboard. There’s that glorious camera, the best one fitted into a mobile phone that money can buy at the moment. And then there’s the teenage OS which will take a lot of time to become one of the default choices for developers to push their apps onto, which means you’ll be strapped for choices. It’s built to last, so there’s also that. You ultimately need to ask yourself what’s more important to you, a rich app ecosystem with a flawless user experience, or a brilliant camera replacement that can shoot almost in the DSLR-realm with an immature OS weighed down with teething problems? Because if it’s the second one even by the slightest margin, you owe it to yourself to try this one out.