The first time Nokia's N8-00 popped up on our radar was way back in early February of this year. On that chilly, misty morning, we learned of a mythical being capable of shooting 12 megapixel stills, recording 720p video, outputting via HDMI, and -- most importantly -- ushering in the promised Symbian^3 touch revolution. It's been a long road of leaks, teasers, hands-ons, and previews since then, but at long last, the legend of the N8 has become a purchasable commodity. All the early specs have survived, including the 3.5-inch AMOLED display, but the key question today, as it was at the beginning, relates to that all-new software within: does Symbian^3 succeed in elevating Nokia's touchscreen experience or does it drag down an otherwise stellar combination of high-end parts? For that verdict and much, much more, join us after the break.

Hardware

Let's not waste any time equivocating here, it'll be quite obvious to anyone with a set of eyeballs that Nokia has fashioned one of the most ruggedly handsome devices of recent memory with the N8. In a sea of identikit touchscreen-dominated phones, the N8 manages to stand out, thanks to its (mostly) aluminum construction, wide palette of color options, and atypical mixture of curvy sides and sternly straight lines at the top and bottom. The biggest distinguishing feature will of course be the protruding camera compartment on the back, which houses the world's largest image sensor yet seen in a smartphone, a Carl Zeiss lens, a Xenon flash, and a loudspeaker.

We've got no complaints to proffer about the apparent durability of the handset itself and that extends to this extra bump on the back, but there are a couple of notes worth making. Firstly, the N8 will spend most of its horizontal time resting on the camera section's bottom edge. In our time with the phone we noticed it generated an unpleasant screeching sound anytime we slid it across a flat surface and we imagine over the long run that portion of the body will suffer plenty of wear and tear. Additionally, we found ourselves inevitably fingering the lens every time we held the handset up to make a call. That was just the most natural place for our forefinger to go, which is hardly a deal breaker in itself, but something to bear in mind if you care to keep your imaging equipment immaculately clean (and if you read our camera section below, you probably will care).

We'd be remiss not to also note that the menu key at the N8's bottom left corner feels rather improperly placed. Nokia loves to tout its phones as being designed for single-handed operation, but reaching down to hit the menu key and access its multivariate functions was something of a treacherous activity. We nearly dropped this precious drop of aluminum a couple of times while trying to maneuver our digits over that button, and eventually settled on using a second hand when we needed it.

Aside from those somewhat minor points, the N8 really looks to be continuing Nokia's fine tradition of making phones built to last decades rather than mere months or years. The volume buttons are crowned with handy little nubs for blind operation, the traditional screen-locking slider is also present and accounted for -- coming with a nicely ridged surface and a finely tuned spring mechanism -- and is joined by something of a rarity in smartphones: a two-stage shutter button for the camera, which is also easy to find and operate.

Internals

Much has been made of the N8's use of a 680MHz processor in a 1GHz world, but those numbers are predictably beguiling. The N8 has a separate Broadcom GPU alongside its ARM 11 processing core, which takes over when things get graphically intense and delivers performance that rarely left us feeling underpowered. Couple that with Symbian^3 being able to exploit the graphics processor to perform hardware-accelerated OS animations and graphics, and grunt should altogether be quite adequate for the tasks the N8 is intended to perform. 720p movies were certainly no challenge for this phone. A lot more worthy of critique might be the 256MB memory allowance, which halves what other new phones are coming out with, but again, the argument can be made that Symbian^3 is an inherently more efficient platform and the lower number on the spec sheet doesn't seem to have had a correspondingly negative impact on real world use. In our experience, spanning multiple N8 devices, we only saw a "memory full" error message once -- while viewing a video file on the phone with the calendar open in the background.

Suffice it to say, you won't be lacking for options with the N8.

The array of additional features is pretty comprehensive too, with 802.11n WiFi, Bluetooth 3.0 plus A2DP, GPS (both the real and assisted kind), USB On-The-Go support, a 1200mAh battery, 16GB of built-in storage, and of course a MicroSD slot for adding up to 32GB more. Light and proximity sensors are joined by an accelerometer and magnetometer in ensuring that there's no unfilled nook or cranny within the N8's aluminum body. Suffice it to say, you won't be lacking for options with this handset.

It's also worth pointing out that a recent teardown of the N8 showed it to be quite friendly to user repairs, thanks to the use of Torx screws throughout, with the battery compartment in particular being only two of those fasteners away from being pried open. It's reassuring to know that even when Nokia moves away from the traditional user-replaceable battery design, it still offers a cell that is accessible to the somewhat more motivated owner. We didn't have the chance to test the battery out in full, but our time with the N8 made a good impression -- we were typically able to get more than a full day's use out of it, though do beware overusing that Xenon flash. The camera was the biggest power drain for us, with its oversized lighting unit predictably being the chief culprit.

Even happier news were found on the video transmission front, where we were able to drop a downloaded .mkv file off from our MacBook Pro and onto our N8 just through OS X, without recourse to any additional software, before exploiting the phone's HDMI connection to pump the video out to our home cinema projector. It was easy and straightforward, and having Matroska format compatibility right out of the box is very nice indeed.

Display

We've got two words for you: Gorilla Glass. We had to confirm this with Nokia since nobody seems to have bothered to make an official announcement on the matter, but yes, the N8 comes with the scratch-resistant glass that's garnered so much admiration since making its mainstream debut on the Motorola Droid. We scratched, clawed, poked and prodded the N8's front, but nothing we did caused it any discomfort. That's just what we've come to expect from these Gorilla Glass screens, which offer a real sense of assurance when plopping your expensive gadget into a pocket or in a bag that includes more than just fluffy toys.


What lies beneath it is a 3.5-inch AMOLED display stretching to 640 x 360 resolution. That's obviously not the densest panel you can own anymore, but neither is it a slouch. The N8's vibrancy and color saturation look highly accurate while the auto-brightness guesses correctly most of the time and gives you enough power -- unless you've got the sun shining directly down on the phone, of course -- to get on with your Symbian^3 business. That resolution is really the only thing holding this display back, but it's not like Nokia can do too much about it now.

Camera

Nokia has a long history of milestone imaging devices (the N91, N73, N93, N95, N82, and N86 all come to mind), and is the number one camera manufacturer in the world by sales volume. While the N95 set a new standard for cameraphones when it was launched in early 2007 and remains competitive today in terms of photo quality, every Nokia cameraphone since then has only delivered small upgrades. Enter the N8, with its 1/1.83-inch (12 megapixel) sensor, Carl Zeiss autofocus lens, mechanical shutter, and Xenon flash. Without mincing words, this is a phenomenal camera, and the N8′s raison d'être. It marks a significant step forward for cameraphones, and improves upon the N86 (Nokia's last imaging flagship) by a wide margin. Contrary to devices like the iPhone 4 which take comparatively pleasing but artificial pictures, the N8 produces extremely detailed and natural shots.

Color balance and light metering are superb. The two-stage shutter button feels wonderful, and locks both focus and exposure when half pressed.

Pictures captured with the N8 contain a tremendous amount of information and leave the door wide open for some serious post-processing. Color balance and light metering are superb. The two-stage shutter button feels wonderful, and locks both focus and exposure when half pressed. This gives the more advanced user plenty of creative flexibility in re-framing shots and/or playing with exposure. As to the less talented among us, we did note that the use of the physical shutter button (instead of the provided onscreen capture icon) introduced an extra bit of camera shake into our results. That wasn't universally the case and trained professionals could perhaps show us how to hold it right, but it did arise as an issue in our earlier hands-on with Nokia's new flagship.

The N8's LED-assisted autofocus is the fastest we've ever encountered on a cameraphone, but focus distance is somewhat limited by the wide-angle lens, with the macro starting at 10cm (four inches). Low-light performance, while generally quite impressive, sometimes exhibits more noise than expected. We talked about this with Damian Dinning at Nokia (the man behind the development of the N8 camera), who explained that the goal was to preserve detail at the expense of some noise, thus allowing more wiggle room for post-processing. While this is a reasonable approach, we'd like to see a setting to enable additional noise reduction. With the flash turned on, the N8 is pure Xenon magic. Night shots from macro to about two meters (six feet) look fantastic with the flash.

The N8 records video in 720p at 25fps. It performs better than the Motorola Droid X, but the resulting footage is choppier than the iPhone 4 and Samsung Wave, which both record at 30fps. Instead of autofocus, the N8 uses an active hyperfocal system which keeps objects in focus from 60cm (two feet) to infinity. While this works well most of the time, it means there's no macro for closeups. Audio is captured in stereo and sounds extremely clear, even when recording in loud environments. The N8 was recently hacked to record video at 30fps with continuous autofocus, and to take pictures at 100 percent JPEG quality (the default is 85 percent). Hopefully, Nokia will make some (if not all) of these features available in a future firmware update.

While not as simple as the iPhone 4 or as polished as the Samsung Galaxy S, the N8 camera interface is reasonably intuitive for long-time Symbian users, and provides plenty of useful settings, such as flash control, scene mode, face detection, exposure, white balance, ISO (100/400/800), sharpness, color tone, and contrast. There's no touch-to-focus, and no panorama setting, although the latter is supported via a separate app (see our sample shot here). The onscreen zoom slider is easy to touch by accident and seems redundant since the volume rocker also controls the digital zoom. Nokia provides functionality to edit and tag photos and videos, but strangely no direct way to upload content to sites like Flickr or YouTube, other than via email, of course.

In the end, the N8 camera truly is a photographer's delight. It excels at taking pictures and is competent at recording video. Still, there's room for improvement, and we're hoping Nokia steps up to the challenge. If you're looking for more sample shots, our own Myriam Joire took her N8 to Decompression in San Francisco last weekend and captured some beautiful pictures, while the untouched full-res version of our gallery above can be found in a zip file right here.

Speaker / earpiece

Sound is another feather in the N8's resplendent hat. The speaker is loud, bordering on booming (for its size), and produces crisp and punchy output. When placed on a flat surface, the rear-firing audio port did a fine job of bouncing sound back off its resting place and into the atmosphere around you, but it was less accomplished when placed on softer landing zones. We managed to disarm it almost completely by innocently placing it atop a cushion. You might say that's a small shortcoming and you would indeed be right. For those cozier moments, you can just make use of Nokia's bundled headset, which features a pair of noise-isolating ear buds that are a clear cut above the mediocrity typically thrown in with phones. It also has an in-line music remote plus a built-in a mic for some old school handsfree telephony.

Call quality on the N8 was similarly above average, with our direct comparison to the iPhone 4 showing a slight, but distinguishable, advantage for Nokia's handset. While voices sounded a tad bit tinnier on the N8, they were also more natural, making the iPhone sound "digital" by comparison. Not that it should come as any sort of a surprise, but Nokia has clearly taken care of the fundamentals with aplomb here.

Software

Nokia and the Symbian Foundation have been met with a unique challenge: the platform has needed to evolve in ways that prevent it from breaking many years of architectural compatibility.

Looking at the spec sheet, the N8 is notable not just for its epic camera hardware, but also for the fact that it becomes the first Symbian^3-based device to hit the market. Of course, Nokia and the Symbian Foundation have been met with a unique challenge that Android and iOS really have not thus far: the platform has needed to evolve in ways that prevent it from breaking many years of architectural compatibility. A very real example of that comes in the form of Avkon, Symbian's UI framework, a framework that has existed since Series 60's creation in 2002; odds are many of your old non-touch S60 applications don't work on S60 5th Edition or Symbian^3, but the fact that any of them do is a testament to the fact that Avkon soldiers on just as it did back in the pre-5800 days. For devs, Avkon's relative stability has made it easier to develop Symbian apps with some assurance that they'll work for years to come -- an important point for attracting high-quality software to the platform.

That's not to say Nokia's been standing still. The company has been slowly preparing itself, its users, and its developers for a clean break from Avkon to Qt starting with Symbian^4 and MeeGo, and to make that transition a smoother one, preview implementations of the Qt framework have been available for quite some time both on S60 5th Edition and on Maemo. In other words, Nokia has given devs plenty of time to wake up, convert their wares to Qt, and deploy them right now -- no need to wait for the first Symbian^4 devices to come out in 2011 and go through several weeks of panic as customers realize that none of their prized apps will install. The N8 supports Qt out of the box.

That's great, but there's still a big problem: to call Symbian's third-party app ecosystem "primitive" would be an understatement. Like the backward compatibility issue, part of this malaise stems from S60's nearly decade-old roots -- a time when phone storage could be measured in kilobytes, not gigabytes. Back then, users had to accustom themselves to trawling websites and forums to download .sis files (or purchase them from vendors they may or may not trust) and transfer them to their phones -- only to repeat the process when updates became available. Put simply, app discovery was nigh impossible (ironically, Nokia helped pioneer the managed app clearinghouse concept with its Download! service, but never bothered to do anything useful with it).

Ovi Store

More recently, Nokia has all but solved those shortcomings with Ovi Store, and we found Ovi Store 2.0 -- the new version that ships with the N8 -- particularly pleasant to use. Actually, back up: it doesn't ship with the N8. There are a few hooks in the operating system (looking for more UI themes online, for instance) that will prompt you to visit a site where you can download the Ovi Store installer, but it's not in ROM. That's a problem that RIM has had prior to BlackBerry 6, but they've now corrected it -- it's mandated that all BlackBerry 6 devices ship with App World pre-installed, the company tells us -- and we'd recommend Nokia does the same. This is how consumers expect to get their mobile apps now, and there's simply no reason for Nokia to pretend that there might be a scenario where you don't want it. It's fine that Nokia still allows you to install your own .sisx files if you're into that sort of thing -- in fact, that flexibility is one of the platform's big advantages -- but the only way for Ovi Store (and other Ovi components, for that matter) to achieve success is through ubiquity. Nokia's got a massive installed base and is selling literally hundreds of thousands of new phones each day ... it makes no sense for Ovi Store not to be instantly available on every one of them -- the ones running Series 40 and Symbian, anyway.

Of bigger concern, though, is that once you get the Store installed, it's a little light on big names. Don't get us wrong -- it's far better than the early days when paid wallpapers and themes outnumbered actual apps by a wide margin, but there are still glaring holes in the inventory that would make it difficult or impossible to beef up a seasoned Android or iOS user's N8 with enough functionality to match what he'd had before (or even come close). Easy example: where's the official Twitter app? Yes, Gravity is quite good, but we dare you to find another modern smartphone platform where you need to pay $10 for a kick-ass Twitter client. Another example: Facebook's in the Ovi Store, but it's not showing up for the N8 at the moment for some reason ... and regardless, it's not a true native client, but a somewhat wonkier web runtime. Google services are weak too -- the Gmail app is a barebones Java client (if you've used the BlackBerry app, you've got an idea of what that's like), the Google Maps app is optimized for the 5800 (there are several places where it asks you to press the nonexistent Send button) and lacks multitouch capability, and if you're a Google Voice user, you're pretty much out of luck ... we were able to track down a year-old Python-based third party client with mixed reviews, but nothing even close to an official app. You might also miss major streaming services like Pandora and Slacker.

Considering that Symbian still commands the largest installed base globally of any smartphone platform, you might say it's really strange the Ovi Store doesn't get far more respect from the big names. It's pure conjecture on our part, but we think there are a few reasons for it. The root cause is likely the legacy we've mentioned -- as a smartphone platform, Symbian is relatively ancient, and its users and developers are still acclimatizing themselves to the brave new world where both free and paid apps flow like water through a well controlled central source. Secondly, Symbian's in a transitional phase right now where developers need to support both touchscreen and non-touchscreen form factors, which essentially means two entirely different user experiences and twice the design work. Thirdly, Nokia's global dominance might actually be working against it here -- localizing apps to the countless markets where Nokia does business can be a huge pain, and outside North America, Nokia's market share is so well distributed that you have little option but to take on the challenge (an interesting side effect of that: many of the reviews we saw in the Ovi Store were in languages other than English).

For entertainment, you've got the all-important Angry Birds, and Electronic Arts has made a big commitment to the platform with key titles like The Sims 3 and Need for Speed.

It's not like the Ovi Store is barren, though. Services like Qik and Fring -- both of which got their start on S60 -- are in there, and you'll find popular names like Foursquare, OpenTable, and YouTube. For entertainment, you've got the all-important Angry Birds, and Electronic Arts has made a big commitment to the platform with key titles like The Sims 3 and Need for Speed. The biggest problem might be with home screen widgets; most handsets Nokia currently sells (and nearly all devices in users' hands right now) still don't support them, so developers seem to be lukewarm on creating the content at this point. At our count, there are just 14 widgets available for download, which supplement the 16 that Nokia supplies in firmware -- some of which are lame like a Phone Setup widget (essentially a shortcut that takes up the entire width of the screen) and dedicated CNN and Reuters RSS widgets, so they don't really count towards the total (you can create your own RSS widgets by subscribing to feeds from the browser).

Wrap-up

You know it, we know it, and Nokia sure as hell knows it. The Finnish mobile-making team shot itself in the foot with its N8 launch purely through a bungled execution on the software front. It's not unreasonable to believe that the hardware for this device was ready as far back as April -- which shines through with the perfectly thought out and built handsets our review team was provided with -- but delay after delay on the Symbian^3 front meant the awesomely specified hardware didn't see the light of retail day until, arguably, too late. Had this phone come out earlier this year, during what we might refer to as the pre-EVO era, its 720p video, spectacular camera, and high-end construction would have returned Nokia to the title of smartphone leader all on their lonesome. Seriously, the hardware is that good.

Let us also be clear about the software: we can say in no uncertain terms that the N8 is easily the best Symbian device that Nokia -- or any company, for that matter -- has ever made. Unfortunately, by evolving at a glacial (and largely superficial) pace, Symbian itself continues to cater specifically to a market of individuals who were early smartphone adopters five or more years ago. That's a market whose continued loyalty only stands to shrink, not grow. And at a time when 720p video recording is no longer novel and 3.5-inch screens are starting to look a bit on the small side, even DSLR-like image quality isn't enough to justify a phone without a fantastic and thoroughly modern user experience to match. Symbian^3, sadly, regrettably, heartrendingly, isn't there yet.

MeeGo, your move.