My N8 review

^^ Yes, which brings me to the question why everybody seems to think that Nokia can just use the GPU to make the UI smoother without sacrificing battery life. Every time you use the GPU, the battery would take a hit..

It is also quite likely that I don't know what I am talking about, but it makes sense. Most of the newer notebooks and netbooks have switchable graphics for a reason
 
The UI effects probably aren't very taxing on the GPU whereas a 3D game would be. You're also not constantly using the UI effects whereas a video game running constantly for hours... You'd probably have to do a million (number pulled from bum) home screen swpies to match that. :)
 
I found out what was using up my battery the most, once I removed Gravity from the widgets and just used it as a regular app and exiting from it as opposed to hide, the battery now seems to last forever.
 
I played a solid 2 hours of Angry Birds the other day and I didn't make a dent in the battery. I probably game at least an hour every day on this thing (Angry Birds, Need for Speed, Galaxy on Fire) and the N8's battery is holding up. I am not so sure the gpu is hogging as much power as you think.

To be honest I think I tax the phone pretty well. I listen to about 3 or 4 hours of internet radio at work, game 1 or 2 hours, random surfing, calls, texts and a few pictures with the camera. The lowest I have ever had the battery is two bars and I usually end the day with 3 left. All this without power saving turned on. I wish I could explain the discrepancies in battery life observed by different users. The only thing I can think of is that there is some poor quality control with regards to the batteries.
 
Gave my phone another shot and did a factory reset a couple of days ago.


With the phone basically barebones and unfortunately I'm still having the same results... :(
 
Thanks.


I'm pretty fortunate with AT&T's signal not killing the battery at home and work. (I've kinda ruled that out with my N8 battery usage, since I used it in the same areas as my e72/n97) . I have been in places where my phone has been "possessed" with reboots and horrible draining but fortunately those areas aren't apart of my daily routine.



As for Angry Birds, it looks awesome on the N8. I've played the **** out of that on Android and the N8's GPU makes the game look way better and smoother. Honestly I felt like I was playing the game for the first time again. Good stuff... :)
 
I was seriously plagued by this for the longest time, as well. I'd say 10 second lags were a serious understatement - and this was the one single thing that to me made this phone nearly unusable ("again, Nokia!?!?"). I even went as as doing a hard reset on my phone (which of course meant I lost the OVI store), which initially got rid of the lags, but then they came back.

Until I figured out why.

I had two mail screen widgets - one for Mail for Exchange and one for my personal mail - on the same home screen. It turns out that this turned the N8 into a monster. Apparently it does not like more than one instance of a "dynamically updating" widget (i.e. more than one Mail widget or more than one RSS widget) on the same homescreen.

My workaround is to put my work mail (MfE) widget on one screen, and that for my personal mail on another. Now both my N8 and I are happy again! :)
 
ccrows - so compared to your Galaxy, how does the n8 rank if the battery life were better? I really like android right now but the picture capablities of the n8 is about to reel me in... thoughts?
 
Compared to the "Galaxy" the N8 is in the same boat as the Galaxy where they BOTH could benefit from an update.


The only beef that I have with the Galaxy is the Battery and the GPS. I could have really used the GPS today but with crappy weather, I couldn't get a lock for anything.

^ I am still waiting on "Official" Froyo which Bell delayed till December while other Galaxies around the world have Froyo now. The Official Froyo is "supposed" to improve those. The N8 has flawless GPS.


Picture wise they are both great phones. I don't use camera much, but the N8 won't disappoint you if you take pictures a lot.


The N8 is still a great phone no doubt about that at all. The only real flaws are the browser and portrait QWERTY. This should hopefully be addressed by Feb 2011. It's still a great phone without it - it just depends on what works for you...
 
I definitely notice that white screens kill the battery faster on Amoleds than other screens (TFT, SLCD) that I've used. For example on my Galaxy S, I try to use "Blackle" http://www.blackle.com/ over Google if I'm not in a rush and I see a difference.



Obviously Nokia wanted to go with style over power with the N8. I still think the phone would have been better off using a removable battery and a TFT screen, but maybe they wouldn't have sold as many units because the design of the N8 is one of the best looking phones that I've seen... :)
 
Battery life is good for me so far. It takes a while to set the battery gauge; maybe a week is needed to get more accurate readings. It also helps to get a battery low warning and then fully charge the battery at least once.

Don't worry about the big clock screensaver. It uses a little bit of CPU once a minute to update the screen. Test it yourself with Nokia Energy Profiler.

Has anyone measured battery life with and without some of the network-using home screen widgets? Some badly written widgets spin too much and are capable of keeping the 3G radio busy by fetching server data too often. That's one way to drain batteries fast.
 
Sadly the first day that I had it I charged it full and then ran it into the ground where I charged it full again.


Since then it's been on daily full charge cycles.



I have entertained the idea of just replacing the battery because it's just a BL-4D and you can get those cheap, but then again it also may be my phone itself that's causing the problem...
 
I think that the portrait QWERTY is going to be addressed within the next week or two, as PR1.1 software is imminent. There will be browser fixes too, as far as I know, but I doubt it will have the new Qt browser. Maybe also Maps 3.06? PR2.0 will be out early next year.
 
Twas a good review. Concise, clean and straight to the point. Not like 'War and Peace' reviews I read in so many sites which leaves me sleepy by the first page.
 
Has anyone else been able to confirm this observation?

Does having two dynamically updated widgets on the same screen cause problems that putting them on two different homescreens solves?

I am really interested to see if others notice the same thing.

I have two mail widgets, both IMAP, on one of my homescreens, I'm now going to put them on two different homescreens to see if this helps.
 
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