[rdcinhou]

As a long-time Nokia user and disappointed N97 owner, I'd like to weigh a few observations from my experience:

The N97 is a fair phone as long as you don't put any software on it or try to make it do things automatically like Facebook, Accuweather, automated email pulls or RSS Feeds.

The N8 is already obsolete (hardware and software-wise) and it isn't even released yet!

I've seen these things happen before...Texas Instruments used to be a leader and innovator in handheld technology and consumer electronics.  BUT...their time-to-market for new products finally did them in--their competition was more focused and quick.  By the time that all of their ad campaigns and marketing hype reached a crescendo, someone else had a better widget out and their sales suffered.

TI learned from this experience (my brother worked for them and this is what he told me) and pretty much got out of the high-tech consumer market to focus on other lines.

I wonder when Nokia will learn the same lesson?

BTW...I won't be fooled into pre-ordering ANYTHING from Nokia ever again.

[chanchan05]

I wonder how N8 could be obsolete hardware wise.

Its Broadcomm GPU is the best GPU on any phone announced or released ever (32 million polygons per second). 680Mhz is pretty normal these days for most phones. 500Mhz is standard, and considering than N8 was never intended as a flagship device but more rather an N86 type, its good since Symbian is lighter than WinMo on resources.

The N8 also has the best camera hardware of any phone in the market.

[kiltbear]

Well, today, right now for the next couple of weeks or so, the N8 is not quite obsolete. However, by the time it will be released, that will most like have changed.

Today, the N8 GPU may be be the fastest. By Q3, there will for example be mid-range HTC handsets out with the latest AMD and Nvidia handheld GPUs that pack almost twice the punch of the N8.

The announced handsets from players like HTC, S-E, Samsung, HP come (with very few exceptions) with 1GHz CPUs and they're not those manufacturers flagships.

True Symbian is lighter than WinMo in resources, but aren't you forgetting something? Many of the newly announced devices from the competition come with Android, which already leaves Symbian in the dust as far as usability, interface, speed and versatility is concerned and it's not any less stable than the Nokias that currently use Symbian (which, considering the N97, is not all that hard). If there isn't something dramatic happening to Symbian in the very near future, it will be gone before long, it's already looking quite dated now.

Oh and let's not forget that by the time the N8 hits the streets, it is very likely that the 4th generation "fruit phone" will be out. (announcement is expected around end of June)

As for the camera hardware, calling it the best is a bit optimistic. It has the highest MP number announced so far, true. But we have already learned in the Digital Camera World that megapixels aren't everything. My ancient  2002 vintage Canon G2 with 4 megapixels still gets crisper pictures, especially in low light situations than my newest 12MP Nikon compact and definitely leaves the N97 in the dust when it comes to sharpness, resolution and noise.

If you keep cramming higher resolution sensors onto the same footprint, you are invariably getting more noise, as the footprint of each pixels gets smaller as well. That's a law of physics. Now that compact digital cameras have barely come to grips with  their 12 MP sensors so they aren't already noisy as hell at 400 ISO, some manufacturers are dialing down the MP. Nikon goes down to 10.3 MP in their latest ultra zoom bridge cam P100 from the P90's 12.1MP.

So 12MP in the sensor footprint of a mobile phone, which is, optimistically 20 to 30% of the sensor size of a compact digicam means noise and lots of it that Nokia will need to get rid of electronically at the cost of sharpness, Carl-Zeiss lens or no.

At the end of the day the camera of the N8 my have the most MP but will likely be inferior in image quality to the 5MP cam of the N97.

So yeah, I am pretty confident that the n8 will be at least lost in the crowd when it hits the market, if not actually already obsolete.

[chanchan05]

Uhm, the sensor on the N8 is bigger than the sensors on compact digital cameras. So yes, it has the biggest sensor for ANY phone on the market. Also pictures using the N8's camera has been released already, and they are very good.

HTC newly released phones like Legend even only have 500Mhz procs.

I do agree that the N8 will not be a crowning jewel like the N95 was, but then again it is not entirely buried either.

[kiltbear]

ok, so the sensor on the N8 may be almost as big as that of SOME entry level digital cams, but by no means is it

"bigger than the sensors on compact digital cameras"

That is another typical fanboy generalization to make their favored company look better than it is.

Please duly note that in in digital sensor size notation the N8's 1/1.83" sensor size is SMALLER than the 1/1.7" used in many compact digtal cameras. (see also on wikipedia)

As for image quality, the samples came from prototypes or preproduction units and if we follow the 5800 XM that does not mean much. Photos from 5800 Prototypes were looking much better than those we now take with production units. Somebody had to have cut costs on software or quality control later on.

The cam on the N97 for instance looks good on paper and in lab conditions, but in real life it is slow as a slug focusing, has a huge delay from shutter to image and uses very long shutter speeds that make sharp snapshots impossible.

As for CPU speed I was not talking about currently marketed or just released competitive phones from HTC, but abut what's announced and in the pipelines and there the speeds range from 680 Mhz on the LOWEST end of the model spread  to 1.66 GHz.

The N8 will be shipping with specs that may be up to par today, but in the lower end of the midrange when it ships. Plagued by an aging OS on its way out and a manufacturer that seems to have lost their touch, i doubt it'll make much off an impact.

If you bother to read anything else than the company line and fanboy blogs, you'll quickly see that most previews tend to agree with the above statement, calling it anywhere from unremarkable to underwhelming.

It's been quite a while since any Nokia handset has had really good reviews anywhere and the loss of market share can't be solely attributed to the proliferation of the fruit phone, but rather to the fact that other manufacturers deliver much more on their promises than Nokia that more often than not, falls short of the pre-release expectations.

We can only hope the shipping N8 won't be such a terrible dud as the N97and that maybe Nokia will have a desktop suite that is more stable, reliable and useful than the dreadful OVI-Suite we have now.

[Fender77]

HTC Legend has a 600 mhz cpu.

[froschy]

@ kiltbear - some good points there, +1 for you.

From the N8 specs it looks like Nokia have not learnt their lesson from the N97 debacle. Nokia saved a few measly dollars per handset by not outfitting the N97 with the required hardware and it looks like they have done it again with the N8. There are reasons why other manufacturers over spec their handsets, firstly it doesn't cost that much more and secondly it doesn't place a ridiculously low ceiling on what can be achieved with the software. IMHO if Nokia had put 256MB of RAM, double the NAND, and a faster processor in the N97 they would have had a win (even with the dated OS) rather than the fiasco that occurred. I really hope that I'm wrong on the N8 but I guess only time will tell.

[chanchan05]

LOL. I read the bashing blogs by Eldar Muzartin. It just seems everybody was waiting for this thing as the next flagship to expect so much from it. IMO this is just going to be the one to fill up the niche the 5800 used to have. A mid range device with the only attraction of being the first of a particular OS, which is also what Eldar Muzartin seems to think. He even called the device bad from a viewpoint, if Nokia thinks this is gonna save the company from the N97 debacle.

@Fender - yeah I noticed the typo. 5 and 6 are pretty close.

[naumannazir]

During installation of a software on my phone, the message apears that 

its not compatible with your phone, I just continue anyway and when I 

rebooted the phone, its just crashed and display was gone, just flat

white screen and is not working anymore, does any one know some 

solution, because it not connecting with PC and also the hard reset 

is not working too.

[carman58]

You really are going to struggle getting help on this, posting your problem hidden at the end of a TOTALLY unrelated subject ! But try a hard reset, if it doesn't work, try a Nokia Care Point !

Switch-off the phone (Remove the battery and re-insert it, if necessary). Now Press and HOLD the GREEN (Call) key, RED (Call end) key and the Camera-capture key SIMULTANEOUSLY. While still pressing the above three keys press the power On/Off key, hold them until phone boots up.

[matthew_maude]

hmmm you all seem so against the N8 and i agree that its not much to shout about but i'm on an N900 and thanks to it being open source its doing really well with a large community supporting it. not bad for what was supposed to be a low key device
so imagine the potential of an open source symbian phone and as for the processer, it won't be long before someone flashes it to a higher power just like with the N900 which people have got up to 1.25GHZ

[timmyjo]

I bought a Nexus One about a month ago. I tried my N97 yesterday to see if I "missed it". That lasted less than five minutes. It's a TRULY HORRIBLE PRODUCT!!!!! I"eve pre-ordered the N8, knowing Nokia might get it to market by Christmas. Why does it take them so long to get these things out?

[metalfan]

Just a tip mate, if you're close to a Nokia Care Centre, usually the turn around time is around 1-2 days! Much better than 21 Just for next time bro!
Also, I'm talking from experience with NCC Australia

[kiltbear]

The problem with Nokia Care Points in many countries is that their locations are a joke and a bad one at that.

I live in Bern, the Capital of Switzerland and my closest Care Point is almost 100km / 62 miles away.

None of the 5 or so care Points in Switzerland are in any of the five biggest cities of the country or within easy reach of public transit.

So all that's left is usually the mobile provider or electronics superstore where the handset was bought and the people there are usually completely clueless and send the handset off to Nokia.