Nokia’s N8 remains one of the more interesting smartphones of 2010, and we leapt at a chance to have an extended play with the Symbian^3 handset as it made its debut in London this morning. Toting a 3.5-inch capacitive touchscreen with multitouch support, 12-megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics, 720p HD video recording and a Xenon flash, and a slick anodised aluminium chassis, our biggest question was whether Nokia’s OS fettling had been enough to make the N8 competitive with what’s an increasingly competitive smartphone market. Check out our impressions – and some hands-on video – after the cut.
It’s not, of course, our first hands-on with the N8, but it was certainly our first proper opportunity to get to grips with the new Symbian^3 OS the smartphone runs. There’s obviously been some consternation about just how different this platform is from its S60 5th Edition predecessor, and while the changes may be relatively subtle – we’ll have to wait for Symbian^4 for the real fireworks – they’ve also very sensibly been targeted at the key pain points of earlier devices.
So, rather than the bizarre double-tap selection metaphor in menus, a hang-over from S60 5th Edition attempting to emulate a D-pad/select button paradigm, you tap just once. On its own it’s enough to make the whole phone navigation system feel slicker; meanwhile Symbian^3 is faster anyway, and the N8 feels – if not the fastest device out there – then at least decently peppy in general use. It’s worth remembering that this is still pre-production hardware and non-final software (and using a clogged WiFi network hence sluggish page loading in the video below) and things will likely improve again before the N8 reaches retail shelves.
Long-pressing the home button pulls up an app switcher which can be used to flip between running software – the N8 supports true multitasking – and each app has a close button so that you can shut it down direct. The homescreen has three panes, each of which with six slots for widgets; tapping and holding the screen allows you to move widgets around, while tapping an empty slot calls up the widget catalog (which has a link to the Ovi store for downloading new widgets). Nokia have reworked their email app for the N8 – it supports multiple inboxes, though not one combined inbox, HTML messages, and each account can have its own homescreen widget – and you can easily filter by sender and date.