Mobiles.co.uk Assess How the Nokia N8 Measures Up to Apple iPhone 4  

Article by Nick Hill

Nokia have had a quiet begin to 2010. The last large declaration was the Maemo-touting Nokia N900 which, even though an totally brilliant phone, was not the large success that Nokia had hoped for. Instead the N900 became the toy for tech lovers and hackers the world over once they realised the potential the Nokia N900 possessed.Up until now, the N900 has remained the flagship high-spec Nokia, but the latest declaration from the Finnish manufacturer looks set to take over the reins: The Nokia N8. With the current success of the new Apple iPhone and the continuing rapid growth of Android, the smartphone market has been inactivity for Nokia – the current world number one when looking at sheer volume of handsets sold globally – to release its latest creation, the Symbian^3 powered N8 smartphone. The N8 has a solid aluminium shell, with plastic at the top and bottom and will apparently launch in a range of five colours; silver, dark grey, orange, blue and green. The device has rounded edges and is tapered at the top and bottom and the back of the phone retains the same smooth aluminium finish, even though the camera mechanism is raised slightly from the back cover, apparently also doubling as the FM Radio antenna.The N8′s screen is a 3.5 inch OLED screen with a resolution of 360 x 640 pixels, which will result in clear, crisp images with the deep, true to life colouring that OLED screens provide. The capacitive nature of the touchscreen means that it’ll respond swiftly and accurately to swipes and touches of the finger as oppose to a stylus. There are also the usual sensors and technologies built in which are now considered fundamental to each smartphone: an accelerometer, a compass, GPS, a closeness sensor and an ambient light detector.Internally, the N8 has two chipsets; one which handles the graphics and another which handles connectivity. This means that the Nokia N8 should be healthy to handle anything that is thrown at it graphically and should be handle video playback and gaming with ease. Symbian^3 now boasts similar functionality to that found on rival platforms such as iOS 4, Android and Windows Phone 7, in that there’s now a free navigation application, multiple home screens, a media player with iTunes Cover-Flow style abilities and social network synchronisation. The Nokia N8 also has access to Nokia’s Ovi Store, where there are applications acquirable to peruse and download for free, although, the Ovi Store still lacks the size and the calibre of the Android Market and the Apple App store, there are still a plethora of apps acquirable covering the expected range of functionality. A real boasting point of the N8 is its camera; a 12 megapixel unit, with 720p HD recording ability and a mini-HDMI port on top so that the videos can then be played back on your HD television in their full 720p HD glory. The camera is said to incorporate the biggest sensor found on any mobile phone currently on the market, a bold claim from Nokia. The N8 comes loaded with 16GB of internal memory for storage which can be further expanded by up to another 32 GB through the use of microSD cards. Nokia have chosen to adopt the ‘ Apple iPhone‘ approach when it comes to powering the device, in that you can't change the battery yourself, a decision which is likely to establish very unpopular. That said, Nokia have said that the battery in the N8 is good for 50 hours of music playback or 7 hours of HD video, which, is quite impressive if true but not quite enough so, to forgive Nokia’s decision to fix the battery in place. Although, a welcome addition, is that the N8 can be charged with either a MicroUSB charger or the proprietary Nokia 2mm charger.

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Mobiles.co.uk Assess How the Nokia N8 Measures Up to Apple iPhone 4