Nokia N8 smartphone review

Editor's Score
Features:	Performance:
Value:
The Verdict: Excellent hardware is sadly wasted on sub-par software.

When Nokia originally announced their flagship Smartphone earlier this year, it was pretty much as high-end as it could get from a hardware perspective. Now that it’s finally here, we find out if the delays have marred the Nokia N8 or whether is still stands a chance against the offerings by Apple, HTC and the like.

Packaging & Build Quality

The Nokia N8 comes packaged in a flat box about the size of a small pizza box. Included in the packaging is a mini HDMI to HDMI converter cable as well as a mini USB to USB converter cable along with the charger and a headset with media playback controls. The headset is of a much better quality than many other bundled ones that we have looked at and comes with silicon pads and media controls.

The Nokia N8 can be charged through the small round Nokia power connector or the USB port. A quickstart guide is also included though surprisingly Nokia hasn’t bundled any applications CD. However a Windows installer is present on the phone, accessible through a USB connection.

Design & Hardware

The build quality of the Nokia N8 is superb and feels very solid in your hand. There are very few phones that feel as well constructed as the N8 and Nokia certainly deserves all the praise in this area. While we received the dark grey version, Nokia has a bunch of colors such as green and blue that you can chose which is always a good thing.

The top of the device has a power button, a 3.5mm audio output jack as well as a mini-HDMI connector which means that you can directly connect the N8 to your HDMI capable TV and watch high definition movies. On the right side, you have the volume rocker as well the sliding lock button which feels a bit redundant since you already have a power button on top. Below that lies the two step camera button which is a pleasure to use after touch screen based cameras that often result in me taking out of focus pictures. The bottom side has the charger slot as well as the microphone and a pair of pretty loud speakers.

The left side has sockets for your SIM card as well as a MicroSD card. I generally don’t take out my SIM or SD card out of my phone but accessing these slots could be a bit frustrating for those of you that keep replacing your MicroSD cards often. Below these slots lies the USB connector that is used for charging the device as well as acting as a USB host meaning you can plug in a USB drive and access its contents on the N8. An LED above the USB slots lights up when the something is plugged in.

The front of the Nokia N8 features a 3.5” capacitive touch screen with a resolution of 360×640 which is a bit on the lower side compared to the new Android devices. Below the screen sits the sole button towards the left side that takes you to the home screen when pressed or the main menu if you’re on the main home screen. Not sure why Nokia decided to keep this button the left side as it can get a bit inconvenient to reach at times. A very cool looking LED surrounds this button and breathes for notifications.

About the only thing that doesn’t look in place is the back side of the Nokia N8. Here, you see a slider type layer where the camera is located- except that layer does not slide but is fixed and houses the 12.1 MP lens along with the dual Xenon flash lights. My guess is that Nokia needed a bit of extra thickness to accommodate the extra large 1/1.9″ sensor with a Carl Zeiss lens.