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What may seem slightly in a bind, here’s a review of the Nokia N8 smartphone – no we haven’t let it slip by. Not everyone would have missed the Nokia N8 when it arrived in India last December. Expansive advertisements, huge hoardings, a loud ‘wow!’ on the lips of committed Nokia fans with just the mention of the phone and silent murmurs by other brand loyalists – well the phone seemed to have a lot riding on its back. For one, it had the added responsibility of being Nokia’s first Symbian^3 handset in times when not all could really be looking up for the Finnish phone maker. We’re not the kind to miss the boat as far as enthusing devices are concerned. Remember we reviewed the Nokia E7 just last month.

In a flash, we saw all the necessary fixtures neatly tucked in the sleek blue box that packed the phone. A microUSB to USB host adapter, HDMI cable, charger, regular USB to USB adapter, headphones complete with replaceable ear buds and user manuals. At the onset, the seems attractive and the dapper olive green shade it’s dressed in had us nodding in to its façade almost instantly despite all the gloss it showed off. The humungous 3.5” AMOLED capacitive touchscreen occupies the entire frontal area. To the right of the screen’s top bezel was a secondary camera for video calls while the lower left rim features just the menu key. On the left border, the microUSB port was seated along with SIM and microSD card slots, both of which were concealed by rubberized doors.

The backside of Nokia N8 embraces a 12MP camera with Carl Zeiss optics and Xenon flash. On the right rim are volume controls, a lock mechanism and the camera shortcut button. Both the volume rocker and the camera key have a nice pebbled metal edging encircling them. The handset’s build quality is up to snuff despite the 13.5mm thickness which we’re assuming is courtesy of the camera hardware. Nokia’s probably left the ‘sleek is sexy’ label for other manufacturers to prove. Inadvertently, we also ended up trying to slide out the phone imagining a QWERTY keypad hidden somewhere beneath all the bulk. The phone in completion weighs about 135g. Moving to the bottom area, there’s just a power jack while the top includes the 3.5mm headphone port, power button and also the HDMI port.

Three homescreens run the show with the phone throwing open widgets you’d like to tweak. Hardly travelling from screen 1 to 2 and the touch mechanism of the phone suggested Nokia’s done quite a shoddy job. At least in comparison to more recent touch phones we’ve spent time with lately. As if in affirmation to our claims, the screen also took visibly longer to auto switch from portrait to landscape mode. The unhurried swipe makes navigating the phone a bit of a letdown. On the upside, Nokia’s made customization of the homescreens an effortless task. We could easily add widgets (including interesting ones that are scrollable within themselves) on each of the three panels. We noticed that the physical menu key always returned to the main homescreen and is confined to just three homescreens. Long pressing the menu key popped up a kind of task manager that revealed applications running in the background.

Even if you’re among those who are rather touchy about pecking smartphones, the N8 could have you giving it a second glance. The large screen estate is capable of lighting up almost any environment. It’s bright, precise and the 16:9 nHD (640 x 360 pixels) resolution of the AMOLED display is commendable. Even if you’re simply spanning through the various attributes of the handset, the screen delivers neatly percolated colors rounded off by deep blacks foretelling of an enhanced video and image viewing experience. The N8’s flexibility of flashing messages as both a threaded conversation and the standard Inbox way deserves a pat on the back. The cursor controls with the onscreen T9 keypad struck a chord in the portrait mode while the keypad transforms to a full QWERTY one in the landscape mode. The QWERTY keypad was a pleasure to use and won’t restrict text-savvy users from going about their daily dose of messages and emails. The only pitfall here appears to be that unlike the T9 keypad, double tapping on a word did not show spelling corrections or suggestions.

The Nokia N8 easily connected to a Wi-Fi network too and after setting up our email account, we noticed a tiny notification indicator to the right corner of the screen. The handset supports everything from pinch to zoom to double tap for web surfing. We only seemed to face a few glitches in Exchange. The phone appeared to be skirmish in bits and parts, especially with the scrolling of web pages. It does lend a helping hand to Flash which though isn’t the best among the breed works fine for videos. We found the browser on the whole a wee bit too fatigued to get through the grind seamlessly. The phone runs with an ARM 11 microprocessor clocked at 680MHz, and 256MB RAM. And it wouldn’t be wrong to suppose the low CPU power take account for the slouchy web navigation. Surprisingly, we faced this hindrance only during surfing the internet and phone seemed skilled otherwise.

We tested the camera next and the phone didn’t disappoint us even one bit. It’s not every day that you meet phones with 12MP worth of resolution weight on their back and Nokia seems to have got it right with this one at least. The camera is quick at recognizing and focusing on the object with the half-press of the shutter button. The camera snaps up superior quality still images in a rather responsive interface. The onboard settings are presented in a simple and uncluttered fashion for easy usability to various modes and attributes. The knitted Xenon flash performed impressively and the enhanced performance of the camera didn’t seem to stop at just still images. We put the squeeze on a brief video in HD format and the N8 left us with a smile on our face. A full 720p HD resolution video with pleasant audio quality for yours truly was recorded at a nifty 25fps. MP4 is also an option should you decide to refrain from using HD. The secondary camera can also be used straight from this interface.

One of the most talked about feature of the N8 phone is USB on-the-go. All we had to do was plug in the adapter cable and consequently a USB storage device. We found the hooked up drive pop up as a mass storage device ready to be accessed. The feature seems to work extensively though not with all external storage drives. If asked generally, we’d call it functional. The integrated music player should tickle pink audiophiles with the included headphones only adding to the experience. The phone includes 16GB of internal storage with a microSD slot for up to 32GB of memory. Social networking buffs can find solace in an All Activity feature that displays status updates for various social networking websites. The phone also packs in Ovi Maps, the use of which was an unwrinkled affair. You can simply tap on the map to see the cursor scroll through naturally to the tapped area and spectacle the address. We faced no hiccups in searching for locations with maps viewable in either Map, Terrain or Satellite views. We were just above half day of usage and the phone needed to be juiced up.

Boasting of a good hardware design, the Nokia N8 looks good and could have set the path for many handsome phones to come through Nokia in the near future. The exciting color options the phone’s available makes it all that more alluring too. It’s definitely the 12MP camera that takes cake with this one. Add to it the awe-inspiring screen and you’re sure in for a luxurious smartphone experience. While the Rs. 26,259 price label the handset carries in India may not appear justifiable to many for the bottled up applications and stutter in interface, the phone is definitely worth a try. We’ve adored it enough to give it a 9 out of 10 score on our charts.