Design wise, N8 feels extremely solid – good weighting behind it.
Flat top and bottom edge – we were dubious at first but it really helps when picking up the handset.
AMOLED colours are really vibrant and pixel density is good.
In direct sunlight it’s still perfectly usable – though gloss may prevent from watching movies.
CAMERA – Nokia says this could double up as a compact camera replacement – let’s see if it does later on…
Overall, we really like feel of the N8 – due to the non removable battery, Nokiia have made it more refined –
feeling solid dense and secure in the process.
S^3 doesn’t feel different enough or more to the point, LOOK different enough [oh boy here we go,
Very happy with the music player – it has been rethought through. Once opened, immediately brought to artists and albums – no wading through menu as these are all available within one click from the menu.
Album art and song integration list – really great idea – makes one handset scrolling a real pleasure
Loudspeaker is a littlebit tinny and not good for prolonged use
Photo viewer loads up extremely quickly. Given that these photos were taken by the 12MP camera, we’re really impressed by this.
There’s absolutely no lag – really happy that this makes the N8 a really good photo viewer and sharer.
Keyboard layout much improved – in portrait, half the screen is now for your message.
In landscape, keyboard is extremely usable, with a lot of superfluous icons taken away.
Video playback – thoroughly impressed with the N8′s codec support – it just works seamlessly.
Really great, N8 can double up as a media hub through HDMI – Really is a multimedia solution for all occasions.
[quite a big general overview on the camera.]
Web pages loaded on N8 well, but S^3 browser quite jerky. We’re sure Nokia is going to remedy this in the
future. We found ourselves switching to Opera Browser, even forgoing pinch to zoom
USB – to go functionality is fantastic.
Overall S^3 is a little bit of a let down, whilst it does do a good job of anything it does and doesn’t royally stuff up anywhere, design wise it’s just not pretty. [woohoo, come on style over substance]
When iOS and Android are stealing the show are making us want to use it, Symbian is lagging behind a bit, not paying enough credence to design which to this day and age is becoming increasingly important
N8 a good phone? Of course it is, we’ve even go so far as to say it’s a great phone.
One of the best if not the best camera we’ve seen on a mobile phone
