Photo Finnish
If you have Vista or Windows 7, or throw something like Twonky onto Mac or a Linux box, you have a DLNA network, and since your phone is almost always to hand, you have an extra pair of speakers. DLNA first appeared on Nokia handsets four years ago and when even Nokia's E-series business phones include this, you wonder what's going on out there, to quote Fred Trueman.
The 12Mp camera also packs a xenon flash
Photography is the centrepiece of the N8, and lots of work has gone into this. The camera features a custom five-part fixed aperture f2.8 Zeiss lens. Its 5.9mm focal length is equivalent to a 28mm wide-angle lens on a 35mm camera. There’s digital zoom, which is capped at 2x for photographs and 3x for video. At 1/1.83in the sensor is, apparently, the largest to be installed in a mobile phone and is capable of 12Mp images. More significantly, the N8 really endeavours to minimise image processing where possible. So in good light, edge enhancement and noise reduction are set to a minimum.
The xenon flash, a rarity even on smartphones, produces excellent illumination although video recording can't use it, of course. The N8 offers 720p HD video recording at 25fps. It can capture smaller sizes up to 30fps, or lower for low light movies. The digital zoom is anything but smooth, however, sound quality is particularly impressive. The handset can capture stereo audio using its two microphones, front and back. Audio is encoded into 128kbits/s AAC format.
Sample HD Video
Can't see the video? Download Flash Player from Adobe.com
Overall, the camera can deliver spectacular results. In tests, using its simple control functions for tasks such as closeups works out better than relying on the automatic settings. The onscreen "shutter release" button rather often worked out better than the physical button, which seemed more prone to introducing camera shake. A nice touch is that the N8 saves your favourite configurations.
Next page: Sample Shots
COMMENTS
@Giles Jones: Not bad
Processor speeds are not important, it's what they do that is important. The CPU is underclocked, the OS is very resource functional (always has been) and has a separate GPU for the intensive graphics. Battery life for me is about 2-3 days on a charge - push email is on 7am till midnight on 2 accounts, browsing the web, telephone calls and music in the morning and evening. So I am very pleased. There some faults but hope they fix them soon.
I always wonder why some of the tech people reviewing this mobile phone constantly rubbish the processor for being clocked slower than the competition. Remember the days when the Apple OS was always said to be better and more resource efficient than Windows and hence the slower processors? Remember also that almost all video and photo editing used to be done on Macs for that very reason? Short memories....
Compareing CPU sizes is pointless...
Android apps are written in Java and run on a virtual machine on a stripped down Linux, an OS designed for servers. While Symbian apps are written in C++ running natively on an OS designed for low power devices. For graphics intensive apps the N8 also has a dedicated graphics co-processor to take on the load.
You need to compare how long the phones last between charges and if they run the apps you need as an accepable speed.
Give it a year
Looks nice on paper, but I'll wait a year to see if it's more reliable than my crappy N95 8GB before I'd even consider another Nokia.
If the incremental changes to S^3 include working out the UI...
... Then we might be on to a winner.
Unfortunately first impressions count, not incremental updates a year down the line.
Need help
"You can't place a shortcut to a person"
You can by adding the Favourite widget to the home screen. You can then add up to 10 people to this list and the widget multiple times - one for work, one for family etc. You can also open your contact list and long press on individuals and mark them favourite - this will bring them to the top of your list whenever you write a message or open contacts again. The only problem is that you can't organise your favourite in any order you might like - only in the order that you added them to your favourites.
"you can't drop applications wherever you like."
You can to a certain extent by adding the Shortcut widget, but then you HAVE to select 4 apps to use. But putting individual app shortcuts is not possible.
"You can't set a shortcut to activate a particular setting, either"
You can for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Sip, to different menu shortcuts. Which one do you want that is missing?
"it won't use the spacebar to accept suggestions unless you change another setting"
Really, how? I have been looking for this and can't find it anywhere. Using the right arrow to accept the work and then hitting spacebar is a poor design.
"E-mail now uses Nokia's server-side Intellisync software, but for obvious reasons of security (Nokia knows your passwords) I didn't test this extensively."
This can be bypassed. If you reject the terms and conditions right at the end of the email account set-up the emails won't go anywhere near Nokia's servers. This also helps because you can send attachments larger than 2MB in size the latter imposes.
There are other fiddly little problems to the ones you mention in this article. In many menus if scroll to the bottom item and select it when you go back the phone automatically takes you back to the top of the list. Notes and files of this type cannot be scroll without first selecting and marking all the text. I can customise my home screen by long pressing the screen, but I can't do the same when inside menus. Why? Instead I have to click on options and then organise. I then can list the items in alphabetical order - instead you have to move each individual icon to the location you prefer.
Mail for Exchange crashes on replying when using Gmail. IMAP email doesn't work as push email, so if your settings are set to retrieve soonest the app won't work until you open it. These things have been smoothed out over years by Nokia so why they should stop working properly is anyone's guess.
