Barely a few days after usual suspect Eldar Murtazin bashed a prototype of Nokia’s next flagship device,the N8, the big N has released official details of the handset. And most of it conforms to the various leaks that have been popping all over the Internet. The handset is clearly a multimedia beast, with a 3.5 inch capacitive touchscreen display, a 12 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics (with a large sensor that Nokia claims “rivals those found in compact digital cameras”) and a Xenon flash, coupled with the ability to make HD-quality videos and edit them using a built-in app. Top that off with “a true home theater experience with HD quality film and Dolby Digital Plus surround sound. You can plug the device to your home theatre system with an HDMI cable” (the release so proclaimeth), access to local and global Web TV services, with 16GB onboard storage (expandable to three times that amount) and you can see why we think that when it comes to entertainment, this is one device that does not scrimp on too much.
On the social networking front, the N8 comes with an app that lets users update their status, share location and photos, and view live feeds on Facebook and Twitter on the home screen. There is also an option to transfer calendar events from social networks to the device calendar. For navigation, there’s Ovi Maps, and on the app side, there’s Qt, “a software development environment that simplifies the development and makes it possible to build applications once and deploy across Symbian and other software platforms” (the release again, in case you did not guess). And then there is perhaps the most interesting facet of the device — it is going to be the first that will run on the latest version of the Symbian operating system, Symbian^3. Officially, this will mean three homescreens, multi-touch and a faster and more responsive UI, along with better memory management for smoother multi-tasking.
It has got the specs and on paper, the looks too. The biggest challenge, however, is going to be making it all work smoothly. Remember, we did not have too much to complain about the N97 or even the N96 when it came to specs. And with Eldar already having taken the device (all right, all right, a prototype of it!) to bits, the folks at Espoo have their work cut out to prove him wrong. They do have time on their side – the device is not due until the third quarter of this year.
