Nokia N8 Review UK

The Nokia comes in a range of colours including: – white silver, dark grey, orange, blue and green aluminium chassis*. The N8 has a massive 3.5 inches screen and packs in an incredible 640 x 360 pixels making the phone HD. The handset is capable of displaying some 16.7 million colours more than the human eye is capable of recognising! The screen can detect the brightness or dimness of light and automatically configure the brightness of the screen potentially saving precious battery juice.

Battery life is quoted as being quite reliable from the 1200 mAh battery: stand by 400 hours maximum, talk time average ~ 500 mins. In my experience these figures are nearly always incorrectly published and the true figure is often a lot worse than that stated. However a reliable source claims“ one day’s usage shouldn’t be a problem.” Nokia have decided to build the battery into the case like Apple which means you will be unable to replace it easily or clean it.

Nokia N8 Camera

I mentioned earlier about the camera on this handset being its best asset it comes with a xenon flash allowing you to take some pretty decent photos compared to most handsets which come with LED flashes. The addition of a decent flash to the N series is hopefully progress which will continue to the N9, N10 etc. Other handsets with Xenon flashes and high megapixel: Motorola Milestone xt720

The phone comes with autofocus & face recognition settings. Zooming on this handsets a bit of let down, the phone has 2 x zoom but its digital only. Digital zoom can distort images significantly. When saving your photos there are multiple output options including the popular JPEG format.
Geo-tagging feature can be enabled which adds some location information from the GPS receiver to the photo / video file. This would allow you to accurately identify the photos source at a later date. Great stuff!

Video can be shot in 720P (1080p is the current highest) and 25 fps.

Social Integration

All smart phones today have social media integration which is bridging the gap between the Internet and our portable hand held devices. and the Nokia N8 is no exception to this.

There’s a close integration with the your phones contacts and a link in your contacts details will open the social application with the contacts Facebook or Twitter info. It pulls in their profile photos too. You can even send your friend a Twitter message, Facebook message, or email from the information pulled from the www or browse their profile amongst other things.

One unique feature of the N8 is the ability to add your location to any status update via gps technology

As a Sat Nav

The Nokia N8 mobile unlike other mobile manufacturers comes with free voice guided sat nav. Which in itself is a great saving if you use satellite navigation regularity. Maps can be cached on the device prior to any journey using ‘Nokia maps loader’, this will avoid any unnecessary data fees.

Summary

At first I was impressed with the phone, it is pleasing to the eye and has good specifications, free satnav, 12 mega pixel zeon flash with autofocus and HDMI out. But the phone is slower and therefore less responsive than other competing brands namely HTC and Apple who’s devices in my opinion are far superior. Don’t get me wrong its OK it just isn’t great.

*Colour availability varies by country