Nokia N8 video overview: Symbian^3 homescreens, messaging, email, and Flash-capable browser on show
By Vlad Savov 
posted May 28th 2010 9:10AM
posted May 28th 2010 9:10AM
posted May 28th 2010 9:10AM
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Wait...did he forget his own name at the start of the video?
@Tes
he he, he did as well.
@Tes
Wow...he's hopelessly nervous. He keeps umming and erring and stuttering. I half expecting to apologise and say "boom goes the dynamite".
@Tes
I think he was going to say im "the product manager" 1st before his name.
Cover flow looks nice! cant wait for more video and reviews!!
@Tes Honestly I think they should've put in a 1 GHz processor. The 680mhz still lags a bit......... (ducks)...
@Billy
You can duck but you cant hide! GPU is what counts here and it seems to be doing fine:
http://mynokiablog.com/2010/05/28/pics-nokia-n8-spotted-again-at-openmobile-and-showing-off-3d-gaming-with-need-for-speed-shift-and-sims-3/
@Tes
These guys are engineers, designers, and product managers...maybe we should cut them some slack.
I'd personally rather hear about the phone from one of these guys instead of, say, a creepy, doll-like, fruit store employee.
@Tes
Regarding his nervousness, if you had to present an OS like Symbian, with visible lacks and hardware problems to display anything smoothly and nicely, believe me, you would be in the same state...
Anyway, I 'm truly impressed. I could never introduce this to the world. I would feel really embarrassed showing it and seeing those mentioned problems at once.
I admire Nokia for being so tough with the fight - that's good. It's also cool, that they still improving their crappy software.
The conclusion is one, or they really improve it and make it competitive with today's OSes, or maybe it's time to say: we finished with Symbian (it's a shit, in short), we take and android, for instant.
The future will show an acceptance or not.
@newtype
Presentation and first impressions are everything. The Google guys I watched during the IO conference are also just engineers, designers, and product managers but the difference seemed to be that they were supremely confident of their products...even when they were going wrong live on stage.
@Tes
How is this smartphone Flash capable? Does he mean Flash Lite or does Flash 10.1 BETA run on this handset. I thought this processor would be below minimum requirements for Flash 10.1.
Overall, the N8 seems OK. The hardware might not be cutting edge, but most consumer users should be satisfied. Nokia will hopefully get its act together but it's still going to have a rough time fighting off Android.
@Tes - hello i do this video but cannot wemember my owns names! LOLCOPTER
@MosesusedaniPad
Because specs will be platform dependent. Android would require one set, WinPhone another, and Symbian another set.
As I'm sure you're aware, Symbian has an extremely small footprint. It doesn't require a heavy duty processor, and tremendous amounts of RAM just to function.
So Nokia (wisely IMO) puts processors that aren't as powerful as something like a Snapdragon, but can move the OS as fluidly as a Nexus One can.
Think of it this way. You have two cars. One is a big block Chevelle, the other is a Lotus Elise. The Chevelle may have (way) more power, but the Elise can give the Chevelle a run for its money because its so light. There isn't as much vehicle to move, so it can go faster with less power (processor) as well as with less gas (battery life).
@MosesusedaniPad -> I'd bet its Flash Lite.
This looks alot like the N97 OS with some differences to the UI. Feels like a small step forward, eg like updating Android from 1.6 to 2.0 Eclaire.
The way Nokia emphasized Symbian^3 was like going from 1.5 to 2.2 Froyo.
@Tes
That's all you have to moan about? A brief 'uh'?
OK.
@Kangal
Everyone already knew thats exactly what ^3 was...
@Kangal
Nokia clearly said that S^3 is an incremental update to S^1, and it won't make any revolutionary changes until S^4. Have you been sleeping in class? LOL
@MosesusedaniPad FlashLite 4.1. This will be the first phone to launch with 4.1, the parallel dev to 10.1 which is hardware intensive Beta on Android and other platforms.
Given flash lite's history, I do not expect it to run Vimeo etc very well but display flash content on websites just fine. But the proof's in the pudding & we'll find out upon release.
------
My N900's wifi antena stopped working for no apparent reason so im thinking of selling it and waiting for a new phone.
I am a Symbian fan but after using the n900 for 4 months, the 3gs/N1 & BB8900 all were not fun to use in comparison (Felt slow, clunky &/or restrictive). The worst devices that I tried tho were the x6 & n97 mini. Decent hardware but either the podcasting app was limited, the browser/email/pim suite sucked or the UX was clunky and frustrating.
I realize that s^3 takes care of a lot of those issues but its hard to spend $500 when you know that in less than 8 months something completely new will be released (S^4) and that most likely Nokia would not be upgrading the previous devices.
@Munk
FlashLite 4.1 is the embedded version of Flash 10, only without hardware acceleration support. If you've used an Archos web tablet, you've used FlashLite. FL3 only supported up to Flash 8 or 9, but 4.1 brings it up to snuff.
@christexaport
S^3 an incremental update.
I didn't know, I thought Nokia would do more than that, especially since investors are thinking of changing to other company's that have more capable (loose term) smartphones on the market.
Nokia get your head out of your *** and make a real smartphone before you lose the international market to HTC, in which case I don't mind.
@Kangal
S^3 is perhaps incremental in the UI, but it has MAJOR changes internally, they have made the OS future ready with this iteration. It is VERY heavily optimized, which you will see when it comes out.
@Kangal One thing that I like bout this is you can use it everywhere on this world. Hopefully, they will do something to improve it. http://j.mp/symbian-n8-amazing-phone
@Tes Who cares, i'm only interested in the phone.
Archaic UI :/
Very smooth. Liking it so far.
Anybody know if the Symbian Foundation theme would be available for S^3 to download?
I wonder if all the 5th edition themes are ok to use with S^3.
@Pdexter
Its not as fast as I expected,especially as its running the new sybian os.
@Pdexter
That really is not smooth at all. Smooth is when you swipe your finger on an iPhone and it flicks between the screens instantaneously. That is what this phone needs.
@dedparrot This phone has it. It was just "the long swipe" from the guy who handled it.
@dedparrot
Which is because that is just a bunch of stupid icons in a row. This is not slow at all IMHO, running widgets and all. I actually like it a lot.
I do have ipod touch 2G and Omnia HD to compare and it looks fast to me. It's still 3 months away.... granted that's not really a good thing as my contract ends in 2 months with Germany T-Mobile.
Camera, HDMI out looks perfect for my needs. Wanna see how the HDMI out performs with that Broadcom GPU onboard. Might be looking to buy Nexus One if N8 isn't out early August at latest.
@dedparrot
That is not slow, and mind you that thing can multitask (as in run individual apps simulteaneously). In fact, a few apps were open while he was demoing the OS. Personally, I like it VERY much, and I would say that the OS is a major improvement over its predecessor.
@tobsmonster2
It's not fast because this phone only has an Arm11 CPU!
iPhone 3g and iPad are fast...Android devices with snapdragon are fast...
This ... is SLOW.
Oh man...2:35 in the video..
They STILL haven't fixed the software keyboard on symbian -- it still takes up the whole screen so you can't see what you're responding to.
I made a request for this specific feature (that EVERY other mobile OS has) on the Symbian blog and they said they liked it and would consider it. I guess either they were lying, or it won't be in the OS until Symbian 4...that really blows.
@Pdexter
Okey Android, iPhoneOS, WebOS, RIM and Maemo/Meego users (am I missing any), sound off, what do you think? Is it slick enough? Software wise?
It says "1 of 3", wonder what the other two videos will be about?
Also, he kept saying "hyme". lol, that was so weird...
I think N8 will be a success like N95 or N900, Nokia has really worked hard on this.
@DoctarPeppar
Doctar, your comments on the CPU are baseless, you do not take into account the strength of the GPU, the fact that the UI is hardware accelerated, and that the OS's are different. This is not the way to make a point. A snapdragon would suck in this device.
@DoctarPeppar It's Cortex A8, like Snapdragon, just lower clock speed but with separate gpu.
@thejan2009 THe only people that think this is smooth are the same ignorant folks that have never used an iPhone, THe Nokia is just like all of Apple's competition - their OS lacks polish and they have design
@Xega
Are you going to finish that sentence or did you realize halfway you were saying something not so smart?
@Xega
Honestly if anything there's no people in this planet who haven't heard if iphone or seen it so i don't know how that rgument makes sense.
I like my ipod touch very much, but as a phone i prefer N8 or nexus One over iphone... depending witch one i end up buying. ;)
Thankfully in this world i can still buy phone i want. Especially in here Europe where our carrier in general have 3x more phone to pick.
@Veon
It's a ARM 11/ 680MHz
forum.nokia.com/devices/N8/
@DoctarPeppar
You're right about the full screen typing experience, that really stood out to me and one of the few things putting me off this devic. The hardware does look (and apparently feels) good though.
@DoctarPeppar
If I were to have an onscreen keyboard I would prefer it be as large as possible to minimize mistakes. But hey thats just me.
Its one of the things I dislike most about my ipod touch. Even in landscape, my thumbs do poorly.
@lockstockedd
The point is though that the keyboard can remain the same size, but the area your typing into doesn't need to take up the remaining space. Something like in the sms app on the iPhone would be much better IMO.
at least it's better over that dastard n97
@technoob http://bit.ly/nomore-1
That UI looks a lot smoother and more flicker-free than the N97!
@xbit i personaly think it should be even smoother as a flagship
@xbit
Well it should!
@xbit
alot smoother and flicker free than his voice too!
@Sergeant Major
I guess Nokia just doesn't get it.
@Sergeant Major
Only that it's not flagship.
@WickedEast
How is it not a flagship? It's got killer specs and nothing in the world matches up to it in hardware.