Nokia N8 Preview

Intro, Design And Display

The most anticipated cameraphone from Nokia, the N8 was shown to us and we pointed out a few of our first impressions. Again,  at Nokia World, the Nokia N8 made it appearance again among the C-series and E7 phones. If you have not seen the specs-list yet, let us remind you, the Nokia N8 is the first 12MP camera phone from Nokia that has loads of excellent multimedia features. While Android is taking over the mobile phones space and Apple boasting its million apps downloads, let's see what difference would the N8 make for mobile phone users after it's been awhile since we've seen a high-end smartphone from Nokia.

Design

Clad in a monoblock design, the Nokia N8 has a solid unibody made of anodized aluminium which makes the phone a bit heavy at 135g. There are five color options ( Sivler white, dark grey, orange, blue and green) which is good as the phone would cater various segments of users. Its front is almost entirely covered by the display and there is just one physical key for menu ( context sensitive)  and a tiny mic-hole below the screen. The back sports a camera surrounded by  a slightly raised small metal plate which also acts as a housing unit for the Xenon flash. The sides have buttons and ports for different functions. The bottom has a charging port while the top has a power button, mini-HDMI out ( we'll talk about its function later) and 3.5mm stereo headphones jack. The right side has abundant controls starting from volume rocker, lock key to camera key. On the left are slots from microSD card and SIM card and a micro USB port for data transfer or USB charging. Overall, from our early impressions, we can say that the Nokia N8 offers decent look and solid build quality while for more details on the usability front will be up soon as soon as we got the device for review.

Display
Nokia N8 sports the same screen size and resolution as the Nokia C7 and it is the AMOLED, capacitive touchscreen with nHD ( 360 x 640 pixels) resolution. However, from what we saw during our hands-on experience in Bangalore, the N8's screen  ooked rather dull and lacked vibrance when we compared with other AMOLED screens we've seen from phones like Samsung Omnia HD, Pixon 12 and LG BL40 Chocolate. However, we were not sure which version of N8 that Nokia had showed it to us and we still have to confirm on this when the product hits our labs.

The 3.5-inch screen offer decent view to web pages and menu, and decent typing experience. Once again here, in terms of display, Nokia N8 offers something that is just above the rest of the Nokia phones in terms of size except for the two or three models ( E7, C7 and N900). Further,  even though the nHD resolution looks fine on a 3.5-inch, it would be much more competitive in the market it at least Nokia offers WVGA (800 x 480 ) resolution like it did on the N900. Didn't Apple pack 640 x 960 pixels on the iPhone 4's retina display?

Processor and Memory
Looks like Nokia believes even its HD-capable smartphone runs just fine with non-Gigahertz processor, as there is just a 680 MHz processor with 3D Graphics hardware accelerator powering the N8. Although we did not face any noticeable lags during our short period usage, we are not sure how Nokia will handle playbacking 720p HD video with just 680MHz processor or while browsing heavy graphics or flash video sites.

For the memory, the N8 stocks 256MB RAM and has internal storage of 16GB which are in league with most smartphones today. Though the RAM size may not be as much as the 512MB on the Samsung Galaxy S, looks like Nokia thinks N8 runs smooth enough with 256MB. For the storage, 16GB internal storage with up to 32GB of microSD card support would be adequate, however, this also depends on how much HD video captured would consume per minutes.