Rafe (and Ben Smith) were extremely busy at last week's Nokia N8 hands-on, taking dozens of top quality photos of the first Symbian^3 smartphone in all its OLED aluminium Xenon-equipped glory. In this interactive Nokia N8 gallery, Rafe takes the time to comment on each photo and what it shows. Grab a coffee and settle down to some serious N8 virtual hands-on time.
Read on in the full article.
Now open for comments! Sorry about the delay.
I know its only a small thing but I'm really glad to see the clock screensaver back - screensaver support was removed for the N97 which really irritated me for many weeks as I used to use cClock on my previous device (N95). Good to see it big as well (one of the nice features of cClock was its customisable font size)- hopefully it will show all missed events as well?
Does pinch-to-zoom work in Ovi maps? I haven't seen that in any demo videos.
hi rafe,
two things.....
1. how do you activate the camera? and is it quick to do?
2. you showed the two options for unlocking the phone - using the slider and the home key/touch screen combo. how do you lock it?
thanks,
aidan
btw - do you think by the time the n8 comes out in september people will have got bored and moved onto the symbian^4 N device that will have been leaked/ hinted at by then 😉
Hi Steve or maybe Rafe could you please find out if N8 has support for smart dialling as WM and Android. Nice pics though.
Cheers
There is a slider lock key like on the n86. It probably locks the device. And you can in all likelihood activate the camera with the camera shutter button. Like on he n95.
I'd like to know if the phone automatically switches from alphanumeric keypad to landscape qwerty when you flip the device or do you still have to select it every time like on the i8910? Looks like text entry is still a major weak point of symbian. At least on phones with no hardware keyboard.
How is scrolling in the browser? Still jerky or have they finally nailed "iphone smooth"?
Unregistered wrote:Does pinch-to-zoom work in Ovi maps? I haven't seen that in any demo videos.
Unregistered wrote:hi rafe,two things.....
1. how do you activate the camera? and is it quick to do?
2. you showed the two options for unlocking the phone - using the slider and the home key/touch screen combo. how do you lock it?thanks,
aidan
btw - do you think by the time the n8 comes out in september people will have got bored and moved onto the symbian^4 N device that will have been leaked/ hinted at by then 😉
1. start the application OR press on the camera capture key - and yes its fast
2. lock it using the slider, or (I think) via menu option or form profiles menu.
and no I don't think people will be bored. It easy to fall into shiny new toy syndrome, but most people buying phones really don't follow things that closely.
Tenkom wrote:There is a slider lock key like on the n86. It probably locks the device. And you can in all likelihood activate the camera with the camera shutter button. Like on he n95.I'd like to know if the phone automatically switches from alphanumeric keypad to landscape qwerty when you flip the device or do you still have to select it every time like on the i8910? Looks like text entry is still a major weak point of symbian. At least on phones with no hardware keyboard.
How is scrolling in the browser? Still jerky or have they finally nailed "iphone smooth"?
Yes it does switch between the two keyboards (from what I remember).
Browser scrolling - felt better but would need to test more.
Rafe did anyone mention future Full HD video capture (1080p) as a possibility?
Having 12Mp makes it possible (as we've seen with recent Japanese handsets).
TIA
Rafe, a question for you. I remember reading somewhere that the N8 has only 135 MB space on C: Drive. Many people (including me) were disappointed by that. However, your snapshot demoing USB On The Go shows 175 MB free space, suggesting that the C: drive could be much larger (maybe 256 MB like the n97 mini). So has the C:drive been upgraded or the earlier specs were wrong?
Tenkom wrote:How is scrolling in the browser? Still jerky or have they finally nailed "iphone smooth"?
LOL! I have an iPhone and this made me laugh. Hopefully it will be much better than the iPhone irritating browser. It still amazes me to see the false impression people have.
What I would like to know about it the OS upgrade possibilities. Will the N8 be able to take later OS versions such as Symbian ^4 in the future by OTA updating.
And if it can, hopefully it won't need 2 hours tethered to a Mac to perform the upgrade, like I wasted yesterday upgrading my iPhone to 4.
Unregistered wrote:What I would like to know about it the OS upgrade possibilities. Will the N8 be able to take later OS versions such as Symbian ^4 in the future by OTA updating.
Great preview and pictures, do you know whether the N8 will 'come with music' in the UK? Getting a little fed up of Spotify deleting tracks! Or failing that, will spotify and older symbian applications be compatible with the new OS?
Rafe,
Just tried a friend's iphone, to reject a incoming call you have to press a top key twice and most ppl didn't know that even we had to do a bit of googling.
I hope N8 has a hardware way to reject and accept a call, not just the touchscreen soft key.
Coz now N8 also just has one menu key
no more accept and reject keys, as I'm sure most symbian user are used to that.
Cheers
On the above comment I meant reject the call When the **phone is locked**
;-o
wow... i really really really want one now... this is not fair... i used my contract upgrade up recently (whenever the n86 hit networks)...
do i buy this outside my contract or wait for the 9 months or so i have left of my contract?!
the 450 quid it looks to be retailin it is ridiculous :/
it looks good nobody not even the apple groupies can deny that, i just wish it had a slide out keyboard, i just make too many emails and texts in a day to not have a keyboard. please nokia don't sell your whole soul to the touch screen devil.
You know what would make this phone instantly a bit more appealing?
Simple: update the icons and the font.
Seriously, most of the criticism is about the appearance being outdated. Hire a competent graphic artisit and replace them with something a bit more 2010 and a lot of pain is going to go away. Give it a nice default wallpaper too whilst you're at it.
And, yes, I know that you can upload your own themes but first impressions count. Drop the outdated visuals Nokia - you can always have a 'classic' them that people can switch to if they want to.
Does the contacts app now support categories?
Does the calendar now support categories (different from multiple calendars)?
Has Text-to-speech found it's way back into Symbian^3?
Is there speech commanding in the n8 (eg. "open <app name here>"😉?
Is there a system-wide speech-to-text framework?
Is the dictionary / spellcheck system-wide?
Is Flash Lite 4 present?
Is there a usable PDF reader onboard?
Is there uPnP / bonjour / DLNA (both directions)?
Is multiple exchange support built-in?
I think that's enough to be going on with - covers the basics of what needs to be in the n8 to fix previous niggles...
I remember myself and certain other ppl predicted this a few months ago while the rabid fanboys were still shooting crap out of their mouths:
http://www.cnet.com.au/nokia-n8-in-depth-339304015.htm
via Engadget
First line in the article:
"According to the Nokia peeps we spoke to, the N8 will be the last N-series to run on Nokia's Symbian platform; all N-Series from here on will run MeeGo."
Symbian is NOT considered the multimedia feature-rich smartphone platform by Nokia anymore :P
I guess from now on we'll compare Meego vs Android vs. iPhone OS instead.
-Gene
My Cousin just sent me this link:
http://i.engadget.com/2010/06/23/nokia-n8-to-be-final-symbian-device-in-n-series-all-meego-from/
Well, Gene, since they appear to be continuing to use Symbian for the E and X series you appear to be wrong.
Again.
Mr Mark wrote:Well, Gene, since they appear to be continuing to use Symbian for the E and X series you appear to be wrong.Again.
Just like you were wrong about Nokia's stock direction? Just face it, Symbian is being shoved downward. You still look like a rabid fanboy, btw :P
Unregistered wrote:Just like you were wrong about Nokia's stock direction? Just face it, Symbian is being shoved downward. You still look like a rabid fanboy, btw :P
I don't think anyone can be wrong (except Gene) as the stock question isn't answered yet (except for the short term simplistic thinkers), and Nokia have a nice line up with two OS options. They look OK to me, with a bright future.
However, I personally am going to get me an X10 mini pro as advertised on this site!
The N8 looks a very good looking mobiles,an the camera looks spot on,as Daily mobile is showing some Night photos taken by the N8,just hope the Software is fully correctly before the phones released,an one main news i have seen on Endaget that the Nokia N8 will be the last "N"series mobile with Symbian ,an Future "N" series mobiles Nokia will be the Meego software instead,so Nokia really want to Compete more in the Top Smartphones Market an dint Apples Success,dying to see an use the N8 myself,but still 2 months to go yet till its released
Well, Gene, I guess it's better to come across as a rabid fanboy than utterly clueless. The fact remains that Symbian will be on Nokia's mid range X series, a class of phones dedicated to... err... media consumption.
Also can you point out where I was wrong about stocks by the way? Because I don't think I am.
cool, nokia's n8 is the last n-series symbian phone. it's almost at the end of its life cycle and it wasn't launched. cool. hoooray nokia
people have been saying the new high end phones running on meego signal the death nell for the n series. really? i think it marks a new start.
i'm looking forward to replacing my n82 with an n8. when i replace the n8 in 18 months to 2 years there will be a rich choice of high end meego devices or mid range symbian^4 to choose from, depending on budget, etc. if money is really tight, why a feature rich series 40 will have caught up by then because nokia is pushing down the technology. does that sound like a bad situation to be in? i don't think so.
as for saying symbian^3/4 is an old os, why don't they say that about apple's? it's been around for 4 years now, just with some tweaks along the way. bit of objectivity please.
aidan
You're all misunderstanding this news of NSeries going Meego. They're merely using the NSeries label as the continuing label for their top of the line range. The alternative would be to introduce another new series label and stick MeeGo devices in that, but that wouldn't have the brand strength. Hence a slight reshuffling of what devices are released under what label.
You're completely misunderstanding the situation if you see Symbian as somehow on the wane with this announcement, and that they will be phased out in due course. Indeed, the exact opposite is true. The ENTIRE FIELD of mobile phones is undergoing an upgrade, and Nokia (given their market share) is leading the charge (ha ha to anyone that thought Nokia were dying in any way). Symbian devices will not only continue to grow in power and features, they will similarly continue to invade the featurephone market from the top down. We're talking many hundreds of millions of devices over a fairly short period of time. And to think Apple are crowing about iOS reaching 100 million!
Symbian is on 300 million+ and that's over years of smartphones being niche. NO ONE is as well positioned to be crowned king of smartphone futures as Symbian and Nokia.
Watch and learn folks, watch and learn.
I'm looking forward to the day when you can choose which OS to have on your phone.
Pick the hardware that best meets your requirements then install the OS of your choice.
Hardware compatability is of course the issue but I'm sure there will be some devices that are generic enough to support Symbian or Meego or Android etc.