Nokia has taken its time about it, but it has finally come out with a capacitive touch screen smart phone that feels like an iPhone ‘ other rivals such as HTC, LG, Motorola and Samsung have done this long ago but Nokia has always fallen short of full gesture controls on a sensitive screen. But Nokia is not content to catch up, it has put this phone together at an incredible €370, which will not only mean that plenty of operators can afford to take it, but they will immediately offer it fully subsidized and to the consumer for zero (probably on two year contracts and reasonable rates).
But with the Nokia N8 it has gone the whole hog and even better opened up the phone for the development environment that has so far bee used exclusively on its N900 ‘ the Qt environment. The phones is powered by the Texas Instruments 550 MHz OMAP3430 processor working with the SGX530 image processor from Imagination Technologies, the UK chip designer which has found favour in Apple devices to the points where Apple bought a big chunk of its shares.
All around the specification is a monster, and the N8 doesn’t really replace any product line that Nokia has come out with. It will likely replace the N97 at the top end of its range, but it’s nothing like an N97, instead it comes with a 3.5 inch widescreen, 640 x 360 pixels display, direct connections to most social networks, is set up for high quality video and the Ovi App Store with a 12 Megapixel camera ‘ the highest spec of any camera on the handset market. Given that the 5.8 MP cameras using the Carl Zeiss optics have performed when tested almost as well as cameras with twice the MP rating, this camera will rock.
The camera also comes with Xenon flash and a large sensor that rivals those found in compact digital cameras and takes and edits HD-quality videos with an in built editing suite. Video capture is in 720p and it outputs to HDMI and comes with autofocus and a front facing webcam.
The N8 comes with Dolby Digital Plus surround sound when plugged into a home theatre system. It has 16 GB of flash storage onboard and you can add more to reach 48 GB in total.
Naturally the N8 also comes with free global Ovi Maps with walk and drive navigation, across 70 countries worldwide, a move that Nokia took a few months back to great effect on a wide range of its phones.
This is the first Symbian 3 Nokia handset, the version that is fully open sourced and it is this version that Nokia has been waiting for, with support for multi-touch gestures, flick scrolling and pinch-zoom. The device comes with multiple, personalized homescreens and has a new 2D and 3D graphics architecture with hardware acceleration. The Nokia N8 will be delivered in selected markets in the third quarter, which could mean any time after July 1st.