Phone Review: Nokia N8

Nokia’s answer to the Apples and Androids, the N8, comes clad in anodised aluminium and in five colours — grey, silver, green, orange and blue.

The 3.5-inch touchscreen occupies most of the fascia, with a home key at the bottom. The camera unit bulges out at the rear. The battery is non-removable – a first for Nokia.

The coolest feature is USB on-the-go, letting you plug a USB flash drive to the phone using a bundled adapter. The 16 GB of internal storage and the USB feature means you don’t need an extra memory card — just play media off the flash drive.

The operating system is new: Symbian 3 offers three home screens that you can customise with shortcuts and widgets, and gets rid of most niggles suffered by its predecessors. The look and feel is a tad old-school, with large icons and customisable folders. In general, the interface has a few inconsistencies. It’s also a struggle to press the home key with one hand due to the sloping design.

A multimedia powerhouse is probably the best description of the N8. Despite having a not-so-high 640x360 pixel resolution, the scratch-resistant Gorilla glass display is reasonably crisp. The camera comes with Carl Zeiss optics, a mechanical shutter, and a large sensor, and supports face tracking. Touch-to-focus is lacking. In terms of image quality, it’s a killer.

A few N8 users have reported ‘power’ issues with their phones. While we didn’t see any of those, it might deter some potential buyers. Though the N8 may not be the perfect reply to its competition, it’s a serious alternative.

Rs. 26,259, www.nokia.co.in

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