Nokia unveiled the N8 today and by the looks of it, the touch screen phone has some potential. The N8 comes with so many features that it feels like the brief to the design team was inspired by a hot dog – “we want a phone – with everything on it!”
The N8 is equipped with a 12 megapixel Carl Zeiss camera which includes a Xenon flash. Nokia claims that the camera’s sensor compares to those found in point-and-shoot digital cameras. But that’s where the usual feature set stops.
The phone displays HD quality videos and provides Dolby Digital Plus surround sound. Using an HDMI cable, it can be plugged in directly to a home theatre system. The home screen is the location of two key features. Web TV services can be directly accessed & viewed from here and a combined Facebook & Twitter app is also found here. The phone also comes with navigation support; it has global Ovi maps free of charge, with support for over 70 countries.
The N8 comes with 16GB of built-in storage and supports expansion up to 48GB via Micro SD card. It will also be the first phone that shows off the new Symbian 3 OS. The new OS supports single & multi touch, pinch-to-zoom, screen flicking, 2D & 3D graphics, better memory management and multi tasking.
The phone is slated to hit stores in the next calendar quarter. With projected price tag of under $500, the phone looks like it could be the iPhone killer – at least on paper. However with the iPhone 4G coming out soon and Android phones building up steam, the future and success of the N8 model is a difficult one to predict.