Review: Nokia N8

Nokia's reputation as a leader in the smartphone market has been under increasing pressure in recent years, as a string of 'high end' handsets have failed to capture the minds and wallets of the phone-buying public.So to fix that, Nokia's gone back to the drawing board to bring out the Nokia N8, featuring a new OS and a huge amount of high end tech packed under the hood.Having announced the phone back in April, Nokia has been holding off on release to make sure the user experience is as good as possible.But it needs to be very good indeed seeing as most other brands announce a phone then release it within weeks ? we've been waiting nearly half a year for this one.Symbian^3 builds on the previous iterations of the OS seen on the likes of the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic and Nokia X6, but adds in multiple home screens, widgets and an improved UI.Hardware-wise, Nokia has pushed the boat out too with the new N8, offering a full metal chassis with anodised scratch-proof paint to give the phone a really high end feel.However, with a 12MP camera with Xenon flash bolted on the back, it's not a slim device by any stretch of the imagination - it fits in the hand well enough but the dimensions 113.5 x 59 x 12.9 mm aren't going to rival the likes of the iPhone 4 and the Samsung Galaxy S in pocket-friendliness.The Nokia N8 also doesn't have a removable battery either - the full metal chassis is completely enclosed so unless you've got a very particular screwdriver, you're not getting in to replace any innards.To that end, Nokia has put two hinged gates on the side of the N8, giving access to the microSD card slot and the SIM card port - both are quite hard to pull open (which isn't a bad thing as you're probably not going to be opening them very often) and clicking cards in can be tricky too.The rest of the Nokia N8 continues the higher-end feel: the 3.5-inch capacitive OLED screen really pops with colour (although fails to match the impressive qualities of Samsung's Super AMOLED) and the minimalistic design sees only one home button on the front of the device... which seems a little familiar. Nokia wouldn't be taking its cues from another manufacturer here, would it?The right-hand side of the phone houses the camera key, which has staggered press levels to allow you to only push it down partway for autofocus. There's also a volume key with raised buttons, although these are fairly far away from each other, so can be hard to hit when you're not looking.There's also the infuriating slider switch on this side of the Nokia N8 - if you're a fan of physical unlocking, then this is a good example of that, but we'd prefer a simple screen swipe to open up the phone (although you can short press a little on-screen offering).The left-hand side of the Nokia N8 is a little more sleek, with only the aforementioned gates for microSD and SIM, as well as the uncovered microUSB slot.The top of the N8 is where it mostly happens though - there's a mini HD port, the 3.5mm headphone jack and the power switch, which is also used to quickly change profiles when buzzing through the N8's interface.The bottom houses the charger port - and it's a standard 'new Nokia charger' port, which is really odd when a) every other manufacturer bar Apple is going microUSB and b) there's a microUSB slot on the side of the phone already.You can charge through this port too ? it's just Nokia has supplied the old two-pin effort in the box.But as we said before, the Nokia N8 sits in the hand well enough and allows you to access all the functions pretty easily and you don't need to jiggle it around in your palm too much. We're just not sure about that charger though.In the boxNokia has thrown a large range of toys in the box with the N8 - an adaptor to convert HDMI to mini HDMI, decent earbuds with an inline remote, a slim line charger and a USB lead with adaptor too. This is all packaged in an eco-friendly slim box, and certainly looks premium and worth the money you'll need to be forking out.As we mentioned earlier, the Nokia N8 is using a new operating system, Symbian^3. Symbian has been used by the Finns for umpteen years, and sadly hasn't gone through much development in that time.The new iteration is designed to help bring Nokia's touchscreen phones in line with those from Apple and Google - and it fails in our opinion.Firstly, the new home screen system - you only get three displays to scroll through, and you can only populate these with identically-sized widgets.We get the reasoning behind this, as the Nokia N8 displays the widgets nicely in both landscape and portrait modes (and flips pretty quickly too). However, if you want to add a few specific applications to the front screen, you have to open a 'shortcuts' widget and then put up to four icons on there.It's miles behind the simple Android system of opening the menu, holding an icon down and then seeing it jump to the front screen.The widget offering is also limited, although more will be available to download as time goes on from the Ovi Store. However, there's a strong focus on pointless entertainment apps out the box, and the Nokia N8 suffers on first impressions because of this.Another problem - Nokia has still got a long way to go in terms of perfecting the touchscreen interface. When you want to move between home screens you have to make a sideways swiping gesture... then wait for the screen to catch up.No screen moving under the finger, no instant reaction. It seems like such a simple thing and once again Nokia has failed to pick up on the basics when designing a 'cutting-edge' phone.The good thing about the new Nokia N8 is there are a range of separate areas where it's significantly upgraded over previous models - for instance, there's a 680MHz ARM 11 processor on board, and while that sounds low it belies its specs in performance.The home screens might seem slow to respond, but it does it in a consistent way, showing it's more the way the software is put together than any inherent limitations in the hardware ? although a few areas, like entering text in web applications, are really laggy indeed.When opening up the menu (using the single button on the front of the phone) the Nokia N8 responds quickly and then when scrolling through the icons, the phone reacts exactly to your touch ? which makes it all the more curious why the same system wasn't integrated into the home screens.But the decent reaction aside, we're bitterly disappointed by what Symbian^3 offers, as it's not much more than a more in-depth version of the Symbian system that's been around for years and years.Things like having to drill down through so many menus to get to simple options and the clunkiness of the home screen widgets make it feel very archaic when compared to the slickness of webOS, Android and iOS.The widget manipulation is a great example: you have to press down for quite a while to begin editing the elements on the screen, and then you can only add or remove the widgets or move them up or down. You can't move them from one home screen to another, meaning if you want to rearrange all three home screens at once you'll be spending a long time deleting and re-adding widgets all over the place.What's more annoying is the opportunity here for Nokia - little things like switching wallpaper every time you swipe are a nice touch, if only the rest of the operation was as slick. It just pales in comparison to the Live Wallpapers and up to nine home screens of Android - and that's before we even get into the excellent overlays such as Sense UI.Nokia's menu-based system might be familiar to some, but the time is now right to change things - the old fans need to move into the next generation of smartphone operation, rather than Nokia catering for them now almost exclusively.Things like having to drill down through two menus to get to an application you downloaded is far too much; and when editing a list (emails, for instance) to delete multiple items you need to press menu, mark, select the items, press menu, then delete and confirm.Compare that to the iPhone's system: edit, select items, delete. Done. Or re-ordering your icons: open the menu, click organise then move the icon through the grid. If you need to go 'up' a level, then you have to throw the icon into the relevant slot. It's good that you can do it, but it's just convoluted.We know that people will say that there's a desire for such organisation, but it should be more like the iPhone: choosing to make folders than having to wade through clicks and swipes just to find where the email client is.We don't want to keep comparing the operating systems, but we need to see more from Nokia, as Symbian^3 in its current iteration is starting to feel as convoluted as Windows Mobile in its operation - and that's NEVER, EVER a good thing for a mobile phone.For lower-end phones, Symbian^3 might be OK - but the Nokia N8 feels like the phone the X6 or 5800 XpressMusic should have been, but with better hardware. Symbian^3's capabilities should have been shown then, not now with this high-end, flagship phone.Nokia's heritage in using a mobile phone as a phone is on show here, and we're very glad it is; we simply couldn't stand another 'Antenna-gate' like we saw with the iPhone 4.ContactsWe've criticised Nokia in the past for offering too many options when adding in a contact, but that's thankfully been rectified with the Nokia N8.Admittedly the multitude of options is still there, but they're at least hidden below a multitude of menus.However, the contacts screen is another area where Nokia has tried to improve things and failed miserably.Having synchronised the SIM contacts with your phone (no such help with Google sync here, although you can synchronise your contacts from your corporate mail account) you're then presented with a contact card.At the top of that is 'social networks' which, when you click it, requires you to sign into Facebook or Twitter, wait, search for the person's name if it's not the same as in the phone book and then click to add.Even after that it's still only an option to be viewed once the social networks tab on the contact profile has been hit ? you can then send a message from there or view the profile of that person.But set up is long... very, very long and you won't do it for more than three people unless you're on a stupidly long train journey. Plus the contact picture it pulls from Facebook or Twitter doesn't always match up to the right size of the space on offer, meaning it looks very amateurish.Given the excellence of the HTC Sense UI on the new HTC Desire HD, with more information than you'll ever need on a person offered from their contact profile, we have no idea what Nokia is trying to do here.CallingAt least calling is a little bit more successful ? although there's no noise cancelling on offer, despite the noise reduction tool being used in the HD video capture.All the callers we had conversations with reported being able to hear us easily, and the ear speaker was nice and loud ? with a good range of volume offered by playing about with the rocker switch.We also liked the presence of the smart dialling pad: either start typing a number to see it spring up, or use the number pad as a T9 predictive text-style operation and the names will come up that way too ? nice touch.Video calling ? which, as we all know, was invented by Apple this year (although hang on, wasn't it around in 2002...*COMMENT DELETED BY APPLE'S NET PATROL*) is present on the Nokia N8, and it's... well, it's video calling. Yes, useful if you have to see someone at VGA resolution, but that's very rare and ultimately it's a pointless feature.At least Nokia has implemented it well here ? it's very smooth and easy to use, especially over Wi-Fi.Another plus is the speaker on the rear phone ? while it's a tiny bit tinny, it's certainly very loud and clear, so make sure you only use it for easier conference calling, and not annoying people on the bus with your rather terrible grime-step tunes.Nokia is all about connecting people, and that's why it has traditionally been so strong in messaging.In fact, it's drawn so heavily on the past it's decided that despite having a 3.5-inch screen, it should be a 12-key multi-tap option in portrait mode on the Nokia N8.Yes, you get predictive text to make typing a bit faster, but we saw that on the Nokia 3210... and that was back in 1999.It's 2010 now, and we're living in a world where large touchscreens have replaced a one-inch monochrome screen ? so come on Nokia, let's have a mini-QWERTY offering with word correction. (FYI that Nokia 3210 has a 1250mAh battery ? which is bigger than the one in the Nokia N8).Obviously there's a full-screen QWERTY keyboard when turning the phone on its side to move into landscape mode, but there's still no word correction, meaning a lot of frustrated backspacing until you get used to the system/slow down your typing.Messaging options are plentiful though: you've got every kind of webmail under the sun, from Google to Yahoo to Hotmail, as well as Exchange support too. Obviously text, MMS and conversations are included from the outset - however make sure you've copied over your contacts to the Nokia N8's memory before you start messaging, as the default Conversations mode will only show numbers and not names until you do.There are a few cool features in here - namely things like being able to find numbers in the text - although you'll need to activate the 'Automatic Find' mode before this works.We would like to have seen an overhaul of the messaging UI though - it's the same as the previous iteration of Symbian, and hitting the correct areas to enter names, number or the message are a little hard to hit.Email set up is nice and easy though: you simply need to enter your address and password, and if it's a popular webmail account the Nokia N8 will pop off and find all the settings for it. If it's Exchange you're after, you'll need to add in a few more settings, but it's still more painless than on other phones.Element like Fring are also included as part of the application list, and will start up automatically when turning on the phone.However once again this is a little convoluted to set up, as you need to add in accounts and then start up Fring to use the service every time.Plus it crashed on us when making calls, which is never a good thing - although you are able to make VOIP calls if you so wish, and it does act as a Twitter client too, albeit very poorly with missing graphics and the confusing layout.The Nokia N8 has to offer up a decent internet experience if it's to beat the current crop of internet tablet/phones. The Google Gang and iPhone iN-crowd both have excellent implementations of a Webkit-browser, and while the Nokia N8 definitely has a better web experience, it's not going to be seen as a better option than those phones.For instance, it seems like it will be a winner: pinch to zoom and Flash compatibility seem to offer up a decent experience, and give a lot of cause for hope.But then you begin to use the internet, and you'll see it's not as slick as the competitors. For instance, the pinch-zooming is nowhere near as accurate, juddering along at times and making it harder to get close to the text.Similarly, you only get two options - double tap to see the text a bit closer, or double tap again to zoom out. You can go a bit closer, but like the iPhone, the text won't reform to fit the screen.It's a trick that HTC has perfected on its Android phones, such as the Desire HD, and now other Android handsets are catching up with - the Motorola Milestone 2 manages it for instance, although it's not automatic.Flash is also a bit of a mixed bag too - the Nokia N8 actually uses Flash Lite 4 to interpret Flash 10 videos, which is a handy plus (and if we need to add: something the iPhone 4 will likely never do).It's good for many videos - we'd say on a par with the HTC Desire for many. However, with more Flash-heavy videos, like those shown on the BBC website, the Nokia N8 struggles a lot and the resulting pixellated mess isn't up to much.It also doesn't seem to like the new YouTube HTML5 site for mobiles - we've been impressed with that on the iPhone 4 and Android handsets, and yet we're forced to look at an oddly-shaped video screen on the Nokia N8.The interface for the web browser on the Nokia N8 hasn't really changed either ? we're STILL forced to go through a bagillion screen presses to just reload the page.Nokia's got this little trick of opening up the screen to show as much of the web page as possible, and then you hit a double-ended arrow to see the options. From there, you have to hit the menu icon, and get a new grid of other icons to mess about with.Only here can you reload, which is a little convoluted when some phones have it as a button alongside the URL.But one nice touch: you can automatically subscribe to an RSS feed from this icon pane, and that feed will be available as a home screen widget. It's this kind of intuition that we wish Nokia would use more often throughout the N8.Google search is also included (and Bing if you prefer that option) and it's nice to be able to search for an item no matter where you are.History is also cool ? each website is shown as a separate thumbnail to scroll through, which makes it much easier to find the page you were on, as the titles can sometimes be a little cryptic.The speed at which you can whizz through them is again testament to the excellent implementation of the GPU and CPU working in tandem.The web browser is decent enough ? the screens render well enough and fairly quickly (especially over Wi-Fi) and the accuracy is pretty good.It just really, really lacks the wow factor of other mobile web browsers out there, with a slight delay on link clicking at times and choppy flash, as well as a being a little slower on a number of tests than the likes of the Samsung Galaxy S, HTC Desire and iPhone 4 in our tests.If there's any area that the Nokia N8 is going to excel at, it's on the camera, and thankfully, it does just that, and with aplomb.Forget the fact you can create coffee-table books with the 12MP sensor and Carl Zeiss optics (as well as 'proper' Xenon flash) it's in the day to day picture taking we're impressed with the Nokia N8.There are a multitude of options to play with: for instance, raising the contrast up and down, or messing with the sharpness of an image. You can also fiddle with exposure or white balance, and there are a number of scenes to play with as well, should you require an improvement in performance.That said, we've only once ever managed to use the 'Fireworks' mode on any camera, and even then we sort of missed the main explosion. Still nice to have it there though.Face detection is included too ? it's pretty good, although when we tested it on a group of 12 people it only ever managed to find 11 at most, and that's with a lot of manipulation.That said, it's not critical to have every face recognised, as you only need to set the focus levels accurately, and the Nokia N8 does that with veritable aplomb with pretty much any mode (although Macro mode was a bit erratic at times when trying to take an EXTREME CLOSE UP).NORMAL MODE: The N8 in automatic modeLANDSCAPE VIEW: Not a lot of detail is added by switching the scenes, suggesting the general mode is good enoughCLOUDY WHITE: The white balance is set to cloudy - again, not showing a lot of differenceHIGH EXPOSURE: When dialling up the exposure, so much more detail is shown in the foreground. Nokia's decision not to add touch-focus, where you can tap on the portion of the screen you want in focus, is obvious here as this may be the shot you'd preferINDOOR: The natural mode captures images sharply despite a relative lack of light, and shots are easy to frame9MP MODE: Using the 9MP mode allows you to take wider shots; the macro mode used here captures detail pretty wellHIGH CONTRAST: Upping the contrast adds a nice sheen to photos, but isn't suitable for every situationXENON FLASH: Working as quickly as a compact camera, the xenon flash takes decent pictures and captures the colour of the subject wellGREAT ZOOM: Despite being a digital zoom, the clarity when magnifying the shot is awesome, a feature that's reproduced on the HD video recording tooIn terms of comparison, it's hard to say that the Nokia N8 is leagues ahead of the likes of the Sony Ericsson Satio or the Samsung Pixon 12, although the overall ease of use is better with this phone than those from last year.Video is in the same league as the camera on the Nokia N8 - we're talking HD video recording and a decent smattering of features designed to give you the best video possible.The settings on offer aren't as extensive as on the camera mode, but that's to be expected.White balance and colour manipulation are on offer, which are among the most important for setting the scene.The night mode is odd; it's still really clear and bright, but the lack of frame rate leads to very strange footage, so it's a shame a dedicated video light wasn't included by Nokia. It's more about the power of the image capture on the Nokia N8 ? check out the world's smallest stop-motion animation filmed using a high-power lens and the N8 to show what's possible with this camera. However, don't go thinking it's the world's best HD camcorder on a mobile phone ? the iPhone 4 is easily its equal, although we'd imagine the superior optics on the Nokia N8 would give it a slight edge to the highly-tuned eye.But either way, the Nokia N8 has a fantastic camera performance, which we'd hope it would do, given the Finns has been boasting about the HD powers of the N8 for nearly half a year now.The Nokia N8 is designed to be a media player with some power, and that certainly seems to be the case. Be it music, video or simply viewing photos, it seems pretty good at most.MusicThe Nokia N8's music player might not have been upgraded massively for a long time, but that's not necessarily a bad thing, given that sometimes all you want a handset to do is play the files you ask and do so in an easy to use manner.The icons on the music player screen are large and easy to use, and there's also the option to see more detailed information about the song playing, as well as the album art.The options to mess about with the music player aren't that extensive unfortunately, which means the music quality is somewhat compromised. While the Nokia N8 has a pretty good audio output, testing it on the audiophile-friendly Sennheiser HD-650 headphones shows it to be a bit high-end heavy.We found the best way to balance it out was to employ the 'Bass Booster' equaliser setting, although this really masked, more than fixed, the problem. It should be noted that the Nokia N8 can really kick out the bass though, so it's not all bad. It was a decent experience overall, just quite beating the competition into the number one spot for music playback (we're still in love with the sound emitted from the Samsung Galaxy S).However, we do like the music manipulation offerings, such as the simple music widget for the home screen and the inline remote controls supplied on the decent in-box headphones, which have some good noise-isolating buds on them.Another big plus is the FM transmitter, which very few phones still offer, despite it being such a handy tool. Any song will have an FM transmitter option in the settings, and you can simply set the frequency to whatever you like and the FM radio can pick it up - it even sends the song information if RDS is enabled on the receiver.VideoVideo files on the Nokia N8 also play back well, which makes sense given so many are supported. We tested out as many files as we could get our hands on, and nearly all worked.However, we did encounter one small problem: the placement of the 3.5mm headphone jack meant it was hard to comfortably watch films when holding the Nokia N8 in one hand.The best quality seemed to come from WMV files, which seemed to offer superior audio performance, and it's interesting to note that should you be transferring the video files over on Windows 7, the Nokia N8 will ask for them to be re-encoded to WMV, no matter what file type.We managed to view Xvid, DivX, MP4 and AVI files with no issue on the Nokia N8, although m4v simply wouldn't even copy across and OGG files wouldn't play back either. However, Flash video files were initially not accepted, but once on the phone and accessed through the file manager, would play back with the sparse-but-functional Flash video player.You've also got the option to download video from the BBC iPlayer - the interface might be a little fiddly but it's very usable and downloading programmes onto your phone is simple as anything - once saved, simply open up the file to activate the license and see your video in crystal clear quality.Image quality is good enough on the Nokia N8, although we weren't blown away. The OLED screen should offer some decent contrast ratios, but we couldn't help but feel that the lower-res of the nHD screen (640x 380 pixels) didn't impress as much as the plethora of WVGA devices on the market at the moment.We weren't saddened by the video quality by any stretch of the imagination, but it's hard to feel that the 3.5-inch screen and lower resolution screen can really match up with the big media hitters, such as the Samsung Galaxy S.Of course, the extra trick of sending video out over the HDMI port is a nice idea, and does help to make your media that little bit more accessible to others - however, the Tron Legacy trailers pre-loaded on our unit wouldn't work due to licensing issues, so we're not sure what Nokia slipped up on there.However the video performance isn't superb on the big screen - it looks a lot better on the smaller screen - but it's still better than a lot we've seen out there.And of course, DLNA is on its way, and in a big way too. The Samsung Galaxy S and Wave feature AllShare to send media all around, the HTC Desire HD and Desire Z offer easy DLNA playback and even Motorola is in on the act, so only being able to connect up via a lead isn't as cool as it used to be (but it's still a really excellent option to have).FM radioAnd speaking of the FM transmitter earlier, we hoped for a similarly good experience on the FM radio as well.Sadly, this isn't the case, as the radio is as basic as it always has been on Nokia phones over the years. Signal was poor in most situations with any pair of wired headphones connected, and the Nokia N8 refused to find RDS details on any of the stations we found.True, the scanning was quick and the signal issues are found on 90% of mobile phones with an inbuilt radio, but it still wasn't an impressive experience and having to go through and name all our favourite stations was really rather irritating indeed.Looking at the specs for the Nokia N8 it's easy to get worried about the battery life when you consider it's only 1200mAh, which is a lot less than its competitors, most of which opt for a 1500mAh power cell.However, the good news is the Nokia N8 belies this spec and actually will outlast a lot of its peers in terms of battery prowess.We managed to easily knock out two days' use with the phone, although it wouldn't have managed to get far into the third day. This is with push email turned on, the Wi-Fi scanner in full force and a fair smattering of internet and music too - in short, it's just fantastic and way ahead of nearly all the smartphone competition.However, it should be noted that we found ourselves hitting the internet a lot less frequently than on other devices we've had on test, simply because it's a poorer experience so idly flicking through web pages while Neighbours is on becomes less of an attraction.It should be noted that the power management of the Nokia N8 is likely down to the decent performance of the CPU - Nokia's decision to put a 680MHz power core in the N8 shows that it's not looking to rev the phone as fast as other devices, but we rarely saw many examples of slowdown in the OS to show this relatively low-power processor.We can't help but wonder why Nokia has gone with the 1200mAh battery - sure, it's optimised it really well, meaning you won't need to charge regularly, but think of how long the Nokia N8 could have lasted with a battery that was 25% bigger? It would have probably pushed the phone into three or maybe even four days' use, and that's ridiculous by today's smartphone standards.We also tested the phone thoroughly offline - the battery performance held up, despite hammering the Bluetooth and Wi-Fi with data transfers to assess performance, and using it for long stints as a music player.The only downside when it comes to battery life we could see is the fact it's sealed in the phone - we don't know why Nokia's chosen to do this, but it means you can't replace it should the power centre go wonky.ConnectionsThe Nokia N8 is full to the brim with high-end connectivity: Bluetooth 3.0 with A2DP, Wi-Fi up to 802.11n, assisted GPS, 10.2Mbps HSDPA, mini HDMI port, basically everything you could want. Apart from the odd decision to put the older style of Nokia charger in the box, there's nothing we can fault here.We were (sadly) quite excited to try out some high end Bluetooth 3.0 transfers, as it promises a jump from 3Mbps to 24Mbps data transfer speeds. We used a Galaxy S (also rocking 3.0) to try sending a song, and the results were a little disappointing: a 3.4MB file took 34 seconds to transfer. However, we tried it using the BlackBerry Torch (a Bluetooth 2.1 device) and we found that same song took 55 seconds to transfer, so at least the Nokia N8 is faster.The other settings all worked well in the background, much as you'd expect them too. However, one of the claims in Symbian^3 is an much more effective management of Wi-Fi and 3G, as other Nokia phones have required the user to set which connection should be used at any one time, and manually prioritise the connections in a ranking list.Well, that's sort of been done away with here, although at times the Nokia N8 will default to 3G for certain applications even though Wi-Fi is present, and still irritatingly ask you which connection you want to apply when opening some applications.It's not a big problem for some users, but for the noveau smartphone user it will be a little disconcerting - Nokia needs to avoid this kind of thing at all costs.Basically, it's another area where the older version of Symbian comes screaming through, and Nokia needs to throw that rule book out the window and design a whole new OS to take on the bigger boys when it comes to little things like connectivity - which is hopefully what MeeGo will be.PC connectivityNokia's attempts to sync your phone up with a PC have been patchy over the years, but with the current Ovi Suite it's doing a lot better; throw Windows 7 into the mix and you've got a fantastically fully featured connection suite for the Nokia N8.We were ridiculously impressed that our PC recognised the phone so easily, and then offered a variety of options to perform without needing to actually open any programs.If that's not your bag then you do get the option to open Nokia's Ovi Suite to do all kinds of phone manipulation, or you can hit the Ovi Player to download and copy your music. Sadly, Ovi Music Unlimited (formerly Nokia's Comes with Music) isn't featured on this phone in the UK ? man, we hope Nokia fixes that service soon as it would be awesome on a phone like this.It's interesting that some operating systems will allow you to convert tracks and videos to a more efficient or palatable format before copying them to the Nokia N8 ? it makes interacting with the phone so much easier.The Nokia N8 comes preloaded with so many applications it's unreal, although scratch the surface a little bit and you'll see most of them are more than useless.For instance, do we need a dedicated Rihanna app, or a Michael Jackson Wiki-style offering? Information on Lily Allen or an app to log into Facebook and tell us when our friends' birthdays are? Not really.But there are some decent ones on there: for instance, BBC iPlayer may only be a link to the relevant mobile site, but the ability to stream or download programmes is really cool.Gravity was one of the better S60 applications for accessing Twitter, and that's on the Nokia N8 as well ? but only as a trial. This is really gutting as the interface is clean and quick, and you can use it as a Google Reader RSS app or click into Facebook too, and those functions aren't easily natively on the Nokia N8.There's a smattering of other average applications include, such as TuneWiki, which offers song lyrics and album artwork, although often it can't manage to locate your tracks.Fring is also pretty neat for some VOIP connectivity, although really needs another user to have it installed to work effectively (although it's a good portal to chatting applications as well).There aren't any good games included, which is weird when you consider Nokia made such a big deal about the GPU included on the N8.There's only Garfield Training included, and it's such a poor and slow game (and ad-funded), we don't even know why Nokia bothered putting it on there.There are only a smattering of decent racing games on the Ovi Store, and none of them are free ? why Asphalt 5, the game of choice for every other phone in the world ever bar none, isn't on here we don't know. At least it would show off the graphical power a little bit.Ovi Store is still a long, long way off being as easy to use as the Android Market or the Apple App Store, and the range needs to be improved too. Heck, we'd even say the BlackBerry App World has a better UI ? and that's a harsh thing to claim indeed.MapsOvi Maps has been touted as a superior product to Google Maps on mobile phones for a long time, but we can't really see how that claim can be justified.True, it offers some extra features, such as being able to post your location to Facebook, but most of the other headline offerings from Ovi Maps are being eroded by Google.Free sat nav? Check. Pre-cached Maps? Check (well, on the new HTC Android phones anyway ? so it can't be long before Google offers the same thing). Walking navigation? Check too.And on top of that, Google Maps offers multi-touch support, Streetview and a much more attractive user interface.If you're going to get a Nokia phone anyway, then Ovi Maps is a brilliant service, as you can download maps for whole countries for free, which is a great thing to offer.And the mapping service offers a lot of cool and easy to use features ? it's just not, as Nokia claims, the best on the market.Nokia's N8 is the flagship model for the firm, and it's clear to see that it's tried to make it the most premium phone it can.The main thing was supposed to be the price: the phone was initially announced with a price tag of ?370, which would have been much, much cheaper than the comparable iPhone 4 (at �499) or the Samsung Galaxy S (at �449).However, now Nokia is selling it for �429 direct and SIM free, which means one of its main USPs has now sailed out the window.We likedWe enjoyed a lot of things about the Nokia N8 once we had become used to the foibles of the OS.The media experience is cracking, if a bit simplistic, and the performance above average.The camera works well in most conditions, and the video recording lives up to its word ? it really is high definition and looks it.The range of video and audio codecs supported is dizzying, and even those it's not supposed to play back still work.Widgets are a nice touch, and one we wish Apple would get involved with. Talking of which, being able to watch Flash video on the handset was brilliant too (when it worked).The anodised aluminium shell is likely to win a fair few admirers, and the Nokia N8 is streets, towns, even counties ahead in terms of battery life compared to some phones, easily offering a two day use under normal conditions.We dislikedSymbian^3. Everything that we didn't like about this phone can be traced back to the operating system and Nokia's ridiculously stubborn approach to updating its ageing platform.Basically, Symbian^3 is the old version of S60 with a spot of spit-and-shine and some new features on top ? more home screens, added widgets and multi-touch do not suddenly make it a decent smartphone platform.Essentially, the Nokia N8 works in the same way as the Nokia N97 and the Nokia X6 should have worked when they were released, offering swift operation and a bevy of cooler features, instead of the bug-filled handsets we were given.The internet browser still feels like a throwback to phones of yesteryear, and the lack of QWERTY keyboard in portrait mode beggars belief.No decent games included from the start mean many won't get to realise the full power of the GPU ? and to be honest, the iPhone 4's performance would probably far outstrip it anyway, when you consider the range on offer and the addition of the gyroscope.VerdictWe started off really not enjoying the Nokia N8 ? it has so many little things that are far inferior to the competition from the outset that it was hard to keep going through the review.Having been ardent fans of Nokia in a past life, it's not fun seeing phones like the N8 coming out ? yes, it's not a bad phone overall, but given the sheer weight of resources behind its development we can't help but wonder how things haven't improved to a class-leading performance yet.If a smaller company like Acer had made the N8, we'd be congratulating it on an excellent device to build on in the future ? but this is the biggest mobile manufacturer in the world we're talking about here.What's weird is there's nothing disastrously wrong with the Nokia N8 ? the elements like media playback and FM transmitter are pretty darn good, and things like Bluetooth 3.0 are a real nice touch.But the UI has become all important on a mobile phone these days and Nokia hasn't managed to nail that yet. Slow moving home screens, a convoluted apps system and confusing social networking integration show how behind the times the Nokia N8 is.Instead of the Dolby Digital output and 12MP camera, we'd have preferred it if Nokia just made a phone that operated as well as the likes of Apple, Samsung and HTC's best.The Nokia N8 is a decent enough phone, that manages to perform its tasks ably and offers up some nice headline specs. However, it lacks in terms of wow factor for most things ? let's just hope MeeGo can provide the smartphone platform to put Nokia back towards the head of the smartphone game.If you've always used Nokia phones or never played with a smartphone before, then the Nokia N8 works pretty well. You'll get a top notch camera, a good battery life and a more-than-useful media player.But make sure you don't play with another top-end smartphone as you'll soon see the UI, keyboard and internet are all significantly better than the N8's and if you don't use the camera or music player that often you might regret your purchase.Related StoriesPAYG Android phones to land on VodafoneNokia N8 finally gets UK releaseSamsung outlines UK Windows Phone 7 plansBlinkx links with Evri for iPhone and Android video contentHTC Mondrian and Spark Window Phone 7 handset leakDogs