Nokia Oyj recently unveiled the top-of-the-line flagship N8 smartphone. The N8 is being billed as the latest 'iPhone killer,' as it boasts of a revamped Symbian 3 operating system and comes with a 12-megapixel camera with high-definition video recording, a touch screen display and high-speed Internet access. But the billion dollar question is – can the N8 beat the iPhone 4?
About the N8
The N8 is perhaps the best smartphone Nokia has launched since N95, which was launched in 2006.
The N8 is sleek and smart-looking. It has a block form factor, measures 113.5 x 59 x 12.9 mm, weighs 135g and has an anodized aluminum case. But looks are not the only strength of the N8.
The N8 also boasts of powerful specifications such as 3.5-inch capacitive multi-touch AMOLED display (640x360 pixels resolution), accelerometer sensor, proximity sensor, ambient light sensor, HD quality video recording and playback capabilities, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, 3G, A-GPS, Ovi Maps (navigable 3-D maps), Digital Compass, on-screen full Qwerty virtual keyboard, Adobe Flash Lite-enabled HTM Web browser, dedicated camera and volume keys, high-speed USB 2.0 (micro USB connector) and FM Radio.
The N8 also features key applications such as calendar, contacts, music player, messaging, mail, chat, photos, Ovi Store, Office document editors, and video & photo editor.
And, if you're in the mood for some entertainment, the N8 can be your best companion – it can play HD quality videos, features Dolby Digital Plus Surround Sound and its HDMI port allows it to plug into a home entertainment system.
In addition, the N8 comes with WebTV, an on-demand service that helps deliver local and global TV favorites from channels like CNN, E! Entertainment, paramount and National Geographic right to the home screen, and boasts of built-in premium guides from Lonely Planet and Via Michelin for tips on travel, restaurants, weather and hotels.
And, if you're feel that you've been away from your friends and family for too long, don't fret. The N8 promises to enrich your social networking experience as it comes with a seamless and fully integrated social networking feature that allows you to get live updates from Facebook, Twitter and the like pushed right to your homescreen with feeds visible at a single glance. Calender events from the social networking sites can also be transferred to the device.
The key selling points of the N8, however, are its powerful camera features that rivals those found in compact digital cameras and the new Symbian 3 OS.
The N8 boasts of a 12-megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optic lens, autofocus, digital zoom and Xenon flash. The camera also has face and smile detection features and is capable of recording 720p HD videos that can be edited with an intuitive built-in editing suite. In addition, the N8 also has a secondary VGA camera for video calls. In other words, the N8 could be said to be the world's best camera phone to date. The only other camera phones that could possibly come close to matching the N8's camera features are Sony Ericsson's Xperia X10, HTC's Evo 4G and Droid Incredible, and Motorola's Droid X, which feature 8-megapixel camera and Sony Ericsson's Satio, which boasts of a 12-megapixel camera.
The N8's other claim to fame is possibly the fact that it's the first smartphone to run on the revamped Symbian 3 OS.
The new Symbian 3 OS, Nokia claims, is "faster, easier to use, more efficient and more developer friendly." The company claims the latest Symbian OS modernizes the long-serving mobile OS with multi-touch, multiple home screens (up to 3 customizable home screens) with widgets, themes, shortcuts, icons and menu and a unified contacts feature that support simultaneous updating of social networks. An updated WebKit browser, an easier to use Ovi Store and overall simplified settings also help improve the user interface.
And, last but not the least, the N8's battery life is also impressive. It offers 12 hours of talk-time in GSM with a standby time of 16.25 days. Nokia claims the music playback time in offline mode is 50 hours.
Via : hken.ibtimes.com
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