Hardware and specs
Sticking to the hardware for now, the N8 has a sealed, anodized aluminium shell that gives it a sturdy, ruggedized feel. There's no easy way to get into the guts of the phone, and access to the SIM card and micro SD slots - normally achieved by opening the phone up - is provided by two external slots protected by slightly fiddly plastic seals.
The other external features are: micro USB port, Nokia proprietary charging port, camera button, sleep mode toggle switch, volume control, on/off button, HDMI port with plastic cover and headphone port.
The Nokia charging port is a strange one as you can just as easily charge via the micro USB one. The sleep toggle switch is also a bit superfluous as the on/off button also provides that functionality. But then again it's a bit more convenient and doesn't do any harm.
There's a protrusion on the back that houses the excellent 12 MP Carl Zeiss camera and equally high quality flash. I presume it was necessary to house the camera in a bulge, but it does interfere with the otherwise clean lines.
On the front , the only hard button serves simply to return you to the home screen. It also doubles as the LED alert indicator, although it's not obvious what you're being alerted to until you awaken the screen. It's definitely a negative not having a hard ‘back' button. Yes, many of the screens you find yourself on offer the opportunity to go back, but life is a lot easier when you know you always have it and it's in the same place.
The only other physical features on the front are a front-facing camera and what we presume to be a proximity sensor.
You can see the full specs below, and on the whole it's an excellent piece of kit. But there are a couple of areas in which it disappoints a tad. It has a decent AMOLED capacitive touchscreen, and the 3.5 inch size is adequate, but the resolution is only 640x360, with 800x480 looking like the norm for its competitors.
The other issue concerns the processor. Nokia doesn't specify which it is on most of its spec lists, but it does reveal that it's based on an ARM 11 core clocking at 680 MHz. Even Nokia's N900 - launched a year ago, ran on a Cortex A8-based processor, and we'll soon be seeing phones running on Cortex A9 dual-core chips. So it seems rather retrograde for Nokia to equip its flagship smartphone with a chip that's a couple of generations behind the latest ones.
One possible justification for that would be to extend the battery life - and we've read other reports saying it's excellent in the N8. But our experience was that, even with the phone in standby for most of the day, we frequently had to charge it twice in a day.
Here are the specs:
- Screen Resolution: 360 x 640 px
- Screen Color Depth: 24 bit
- Screen Size: 3.5 in
- Display Technology: AMOLED
- Device Size: 113.5 x 59 x 12.9 mm
- Weight: 135 g
- Battery: BL-4D 1200 mAh Li-Ion
- Internal memory: 16 GB
- MicroSD memory card slot, hot swappable, up to 32 GB
- Software platform & user interface: Symbian ^3 for Nokia, Java MIDP 2.1, Qt 4.6.2, Web Runtime 7.2, HTML 4.1, Software updates Over the Air (FOTA) & Over the internet (FOTI), Flash Lite 4.0, OMA DM 1.2, OMA Client provisioning 1.1
- Connectivity: Bluetooth 3.0, HDMI, 2mm Charging connector, Micro USB connector and charging, High-Speed USB 2.0 (micro USB connector), 3.5 mm AV connector, FM Radio, FM Transmitter
- Standard Sales Package: Nokia N8 mobile computer, Nokia Battery BL-4D, Nokia Connectivity Cable CA-179, Nokia Stereo Headset WH-701, Nokia Compact Travel Charger AC-15, Nokia Adapter Cable for HDMI CA-156, Nokia Adapter Cable for USB OTG CA-157, Quick start guide
