[DjDave5]

Hello Folks,

I'm curious to find out from those of you who've recently purchased an N8 or E7 how you feel about the recent partnership announcement between Nokia and with Mircrosoft and would you encourage others to buy one of these devices?

Thanks,
Dj

[bazyeo]

That is up to you. A new Nokia phone sporting WP7 wont be out until later this year at the earliest. If you want an N8 or E7 then go for it. Nokia phones with Symbian three are great phones. I personally will not be buying any phone with WP7 on it. Nokia, HTC or any other brand. I presently own three windows pc's/laptops as well as several winmo devices. The last thing I want is a phone with wp7 on it. Bill Gates is rich enough as it is.

[bandofbrothers]

I bought my n8 about 3 weeks ago and am not fazed regarding the recent announcement, although I think we might not seee the finished wp7 product until 2012.

This is why this industry is so interesting as yoiu never know whats round the corner !

The n8 and other released unit fones will be supported for approx 18 months after release so any bugs will be ironed out, and new specs will be continually be added with sw updates.

Series 40 and symbian are Nokia's bread and butter.

Im really happy with my n8 apart from the inbuilt browser, which is clunky at the moment so hopefully the next sw update will balance that out. Until then I use the opera mini 10.1 browser which is awesome.

The specs on the n8 are in abundance and will serve me well until I upgrade. In the end it was only £300 which is kinda cheap for such a rich spec smartfone !

Lots of internet chatter spoke about Nokia being left behind, and critised the old os platforms. With android being on the market they tried maemo on the n900, but this was meant to be a experiment which then was released because the geeks wanted it, but they made an error releasing it on the marketplace, as it was too much for the normal user as its truly open, and could be affected by downloads of bad open apps/programmes, and the telephoney part of the fone was weak. This again damaged Nokia's standing. That handset was the first and last on maemo. Then the speak of meego os !

My thinking is that is one waited to see what's new round the corner one would never make a purchase !



Will I entertain the future released Nokia/wp7 handset....maybe..... I will certainly look and play with one. Im keeping my options open !

Its all about choice !

[chukka]

i generally love my N8 and about 8 people have bought one because me getting one.

i dont have a problem as long as it keeps working as it has so far

like many have mentioned.its 18 months before my next upgrade and who knows what will be on the market then, so no problems till then,if at all

[VeePee]

I still love the phone but am now concerned about any developement of new apps.

Currently a lot of Google apps - search by voice, places, etc are not being developed for the N8.

Vlingo and Truphone will not develop apps for the N8.

So I feel it will be more and more ignored - Smartphones need apps.

If I was to buy now - I would go Android, for support reasons.

VeePee

[scottysattler85]

Vlingo app has been released for N8 - Ive been using it for around a week now. Its awsome,and currently waiting in the ovi store for you to download it!!!!

And why would you be concerned about something as simple as apps??? What apps do you want that nokia dosnt have? Nokia is giving us a new UI to play with in PR 2.0..pics and info have been leaked so who says we arent getting anything new?

If you want to simply play games and apps on a phone, an iphone or phone running android OS will best suit you needs.

[glossta1]

I love my N8, which I had on contract with o2 on a 2-year deal last November, so ages still to run.  I agree with whoever it was above that said if we all alwas wait for the next Big Thing, then we'd never reach the point where we'd choose a new phone. 

I'm sad that one or two apps that might have come the N8 way probably now won't... Wellness Diary Beta was one I tried in beta format but it doesn't work [yet?], and I guess Weight Watchers now won't bother launching in Symbian (iphone and Blackberry run Weight Watchers so far).  probably not many forum users are quite so interested in those?!

My main area of interest is Predictive Text, which fascinates me, because it has so much to offer people in a hurry.  The way Pred Text goes, or doesn't, will be interesting to discover regardless of what Nokia does with Microsoft - as more people move to qwerty, will the pressure for speed typing, abbreviation and word anticipation/completion go away?  I hope not.

I think we should enjoy our N8s and see what evolves in future ready for our next choice.  I've always had a Nokia, and would be sad if I felt I had to change - we will see...

[chukka]

try swype if ya like 2 hand typing/texting

[Gorkon]

I've had mine for about 2 weeks and am dissapointed with the direction they have taken.  Although I will hold on to this phone for another year or more and support will be provided, but choices beyond that will be limited to moving away from Nokia.   When the upper eschelons of Nokia admit to having a lesser operating system than the competition I wonder if they are succumbing to what others are telling them or if they even understand it's capabilities and solid platform from which to move forward.

I continue to impress non-Symbian users with this phone's capabilities (from business connectivity like MFE, games like Galaxy on Fire, and camera, GPS (with local maps), but it is end of the road.  Maybe Nokia can impress on WPx some of this and remove limitations, but I am skeptical as to what Nokia may be allowed to do with the platform - like how Microsoft dictated the hardware for netbooks a few years ago.

I still feel that with the least bit of advertising, Nokia with Symbian/Meego would be a very attractive offerning in NA and increase market share, but instead they throw in the towel, admit to having a poor product, team up with a controlling company and disenfranchise their employee base.

Anyway, it will be interesting what we may see going forward and if the Nokia/Microsoft relationship will be successful.

[DjDave5]

I first want to thank everyone for their comments and feedback - greatly appreciated.

I've been a Nokia user since 2002; I'm on my forth device (I hold on to my phones for a while) and was TOTALLY excited when the E7 was announced.  However, when I found out about the Microsoft partnership, I was really disappointed and wasn't sure if I'd wanted to buy the E7 any more.  After reading through the comments, I think I'm leaning back towards getting an E7 and I totally agree with 'bandofbrothers' that if we wait for the "next best thing", we wouldn't buy anything.

Thanks again everyone!
Have a great weekend!

Dj

[kj55552009]

@Gorkon: Exactly my thoughts.

Makes no sense for Nokia's management to publicly trash Symbian^3 and say it's "not competitive". Even if that were true, and I don't think it is, why admit that your product is inferior compared to you competitors' products when you don't have anything else to sell for the next 10 months or more?

Sure, go ahead and make some Nokia phones with WP7, but why rush to announce that Nokia is going to completely kill ALL SUPPORT for Symbian, when it still is the SECOND most popular smartphone OS in the world? Could someone please explain the logic in this?

[freepizza]

Got it two weeks ago. I have done the following and confirm it works:-

Installed:

Garmin XT ( better than nokia maps for me).

Installed not working:

Navigon 7.4

Ndrive 10.1.15 ( navigates but no sound even when installed, known issue)

Other Points:

- I bought is for the video and camera - the best on the market for mobile phones. slightly better than Iphone 3 & 4 (have one of those too).

- Battery life is average. Depends what is switched on. Similar to Iphone battery life.

- Have put another APN on and is occasionally says ''maximum number of connections in use" so I just ignore the message. Anoying especially when navigating.

- Tuned it not to use the wirless too much. Save power.

- Put in a 32GB card for my vidz and pics - confirmed working.

- Installed tethering software (Joikuspot). Now I can use my phone as a mobile Access Point, where the Mobile internet is the active connection, lasts for an hour on a full charge so I have a power chor plugged in. (Battery Drainer). You can thether with a cable ot of the box but need nokia ovi. The data cable also charges the phone.

- Cannot easily move contacts across from my old N95 but i found a long winded way to do it.

- Cannot export contact from Ovi. But there is a free longer method. Forget google sych too much monies.

- Blutooth works well, with hands free kit.

- can have standard phone keys keypad or qwerty keypad when typing messages. Although qwerty keys are a little small compared to iphone - fat finger somtines.

- The only thing this phone does not have is a typical MS blue screen of death! (kidding)

- web sites like 4od don't work. But that is the same for blackberries. A plugin is required apparently.

- Looking into installing VNC and ssh clients next + more.

[Mike_Myers_N8]

Thanks for the list of applications you've tried and found to work well. 

As to the N8, I've had mine for about a month, and love it.  There are things i like, and things I dislike about it, but overall, it's as good a phone as I think I can get nowadays, and does things the competition can't.

As to Win7, if the next version of an N8, perhaps running Win7, does the things I want to do, I'll consider it, but if we get another brain-damaged phone that doesn't do the important things I want, no way.  I don't care one way or the other if Nokia changes the operating system, but if they make a clone of the competition's phones, I'm not interested - will then be using my N8 for a long time to come, I guess.

[azraeil]

Bought mine from Malaysia in mid November. Have been sitting on my bedside table ever since they announced PR1.1 and I'm still waiting for mine. It's been close to 4 weeks and there's still no update for my unbranded factory unlocked N8 which really annoys the crapper out of me. Have been using my iPhone 3Gs ever since (thought of selling the 3Gs once I got my N8, thank god I didn't do it).

I know the 3Gs has a lot of limitation (not if you jailbreak it though) but AT LEAST when Apple releases a new firmware, they release it worldwide. Nothing of this 2 million region specific nonsense from Nokia.

If it takes them more than 4 weeks for a minor firmware update, I shudder to think about how long it will take to get the 2.0 update (I personally don't think 2.0 will happen after the WP7 fiasco but that's just coming from the jaded me).

Now thinking of selling the N8 but since I'm in the middle east, no one is going to buy it since it won't have Arabic since the ME version is a different region code.

I'm pretty much done with Nokia. Have been a Nokia user since last century (1997). Next upgrade will definitely be an iPhone 5.

[slowfiddler]

@freepizza:

Where do you find Garmin XT?

[branu]

Two slow giant joining forces will not compete against android they say on the news,,totally agree..cannot really understand why they did parnership with microsoft..can this be one reason?

http://www.phonearena.com/news/Will-Microsoft-buy-RIM-or-Nokia_id9807   My personal feeling is YES..Why will you kill symbian platform othervise?.despite It´s selling so many phones in the world .That was the biggest misstake so far.second the new CEO..The value of nokia share down 19.91% this year so far.15% the day they announce the partnership.,after i´m done with my N8 I will go android,have no plan to buy an Microsoft Os phone and not an Apple phone either,not much so choose from then..About the N8 It´s a very fine piece of work with only the Os not finished.maybe we will get some updates to make it better or we don´t.heard that Opera is making an an symbian3 webbrowser,let´s see what will be finished first..I have been looking for the webbrowser update and update to the music player since It was released in early October but will now buy a phone that work as planned for the beginning..so this will be my last post here in this discussion forum..hope you get your updates eventually..I´m not waiting anymore..bye bye...

[helot]

Android is Java on Linux, unlike symbian which is a native OS.

[meshuga]

I bought my n8 AFTER the announcement that Nokia were going to WP7.  It didn't bother me much, I change phones every 2 years usually, and I think Nokia will support Symbian for some time after that, as they have publicly announced.

For me it came down to familiarity with the 5800xm, and price - after cashback I got my n8 for £18/month, including txts calls and internet.  I'd purchased some apps from Ovi that I can still use on the N8, which I couldn't have done by switching OS's.   I could have had 2 and a half N8's for the price of an iphone4, so it was a no brainer.

I'm really pleased with my n8, yes there a niggles here and there, but if you look on the support forum for every competitor to the N8 you will see that all smartphones have glitches.  It often comes down to luck and the individual handset - so far I've had no major problems affecting my unit.  Firmware 2 and 3 will come in time which will make things even better I'm sure.

[icemaydn]

I actually thought I had the issues ironed out, but made the MASSIVE mistake of calling Nokia customer service who seemed to, in my opinion, just take the easy way out and have me reset the phone to the original settings. They DIDNT tell me it would go back to all the original issues. Im ready to throw it and go to an Iphone, yet i've stuck with Nokia for over 10 years now!

[banlec]

I bought N8 after they announced a deal with MS. I find N8 a fantastic phone. Previously I had 5800XM and 6120. Symbian for me is the system, I can trust and like it. For some period of time I was using a phone with Android but for me it was too chaotic, and no software upgrades even in situations when many security flaws were widely known - basicaly their policy seems to be: the new system version - the new phone. 

Certainly, there are some things in N8 which could be improved, i.e. some lags on receiving (when taking out a ringing phone from a case) and disconnecting calls, ringing phone changes orientation to vertical - does not make sense when you drive a car and are using car's hands-free, hdmi cover seems to be weak - some cracks already appeared.