Review: Stomping Around SXSW with a Nokia N8

So if you haven’t been following my exploits over at my audio blog (SomeAudioGuy) or movie webseries (Movies You May Have Missed) then you probably didn’t know I was at SXSW all last week sitting in on Interactive and Film. The folks over at WOMWorld/Nokia flew me down to Austin, threw me a platinum pass, handed me an N8 smartphone, and turned me loose on the town.

Since the N8 has been woefully under reviewed in the USA (Gizmodo I’m looking at you, you snarky gits), I figured it was only fair that I share my experiences with Nokia’s top of the line slate.

First a brief confession: I’ve never really used a Symbian device before, not for more than a minute or two. I LOVED Nokia candybar phones (still have a 6200 which I use as a weekender phone), but as I got into smartphone and mobile computing my experiences have been dominated by Palm, WinMo, and now Android.

I’ve been thoroughly impressed by the hardware Nokia puts out. It’s solid. Always solid. The N8 is no exception. Fit and finish are fantastic. Metal build (which also helps the internals dissipate heat), 3.5” AMOLED screen (640×360 – a little more on that later), 16GB on board storage plus support for MSDHC cards (up to 32GB), a 12MP camera with a Zeiss lens and a Xenon flash, Micro HDMI connector, 3.5mm headphone jack (which can ALSO function as an A/V out), and a Micro USB which supports USB On The Go for connecting thumb drives and keyboards/mice .

It’s a very clean looking phone, simple lines that taper at the edges, recalling one of my favorite classic muscle cars, the Dodge Daytona.  Lines are very symmetrical, which does hurt “pocket identification”, as I was always pulling it out upside down. The offset Home button was an interesting choice. It made the phone a little harder to navigate left handed, but using the phone primarily right handed it worked, and the thumb rocker on the right side (to turn the screen on and off) is perfectly positioned for quick access. Thankfully, Nokia gives us a dedicated camera button which also controls autofocus.

One bummer on the N8, no user replaceable battery. It helps the phone feel more solid, but especially in a high use situation like SXSW, it would be nice to have the peace of mind that comes with having a spare battery, as opposed to always having to look for an outlet.

You don’t need me to tell you that the crown jewel of Nokia phones is the camera. You will find no better camera in a mobile device. Period. The 12MP shooter in the N8 uses the same size image sensor as the Canon Powershot G series, so it’s larger than most standalone point and shoot cams. The Zeiss lens is a 28mm equivalent, just wide enough to help get all your friends in a single group shot, and for those ultra low light shots, a proper xenon flash is on board. Much better than a wimpy LED flashlight.

Obviously there’s no hardware zoom on board, but even using the “crop” digital zoom on board, you still get a usable 5MP image. The two images following were taken during the Pepsi Max Big Boi concert without a flash, and fully zoomed in:

Video on the N8 is a pretty high quality 720p. I’d be hard pressed to tell the difference between video shot on the N8 and on my Epic, but in the hand the N8 seemed to autofocus a little easier than the Epic. How about a little Chris Cornell (singing “Imagine” by John Lennon) to show off the video:

I was a little concerned about the camera bulge on the N8, but checking out the phones from Nokia employees, many of which looked like they’d been through battle and were still perfectly functional, I have to believe that the camera in particular (and phone in general) can take a few knocks. In fact I watched several N8’s take falls that would’ve ended my Epic, and it quickly became a running joke amongst us that we’d “caught the phone on the first bounce”.

I wish more phones featured USB OTG. Being able to shoot pics and vids, transfer them directly to a pen drive, and share them directly with other computer and Nokia users was refreshing. In a world where “smartphone” users have to go through some kind of portal like iTunes to put content on or take content off a phone, USB host is a tremendous help. With all the issues we had uploading content to the “cloud” at South By (data networks were crumbling constantly), having a good sneaker-net solution for our phones was invaluable.

I did not like moving back to a 3.5” screen. After using the 4” screen on my Epic, it felt a little cramped, especially when using the on-screen keyboard. The N8’s AMOLED screen wasn’t as readable in direct light as the SAMOLED screen on the Epic, but the N8 does not use the pen tile pixel arrangement the Epic does (my biggest complaint about the Epic’s screen), so text and fine detail was crisper on the N8.

Battery life on the N8 was pretty fantastic. My Epic was something of a train wreck. I would switch it into airplane mode whenever I wasn’t using it, and it would still need to be charged two to three times a day. The N8 would be dead by mid evening with the same moderate use without having to do the airplane mode dance. While on paper, the N8 would seem underpowered, by not packing a screaming fast processor, it really is an all day (or two day) phone in use.

This brings me to the OS.

Symbian^3 is an interesting beast. It really is unlike any mobile OS I’ve used before. It just has a different feel to it. Take screen transitions for example. On Android  or iOS, as you slide between two home screens, the screen will follow your finger. Pause in between two screens, and you’ll stay floating or hovering in between those screens. On Symbian, engineers have made a clear distinction between selecting a widget and completing a swipe. The phone will only react once the swipe motion has been completed, and if you try to drag and pause, you’ll probably select a widget by accident. It’s intuitive, but it’s not familiar, and many on first glance will confuse it for lag.

Nokia has been able to cultivate a pretty active developer community, so even though I wasn’t very familiar with the OS proper, there were a lot of familiar apps in the OVI store (Nokia’s app market). Within a couple minutes I had Skype, Swype, and even Angry Birds ready to help my learning curve.

The stock browser on Symbian is pretty miserable, so downloading Opera was pretty much mandatory. It’s a perfect example of the inconsistent experience on Symbian, and definitely recalls the dying days of WinMo, where manufacturers pretty much gave up on IE and just replaced it with Opera. Why the N8 doesn’t come preloaded with Opera is a mystery. It’s really that much better. The stock browser is a glaring smudge on an otherwise clean OS.

Thankfully, Tech blogger ZOMGitsCJ clued me into Gravity, a social networking hub for Symbian which supports Twitter, Foursquare, and Facebook. Made my whole Symbian experience MUCH more enjoyable, keeping me connected while running around Austin.

Lastly, while Symbian lacks some of the “pretty” of other mobile OS’s, it’s MUCH more resource friendly, and is probably the main reason why the N8 can get away with more efficient hardware, getting better battery life than most Android devices, without slowing down the user experience.

Nokia is in an odd position at the moment.

It’s committed to supporting Symbian, is still developing MeeGo, and has just announced a partnership with Microsoft to develop a Windows Phone 7 device. Most of the Nokia folks I spoke to were pretty excited about these developments, that they would help Nokia shake things up a bit. Many hoping this would help wake this humongous corporation, make it a little hungrier for the North American market. In fact this partnership might have a few additional benefits for Microsoft as well, as the recent announcement of Angry Birds getting ported to WP7 could have a little to do with Nokia embracing Microsoft’s OS. I’m sure other OVI app developers are more than a little curious about what app development in WP7 is like. There were a LOT of Rovio people at Nokia functions during SXSW…

I can’t help but be a little nervous about the devices themselves however. I really liked having all day battery life, and WP7 requires much more powerful hardware than Symbian does. Hopefully Nokia can mix a little of their special sauce into a WP7 handset, but I would hate to lose out on one of my favorite features. Though having played with WP7, and genuinely liking it, I would love to see an outlier like Nokia offer up some high quality hardware to compete with HTC in this new arena.

So can I recommend the N8?

That’s a little tricky. I really liked it, and if you’re a hardware junky like me, then it really is a fun phone to play with. HDMI plus A/V out, USB-OTG, fantastic build quality, and a killer camera makes the N8 a compelling piece of tech. However, if you like having the prettiest software, or are tied into services like iTunes, the N8 becomes a little harder to recommend.

Also, and this is kind of a crappy point to make, there is something to be said for belonging to an Android/WebOS/WP7/iOS “club”. That the people around you are using a similar device as you, and can share experiences with you, that you speak the same “language”. There wont be a lot of people around that can speak “Nokia” in North America, so expect to be something of a loner if you use one as your daily driver.

However, if you are a loner, hardware junky, smartphone rebel, I think you’re in for a treat…