Nokia N8 Review Part 2: Features and Performance

We are back with the second part of our review of the Nokia N8. After discussing its look and feel (and getting loads of feedback, for which we cannot thank you enough), it is time now to seriously look at the most prominent part of the handset – its features and performance. Beauty is after all, skin-deep.

Yes, we were not too impressed by the appearance of the Nokia N8, but what truly matters is what lies beneath that exterior and just how well it works.

We must confess that in terms of pure specifications, the N8 is one of the most powerful devices we have seen. It has got every connectivity option out there from high speed wireless connectivity to GPS to Bluetooth to the option to attach a USB device, has one of the fastest processors seen on a Nokia device, 16 GB of onboard storage (expandable to 48 GB) and of course, that digital camera challenging 12-megapixel shooter-Xenon flash combination, not to mention Dolby surround sound support.

All this encased in a new operating system, Symbian ^3, one that is supposed to be a massive improvement over its predecessor, the supremely lamentable Symbian Series 60 (5th edition), which drove all touchscreen lovers to distraction.

It Works

And quite amazingly, MOST OF IT WORKS (yes, we do think that statement merits capitals, given the experience we have had with a lot of Nokia touchscreen devices in the past). The 3.5 inch AMOLED capacitive touchscreen is extremely responsive, letting us move smoothly between three customizable homscreens, making it is easily the best we have seen on a Nokia device, although its relatively low resolution is a massive disappointment.

You can pinch to zoom in the browser and in the photo album – yes, multi-touch has come to Symbian. For social networking, you can connect to social networks using Nokia’s social networking app that supports Facebook and Twitter.

There is unlimited music for a year from the Ovi Music store and games and video play exceptionally well on the device, thanks to a graphics processor. And Symbian’s trademark multi-tasking is very much in evidence, letting you run several apps without any discernible decrease in performance.

The oh-my-god moment moment of the phone, however, comes when you connect a flash drive to it via the USB adaptor, and see the files on the drive show up and transfer effortlessly. You can even connect it to a portable hard drive or a printer, as long as both have an external power source. Now, that is something that brings the device much closer to a computer – we are waiting to see it on a E series phone soon.

The Camera

The camera is impressive, although truth be told, we were not exactly blown away by it. Part of this can stem from the fact that Nokia projected it as a digital camera replacement. Well, while it is pretty close to the best camera we have seen on a cellphone in terms of pixel count and is an excellent option for those who like to take impulse snaps, we do not really see it displacing cameras – the absence of an optical zoom is telling and we could not understand why there is only a digital zoom of 2x in such a high mega pixel camera! Honestly, you can buy a much better digital and a smartphone for lesser than the Rs 26,000 price tag commanded by the Nokia N8.

But yes, if you are looking for decent still photographs to slap on to your social networks and the odd print, the N8 does a good job, and its camera is definitely easier to use than the other two notable 12-megapixel cameras in the market, the Sony Ericsson Satio and the Samsung Pixon 12, although we were surprised at the absence of features like smile-detection. Video-wise, we were not too impressed – we think the Samsung Galaxy S and the Motorola XT720 were better at HD video.

Sample shots and video from N8 coming soon

Battery life, generally the biggest pain in touchscreen phones, was easily the best we have seen on a 3.5 inch and above touchscreen device. The N8 lasted a day and a half on a single charge, with social networking, live widgets and push mail working away all the time, apart from a few hours of calls (sound quality on calls is generally good, by the way – with such a versatile device, it is easy to forget basic phone functions!) and browsing.

The best?

Now, surely that is enough to make N8 the best phone of them all. Especially considering its price!

Nope, it does not. We are willing to say that this is the best Nokia phone we have seen for quite a while – right since the magnificent E90. The problems crop up when you start comparing it with the likes of Android and the iPhone.

This is because although the N8 is a very efficient device, it shines most when compared with other Nokia phones. The touch experience, which looks so good when compared to the N97, seems a tad slow when brought face to face with the iPhone or the Motorola Droid. The OS is mainly to blame for this – Symbian ^3 may be a Massive improvement over S60 (5th edition), but it is still a long way off the Android and iOS benchmark.

You still have to navigate menus and even a task as uncluttered as composing and sending a text takes time – you type out the message, verify that it is all right and then send it, as compared to just writing and sending it on other operating systems (including Nokia’s own Symbian S60 3rd edition).

The onscreen keyboard for some reason does not have a QWERTY layout when in portrait orientation, making typing out longish texts and e-mails a two-handed operation as one has no option but to switch to landscape and the much larger QWERTY available there. And while Nokia does serve up a decent social networking app, you still cannot post pictures directly from your album to Facebook as you can in Android – you have to instead take the rather torturous path of opening the app, going to Facebook, choosing to add a picture and then uploading a picture. Tiresome, if you ask us.

The default browser remains largely useless with slow page rendering and no tabs, forcing us to download Opera Mobile, which ran exceptionally well, but could not be set as the default browser – sending us back to the S^3 browser whenever we clicked on a link in a mail or on our social networks. The widgets look spectacular but still tend to go to sleep – our BBC news widget stopped updating within four hours of starting up!

Finally, there is the matter of apps. The Ovi Store for all the releases sent out about millions of visits and downloads per day, still cannot hold a candle to the Apple App Store or the Android Market in terms of the sheer variety of apps. If you are an app download freak, this is not the device for you.

So where does that leave the Nokia N8 in terms of features and performance? We think that it marks the first genuinely good touchscreen device from Nokia, and in terms of specs, the most loaded touchscreen we have seen for a while. Launched a couple of years ago, it might have beaten the iPhone and dealt Android a premature demise. For its price of Rs 26,000, it offers decent value for money today.

Provided you have not used the iPhone or a recent Android device. But more on that later.

Next: Competitors and conclusion. Stay tuned.

Previous: Look And Feel