Nokia N8 impressions

I recently had a couple of hands-on with Nokia's new Symbian^3 'flagship' device, the N8, at Nokia World 2010. I wasn't planning on writing this, as I spent way too little time with the display devices and was overwhelmed by my other times with the E7, C6-01, C7, X3, X2 and the new HTC Desire Z and HD.

But on Monday I happened to be at #LeStudio52 and had a chance to play around with Julien Fourgeaud's N8 running on pre-production none-release firmware, which he recently won in an Orange tech competition. It was nice to be given the chance to spend a little bit more time with it and this time without all the usual crowds you get at Nokia World.

The unique and sleek metal body of the N8 just scream quality. It feels great in my palms, and definitely feels and look like the premium device it is. The battery is none-removable, but a couple of N8 owners I talked to reckoned that it could last about a day on the none-removable 1200mAh battery.

The OLED screen is lovely and matches AdonisDemon's HTC Desire in colour saturation and has the same wide viewing angle as you can see from the comparison side-by-side pictures I've taken (note: the HTC Desire's brightness is set to maximum and the N8 was at 50%). The HTC Desire obviously trumps the N8's screen in terms of resolution.

Powering the Nokia N8 is Symbian^3. As far as I know Symbian^4 will not be made available on this device, so take that into consideration when considering the N8. The UI feels and operates much like Symbian^1, but is far quicker no thanks to OS optimisation, quicker processor and the removal of double taps. Gallery and web has pinch to zoom feature and suffered from very little slowdown in rendering.

The N8 was able to play 720p video files with no problems. We've had no issues playing 720p .mkv files. This is great news as the N8 features HDMI out, which works really well as demonstrated at Nokia World. Angry Birds on a HDMI telly? No problem!

The Nokia N8 is due out next month. You can pre-order it here.