Nokia has recorded 3 videos showing off the Nokia N8. They’ve made only 1 available today and promise to make the other 2 available next week, which is a classic move done by people in the press world to get readers to come back to your site. Nokia isn’t press however, which makes me wonder why this piece by piece approach was taken.
Anyway, back to the N8. It’s the first Symbian^3 device from Nokia, and as such expectations are high … but from was shown off in the video below you’re left with a feeling in the pit of your stomach that this is just S60 5th Edition, but cleaned up a little. Is it faster? I guess so. We’ve seen benchmarks that show that the Nokia N8 is faster at rendering menus than the Nokia N97.
Because when I think about my phone’s performance, I think about how fast it can render me a list of 10 option that I’ll have to select to perform a task.
The browser is demoed, and it runs Flash all well and good, but how many people really go to the Ovi Maps website when giving a demo of Flash integration? Why not a Flash game, or at the bare minimum The New York Times? Another feature shown off is threaded text messaging. This was a feature that was introduced in the Palm Treo lineup during the early years of the last decade. Then Apple would copy it for the first iPhone … which came out in the summer of 2007. Then Google copied it for Android, which has been out on the market for over 1.5 years. So welcome Nokia, welcome to threaded messaging. We’ve been waiting for you.
Last we have a demo of multitasking. It’s similar to what you’ve seen in webOS, with an image of the applications that are open, but they just had to beat said feature with an ugly stick made out of aluminium because each window has a giant X you can select to close an individual app.
Earlier this year I switched to Android and got myself an unlocked Nexus One. Read my review of it here. Now with Android 2.2 coming over the air during the next few weeks I’m thrilled about the performance increases coming, and improved email client. The Nokia N8, for a few days, peaked my interest. After I found out the image sensor inside the N8 was 1/1.83 inches, which is larger than my Canon IXUS 120’s 1/2.3 inch sensor, I was terribly excited, but then I realized I’d be giving up my Nexus One’s fantastic browser, fantastic push email experience, brilliant mapping experience, and more, just to carry one less device.
Not ready to do that yet. Maybe the reviews of the retail N8 will change my mind, but for now I’m an Android man. Can’t believe I’m saying that.