The Nokia N8 has arrived

by Volker Weber

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As expected there was a box at the door in the early morning. The mighty N8 has arrived. Now it has to fight against the iPhone 4, which I currently like a lot.

First impressions: small box, excellent stuff inside. The phone, the tiny charger, one USB-cable, two dongles, one for playing video through HDMI, one for attaching USB media, an ear canal headset (!). Nokia also sent an O2 SIM, my favorite German network.

I was up and running on my Wi-Fi, with GMail, contacts and calendars synced through Mail for Exchange against my Google account, Twitter and Facebook within about 10 minutes. The browser needed some tweaking, since it insisted on using the O2 APN instead of defaulting to Wi-Fi where possible. My only complaint so far is the social application Nokia provides. Tiny font, does not inherit settings from Symbian. The clock for instance shows am/pm instead of 24h clock.

I will keep you posted. This is miles apart from the dreaded N97.

Comments

do you use the one and only usable symbian twitter client gravity. Does is work with the new symbian 3.0?

Karl Heindel, 2010-10-08

I don't. It does not make sense to me, to buy software for phones that are not mine. Let me first see what I can get done with what's on board.

And it's not Symbian 3.0. It's Symbian^3. :-)

Volker Weber, 2010-10-08

Look forward to hearing about your time with this...

John Ash, 2010-10-08

hi, no need to pay for the 10 day trial gravity version:
Gravity trial via Ovi Store
so enjoy testing :)

Pina Meisel @ Nokia, 2010-10-08

Nokia first ;-)

Volker Weber, 2010-10-08

I don't think the browser requires some tweaking; you should change the APN priorities in settings/connections AFAIK.
Enjoy your toy!
I'm envious:-).

horia stanescu, 2010-10-08

The iphone 4 still seems a lot slicker. I want to see what sort of pictures comes out of that 12mp Carl Zeiss len camera.

Bryan McDade, 2010-10-08

I am currently using both - iPhone4 from work since a month or so, N8 for passion since Tuesday. As Volker probably knows, I am deeply in love with Nokia :)

The N8 is great - Symbian has never been better. But the iPhone 4 is as well. If you have a bumper (have one), making phone calls also is less complicated, you can then hold it any way. OK, that was mean.

BTT, the N8 is beautiful - the display has very nice colors and is really shiny. It has less resolution than the iPhone4 but better colors. Overall operation is slicker on the iPhone. I really like its mailclients, for instance.
The N8 is really stable, considering it is the first shipping firmware. As Volker said, this is way ahead of the N97, it needed 6 months to become good. And it still was not great.

The N8 camera is a highlight. There is no better mobile-camera in the world ATM. Period. Nokia has had its problems in the highend UI-whise, but they always made very good cameras. And this one is stellar.

Nokia has come a long way and is on the right path. With all N8 - ip4 comparisons one may not forget the price - the N8 is NOT a flagship! It is "only' the first Nokia touchscreen phone that is really recommendable to normobs and family. The N8 and C7 are going to sell bucketloads.

If you want to compare, thake the upcoming N9 - December or January, hopefully. This is going to be the next flagship device.

Hubert Stettner, 2010-10-08

Sorry for spamming, but regarding Gravity:

You can buy it once and Jan Ole (the one man behind Gravity, he is a very nice person) will be happy to transfer the licenses to new / other devices. You only need to tell him the old and new IMEI and he will switch. Or you can just use the trial as well... the application makes so much sense :)

Always worked for me when I asked kindly :)

Have a nice weekend,
Hubert

Hubert Stettner, 2010-10-08

Hubert,

no problem re: Gravity. If you are spending a couple of hundred Euros on a phone, it's of course not a problem to spend another ten on an app. I just don't mix and match device and commercial software. I am looking at what Nokia provides (their own client for Twitter and Facebook). Or what Twitter or Facebook provide (nothing).

With the iPhone things are a bit easier, btw. Software is not tied to an IMEI. Whatever I bought, works on all my iOS devices. That's, wait, six of them. ;-)

Volker Weber, 2010-10-08

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