Hands-on with the Nokia N8

Back on Wednesday night after Motorola's big event for the DROID X came to a close, Pepcom's Digital Experience event was being held in New York City later in the day. We were fortunate to attend and check out some interesting handsets that were on hand from a variety of manufacturers. Out of all of them, we were attracted towards Nokia's booth where they were prominently showcasing their soon-to-be flagship device – the Nokia N8. From what we've been reporting numerous times, Nokia is surely banking on this Symbian^3 powered device to hit it out of the ballpark and prove to gain some mainstream success for the number one handset maker in the world. It almost feels like an eternity since the Nokia N95 came storming to the scene and brought the company into smartphone game, but as we've seen in the last few years, they've been unable to answer Apple's heated competition in the market.



Thankfully the Nokia N8 might have the guts, raw power, and intuitive experience to hopefully bring them back into greener pastures. Although the unit we checked out was not a final production model, we were truly impressed with its build quality. The lime metallic colored handset definitely exuded a product that seemed polish in almost every aspect – from their choice of using a metallic finish to its durability, everything clearly came together properly. It's by no mean overbearing in weight when you hold it, instead it was quite manageable and well-balanced. The design of the Nokia N8 isn't ground breaking at all, but it clearly separates itself from Nokia's other touchscreen only devices like the XpressMusic 5800 or Nuron 5230. Now what we were really impressed about during our short visit was how smooth and fluid the handset was performing when we were touching the screen and moving around its interface. Although there are some hints to S60 5th Edition around, one can easily see how Nokia decided to stray a little bit from their usual beaten path. Finally, we were informed that Nokia will include the HDMI cable to connect the handset to a source – so no need to dish out more money to enjoy this feature from the start. All in all, we'll see how the Nokia N8 fares in the long run when it's officially released and pass our final judgment then.

Nokia N8 Specifications