The Nokia N8 and My 2 Month Experience

I’ve had a Nokia N8 (thanks to Nokia for the loan) for about 2 months now and it’s about time I wrote a summary of my feelings about it. Remember I’m a mobile/internet camera nut, a long-time Nokia user and also a user of many mobile devices through my work at Carrypad.

The original idea of testing the N8 was to see if it would be the perfect partner for another mobile buddy I have in my life – the Samsung Galaxy Tab and to a large extent it has done that by being the phone, the camera and the offline navigation device but when the Galaxy Tab isn’t around and I want to do something with social media, the web or with a particular application in mind, the frustration levels quickly rise with the N8 highlighting that it really isn’t up to the task of being a smartphone for a mobile user like me.

I LOVE the design though. I picked up a Galaxy S the other day and thought, er, this feels cheap and it’s because the N8 is just one solid bit of quality engineering. You have to give Nokia credit for this. The screen (Gorilla Glass I seem to remember) is still totally scratch-free and I can’t see any signs of wear. The buttons are good quality too but i really wish Nokia had found a way to cover the camera lens. it annoys me no end that I have to wipe it before every use. Coming from the N82, I’m not getting used to it and screwing up a lot of photos.

Battery life is great too. I had a Sony Xperia X10 for a while and oh my god, the battery life was abysmal. I can go two days with the N8 without charging although I have to say, I don’t use it as much as I did the Xperia and that’s a significant point to make. The software is really old-school smartphone and even after years of using Symbian, I still get lost. Networking support is better than on my N82 and there are some great ‘tuning’ options but I was getting used to being a dumb user with Android and I don’t want to have to deal with this level of detail any more.

I’m also used to sharing, sharing, sharing on Android. Sharing to email, to Evernote, to Twitter, to Flickr, to Google Reader, to Bluetooth, to maps, to chat, to Facebook, to Google Tasks, to WordPress. When I hit the share option on Android I know that the sharing subsystem is going to pick up all possible conduits and present them in one menu. On the N8 there’s a share option but it only integrates with Nokias sharing system. For any other sharing options you’ve got to go to options –> send and even then, most 3rd-party apps don’t integrate into this. Gravity, for example, requires going through cut and paste hoops to get a URL into a tweet. The N8 drives me nuts in this respect.

Talking of URLs, what’s up with the browser? Well, let me be fair, the quality of the browser rendering isn’t that bad. The problems arise with the processing speed. It’s slow like, well, like ARM11 slow! Smartphones are below the 10-second barrier now for rendering pages and when you’re used to that, waiting 15 seconds seems like a lifetime. Oh, and can I share a URL? Not really.  Finally on the browser, the lack of text reflow just kills it. For small screens, reflow is a must. Yes, there’s, apparently, a software update coming that should improve the browser. Timescale: Future!

Maps are good. Thumbs up to Nokia for free maps, OTA map downloads and free navigation that works reliably. The GPS subsystem is good although having used 5 and even 7 inch devices in the car, the relatively small screen is not ideal for that scenario. For occasional use though, its fine.  Checking maps again today though, I see I haven’t used the application since I was in CES a month ago. Google Maps on the Galaxy Tab is getting far more use than the Nokia and that is probably because of the screen size. With Google Maps now caching whole cities, the offline argument for Nokia is fading too. I’m even ‘checking-in’ with latitude and tracking friends with it because, well, because they use Google services too!

While I was at CES I had fun with a huge wall-mounted TV in my room. I had taken an HDMI cable and after hearing about Big Screen, I was enjoying the N8 media application at 42″. Wireless transmission has to solve this HDMI cable problem though because I couldn’t lay in bed and use the N8 as the controller! HD video looked sharp (720p), music search and playback was easy and photo’s were nice to browse through. It’s these little features the Nokia keeps coming up with that make me love the N8…until I want to browse the web of course!

That brings me on to photos. Wow! This device has some serious technical quality. In some tests I did it beat my bridge camera of 4 years and a brand new Samsung compact camera I was testing. The flash is as good as the one on my old N82 too which means night-time party photography at CES was a whole lot of fun. I’m fairly confident I got photos that no-one else would have had a chance with. In one week at CES I took over 300 photos with the N8!

Panorama (3 photos) stitched with Windows Live Photo Gallery. Original on Flickr.

Video quality is fairly good too but I keep getting tripped up with focus. It’s fixed focus and doesn’t work well if you’re looking to do some close-up shots of a product found at CES. What’s more, there’s a hack out there that enables continuous auto-focus so it’s very frustrating not to have it in the stock firmware. (I’m running the recent PR1.1 version and it’s not included in that either)

There are other nice features too:

• Always on OLED screen clock / lockscreen
• USB OTG for attachment of USB drives, keyboard, mouse
• DVB-T accessory / DAB accessory via USB OTG
• HDMI port
• Cables supplied in box (HDMI, USB OTG)
• 2 charging methods (Nokia charger and micro-USB)
• FM receiver and transmitter
• High quality audio recorder
• High quality voice calling quality
• Timed profiles
• A battery save mode that works

At the end of the day though, I’m a blogger and a Google user. The N8 doesn’t reach the level of sync and share that I require on a daily basis. The speed of web access is also a problem along with one more thing – apps.

Once you’ve had apps, you can’t go back!

I miss: Google Sky Map, Latitude, WordPress, Google Talk, Google Reader (and share-to-reader), Kindle, lots of weather apps, HQ YouTube with commenting and sharing and that special moment you have when you discover a new app in the long tail of rubbish that’s out there in the Android Market. Yes, a few quality apps are better than hundreds of useless ones but even those quality apps seem to be largely missing from the OVI store.

The Nokia N8 for the average user.

You’ve just been listening to someone who lives life at the leading edge of mobile hardware and software ecosystems. Is the Nokia N8 for me? See below. Is it for others? Most definitely. It appears to be selling well and if I think about it, it fits in well with where the average person on  the street is (or is going) right now with smartphones. Take the UK. It’s a country of SMS, not of GTalk. N8’s are free with contract renewals and obviously the photo side of things is going down well for the after-work crowd. The N8 makes a great MP3 player with storage, speed and quality all round and for those looking for Facebook and Twitter, they’re easily integrated through Nokia’s sharing system. Yes, the N8 hits the mark with a mainstream crowd of phone users. It’s such a shame for Nokia that all the reviewers online are looking for something else and comparing it with the super-phones of today. At its current street price of under 400 euro, it’s a quality choice.

Is the Nokia N8 for me?

No. While I simply love the camera, I can’t get over the limitations of sharing, syncing with Google, web and applications. That’s not going to change over time because Android will always be in a better position there. I love the quality of the product and some of the unique features are almost lock-in for me. I’ll miss silly things like the always-on clock, timed profiles and I’ll curse my next phone when it doesn’t have adaptor cables included in the box. I’ll also have to make sure I get the battery life right on my next phone too! But no, this Google user has to say goodbye to the Nokia N8 and start a search for his next phone. That, is not going to be easy. A quick glance at my Android options and I see nothing that will satisfy my camera needs.

Do I recommend the N8?

If you’re a social network mad Twitterer with sharing on your mind and a big Google dependance, this isn’t for you but if not, absolutely! Especially if you fall into the following categories:

• Out and about – The camera works day, and night and is the best cameraphone in the business. Free offline maps and and navigation is a real value-add that only Nokia have. The N8 is semi rugged too.
• Music lover – The storage, playback quality and speed of music application are great.
• Voice user – Yup, the Nokia N8 makes a nice voice phone!
• Basic internet user – 3G quality is good and there’s a good suite of basic internet applications. A 200MB per month plan should cover you!

Again, thanks to Nokia for the loan of the N8.

My first N8 hands-on article at Carrypad is here. (Wow, was it really September?)

You can find some more articles on the N8 that i’ve written here on hiblue.com

Hiblue.com is my personal blog. I normaly write about tablets, netbooks and other mobile computing devices at Carrypad and UMPCPortal

Chippy.