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Over the years I have really enjoyed using S60 phones. It started with the 3650 followed by the 7610, along the way I’ve owned or used the 6620, 6682, N91, N80, N81, N85, N86, N95, N95 8GB, N96, N97, N97 Mini, 5800XM, E61i, E71, E72, even the N-Gage and N-Gage QD. I’m probably missing a bunch of phones here. Can you name the phones in the background of my picture?
While S60 has been my platform of choice in the past years sadly, I haven’t used S60 as much in 2010.
There are three reasons why I haven’t used S60 much; Reason one is because I’ve been using other platforms more - mostly Android though I use my iPhones and Blackberries more this year too. For me the grass has been greener on the other side lately.
Reason 2 is because I haven’t found any of the current crop of S60 devices to be compelling. You’ll find 1Ghz processors, larger, higher resolution displays on Android and iPhone.
The most important reason is because I didn’t find S60 made a graceful transition from non touchscreen to touchscreen.
Still, out of the box S60 are among the most feature filled devices available.
The problem is that I find touch screen S60 to be a bit of a mess. First off the screen resolution is too low. While it’s true some other smartphones have lower resolutions (the Palm Pre comes to mind), I find the UI eats up too much of the screen resolution. Nokia has tried to remedy this by sometimes hiding the elements but I’ve always found it to be unintuitive.
I also really hate the default keyboards. I dislike using my phones in landscape mode - the Nokia 5800 had this silly portrait mode keyboard which tiny keys. The N97 was both better and worse; it used a T9 keyboard - which I’m very good with but QWERTY would be better. Luckily the N97 had a physical keyboard though I didn’t like it. I did like the N97 Mini’s keyboard a lot more but by the time it came out it felt very dated.
There were other reasons why I stopped using S60 (too many layers of menus which often changed from phone to phone), lack of multitouch, slow processors, the screen unlock sliding key, etc.
Now I realize haven’t even started reviewing the N8 yet, and that my review has turned into somewhat of a rant but this case it’s because I really cared for S60. I’ve never admitted it before but it really hurts me to see S60 become uncompetitive.
Okay, onto the review.
Unlike the N97’s the N8 has a capacitive touch screen with multi-touch. It also eliminates the send and end keys. Other notable features are a 12megapixel camera, aluminum body, AMOLED display plus a mini HDMI port plus a penta band HSPA radio.
On the N8 Nokia has eliminated the send and end keys. While I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t use my phone to make calls much these days I always found S60 comforting in that I could quickly make a call by pressing the send button. I’ve also always used the end button to take me back to the home screen. As a person who has used S60 for years I’m having a hard time adjusting the lack of send and end keys.
As I mentioned the main body is one piece of aluminum while the top and bottom are made from plastic. The aluminum is very solid yet simultaneously surprisingly light.
The only button in front is the menu one. Pressing it switches between the home screen and the main menu. Pressing and holding it allows you to multitask. I found that the shape of the N8’s bottom sometimes makes it hard to press this button.
On the right side are volume buttons, camera button and a sliding switch which turns the screen on/off. On top is a power button, 3.5mm headphone jack and a mini HDMI port. This is the same kind of HDMI port you’ll find on a lot of camcorders.I tried the mini HDMI port, the video out quality is good and it can be used to playback 720p video.
The N8’s main body is a single piece - the top and bottom are plastic. The battery can be accessed by unscrewing the bottom part but really it’s not meant to be opened. You can insert a SIM card and a Micro SDHC card on the left side. There’s also a micro USB connector for charging and connecting to your computer. Speaking of charging there’s also a Nokia mini charging port on the bottom - so there are 2 ways to charge the N8.
As far as processing power goes you get a 680Mhz ARM 11. While the N8 does lag occasionally and definitely feels slower than the processor in a Galaxy S or iPhone 4 it’s generally adequate.
The screen looks fantastic. Colours and black levels are excellent as is the viewing angle. I just wish the display was bigger with more resolution.
I mentioned this earlier but the N8 has no portrait mode QWERTY keyboard. In portrait mode all you get is a T9 keyboard. In landscape mode there is a QWERTY keyboard and recently there is also a SWYPE keyboard. It’s kind of funny because SWYPE would probably work really well in portrait mode. One thing I really hate about the various input methods is that when you use them they take up the whole screen - which isn’t that bad I suppose - other Smartphone OS’ do this too. Here’s my problem; let’s say I’m using the browser. The browser won’t show me matching url’s from my history unless I hide the keyboard. It’s really annoying.
The N8’s home screen still has widgets like the N97 and like the N97. There is room for 6 widgets per screen but now there are 3 home screens. Widgets include recent messages, speed dial, calendar, music player, etc. The home screen has support for both portrait and landscape mode. The widgets work correctly in both modes.The widgets are a good idea but a lot of the time they don’t display very little information.
There is push email courtesy of Nokia Email. You sign up for Nokia Email, enter your settings and then the emails will be pushed to the N8.
My apologies, I was incorrect about threaded SMS. There IS support for it.
Nokia has their own app store but it irks me that out of the box Nokia makes you download it before you can use it. When you download it for the first time it will open up a browser window and ask you to open the file. If you’ve never used S60 before this is really confusing.
The phonebook hasn’t changed much over the years. There is some extremely limited Facebook/Twitter integration.
There are actually a lot of programs on the S60 but some of them are located many levels down. Of course you can reorganize them but out of the box I found some of them difficult to find.
You get Ovi Maps which has voice guided navigation, 3D map view plus you can plan your trip online at ovi.com, save it to your favorites and then synchronize it to your phone. There is also get Michelin guides and Lonely Planet.
Ovi maps is extremely fully featured but I found the interface to be very difficult to get my head around. This is due entirely to the fact that the screen is too small plus the interface is kind of all over the place.
One cool features you get is that you can download maps via your computer directly to the N8. That way the N8 doesn’t require data to use maps. Needless to say this is very useful if you’re roaming.
Finally you can record your own voice (or someone else’s voice) to use for the voice guided navigation.
The camera has autofocus with a 12MP resolution with a xenon bulb flash. It’s excellent; It focuses fast, it’s usually accurate, and most of the pictures it takes are keepers. It’s no SLR replacement but it’s easily the best camera phone I have ever tested.
As far as video goes the N8 captures 720p video. Video quality is also decent.
There are separate video and image editors. The image editor is actually not bad. There are a lot of features on it and it’s not hard to use. Of course it would be much better if the N8 had a higher resolution display.
The video editor is a little more basic but it’s also not hard to use. You can use it to edit your videos or create new ones from your photos.
Quickoffice viewer is included so you can view Office 2007 and earlier files. There’s also a PDF reader (which doesn’t work very well).
In the past Nokia phones generally have excellent RF performance. So I can honestly say I was floored when I found that the N8 is not a very good with regards to RF performance. It did not stand out when I tried it on Mobilicity (AWS network). It was actually noticeably worse than the Samsung Focus/HTC Surround/LG Optimus 7/Quantum on both Rogers and TELUS/BELL (850 and 1900 HSPA networks).
Sound quality is decent though maximum earpiece volume isn’t that loud.
In the end the screen looks great, the aluminum body is solid, the speaker is loud plus the penta band HSPA is cool. Then there’s the camera, it’s kind of addicting. Unfortunately the screen feels too small and cramped and the RF performance is lacking.
I’ve been using S60 for years and I’m sad to say that I don’t find the N8 to be very intuitive to use. The interface feels cramped and inconsistent across the various applications. The keyboards aren’t that great and many of the built in apps feel dated (the phonebook, slow non threaded email client, acrobat reader, etc).
