Nokia’s N8 – The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
By Branko Miletic
So Nokia has finally discovered the smartphone. Perhaps I am being too harsh, but as someone who grew up with Nokia’s, you’d think they would have invented it, rather than copy the idea from Kyocera. Regardless, we will have a full review for you next week, however below are a few good, bad and other points about Nokia’s N8 smartphone.
The Good
Woo-hoo!!—What a camera. I mean, finally, someone in the mobile phone design world has worked it out—you can’t be half pregnant – so you either have a real camera in the phone or you have a glorified toy.
The 12-megapixel Carl Zeiss optics with autofocus and Xenon flash is not just a camera- it is the very best in-phone snapper currently on the market. I would go as far to say here are some prosumer cameras out there that would love to have those specs as standard. Add to that the N8’s ability to shoot HD videos with geo-tagged photos and what can I say but this is a real winner. Who needs that point and shoot camera when you can have this baby in your pocket!
And speaking of geo-tagging, the N8 comes with Nokia Ovi Maps preloaded and ready to rock and roll at a moment’s notice. So not only will you never get lost, you can do it whilst also taking great photos.
The Bad
OK—Breathe in, Breathe out — Symbian OS—there, I said it!! For whatever corporate reason, Nokia and Symbian are welded together at the hip? I am not sure why, but those crazy Finns over at Nokia have not yet worked out that the Symbian OS and touchscreens go together like oil and water—that is, they don’t!
Nokia should have worked this out during the N97 days, where it was blatantly obvious that touchscreens and the Symbian OS just won’t tango. Add to that that the N8 is underpowered with its 680MHz processor whilst everyone else is packing 1Ghz processors into their phones, and you are asking for trouble. It’s a bit like having the very latest BMW but with a 3-cylinder engine. I would love someone in Nokia to explain the reasoning behind this to me, but I won’t hold my breath.
The Ugly
Well, nothing to do with the N8 or Nokia, but our wonderful Telco’s have yet to offer a decent plan for the N8. However, this is not Nokia’s problem, although an explanation would be nice as to why there aren’t any available.
