N8 has begun SHIPPING!
 

So the N8 has begun shipping pre-orders

source: http://conversations.nokia.com/2010/...ipping-photos/

anyone pre-orderd it yet?

Re: N8 has begun SHIPPING!
 

why would anyone want this crap

Re: N8 has begun SHIPPING!
 

here here. the n8 is a massive step backwards.
better video capture. and thats it.
let mysymbian get exited about it.
im not

Re: N8 has begun SHIPPING!
 

Care to explain why you think so? I am betting on N8 (and others with Symbian^3/4) binging the power back to Nokia.

Re: N8 has begun SHIPPING!
 

Re: N8 has begun SHIPPING!
 

so you think if you buy an N8 its going to behave like that?

I also think its gonna be great for Nokia, and am still considering buying one, as one of the main things I do with my N900 is take pictures and video of everything every day :P I just dunno about the lack of h/w keyboard... I'll probably wait til MeeGo event in Nov til I decide on N8 or hopefully N9.

Re: N8 has begun SHIPPING!
 

Was at Nokia Flagship Store and had a 15-20 minute test run on the N8. Here's few first impressions.

The good
It's kinda hard to express just how much Symbian has improved. My last Symbian experience was with the POS known as N97, and N8 is such a huge improvement.

First of all, there's no more excessive clicking and confirming connections and so forth. The UI really feels like it's optimized for touchscreen, unlike the S60 5th Edition which was just a T9 UI with basic touch controls tacked on top. It's also very responsive and snappy. Multitouch works well on everything except Ovi Maps (more about that later). Also the few apps that I tried and one game (Angry Birds) were all working well and loaded up nicely.

The store was packed with people and it seemed like everyone was pleasantly suprised. Actually it's been like a year, since N900, that I've seen people enjoying testing a Nokia device.

The Bad
Lack of multitouch on Ovi Maps was a pain, especially cause multitouch was implemented on everything else and it was really akward to 'dowgrade' back to single-touch.

I'm also bit sceptical about browser rendering speed. The new Qt based Symbian browser won't be out until November/December and the old browser currently in N8 is propably as slow as in S60, but I can't really say that for sure, because there were so many people playing with N8s that the network could'nt cope and everything requiring net-connection crawled at snail pace. On the positive side, scrolling and pinch-zooming was really smooth and fast on the couple of pages I had the patience to load.

Overall
Not really a phone for me, but very good phone for the market segment it's intended for. And all Symbian haters should definately judge S^3 on it's own merits rather than those of S60 5th Edition. Oh and please stop linking to that one and only Youtube video which shows S^3 as unresponsive. The net is full of much better videos, and the real world performance is nothing like that.

Galaxy, Iphone 4 and their ilk don't have to lose any sleep, but N8 is gonna offer some good competion to iPhone 3GS and similarily priced Android handsets. The cheaper S^3 models (C6 & C7) will make it really hard for Android to eat that Nokia dominance in mid-range.

Re: N8 has begun SHIPPING!
 

This is ok for a General topic. Moved.

Re: N8 has begun SHIPPING!
 

I guess the browser would suffer from the ARM11 CPU..

Re: N8 has begun SHIPPING!
 

Are they going to have the next version of N900 or is it dead?

Re: N8 has begun SHIPPING!
 

i pre-ordered one in USA, don't expect to see it until maybe 10/15 or so.

Re: N8 has begun SHIPPING!
 

Just in case anybody from Finland read my impressions and is thinking about going to Nokia Store for purchase: Don't do it.

Nokia is really taking advantage on the huge pre-order list, and charging outragous 'tax' on people wanting to get it fast from Nokia store, 525 euros LOL.

Re: N8 has begun SHIPPING!
 

Great balanced review from cnet:

http://reviews.cnet.co.uk/mobile-pho...view-50000971/

In summary: camera is awesome, software is meh...
Can't tell if its a production unit or not, but the points brought up should not be a factor..

Was alarmed to hear that taking videos of movement look a little jerky.. hopefully will be confirmed on a production unit

Re: N8 has begun SHIPPING!
 

Well, I have elucidated these points in several other threads, but here goes again, why someone would want this crap(vs n900 or iphone or android). And yes i will keep my n900 for sure and I have various other phones/mobile devices so it is not really a mutually exclusive decision for me at least, meaning just because I have/choose one phone I have to exclude all others, i am not marrying the damn thing like some of you people.

Where Symbian, and specifically this N8 device will suit my uses cases:

mobile entertainment usually from downloaded media, xvid etc(currently employing a samsung vibrant for this chore, TV out is a little flaky though and n8 will have much better qulaity to tv) but the screen on the vibrant is really good if not outputting to tv

sales work. I use my n900 when I am having to do more sysadmin type stuff than sales type stuff. but the maemo PIM is laughable compared to symbian. Symbian contacts are great, feature rich, very configurable, etc. currently using e72

Symbian 3 will also have support for caldav which I already use and will be great to use on mobile

Navigation. I currently have an e72 that is my road warrior device for ovi maps and battery life, but assuming the n8 battery life is decent enough it will replace this use case as well. neither the n900 or samsung are as good at this IMO.

games and kid stuff use case. right now have an iphone 3gs. some of the new games on n8, especially golf look awesome, but we will see if the silly kid game apps get near the level of iphone. probably keep the iphone for this use case for now.

mobile photography as an always with you camera. yes this is a no brainer

Re: N8 has begun SHIPPING!
 

Thats pretty clueless nonsense by the reviewer, claiming that 25fps would look "a bit jerky", stating that simple as he wrote it.
The jerkiness is indeed visible if you try hard, but its *also* one fps used in big picture cinema, blue ray etc, and that same jerkiness is just the same visible in abovementioned "reference" formats.
Now by all means i would not expect a phone to produce better quality than professional movie gear ;)

Re: N8 has begun SHIPPING!
 

The chaps over at electric pig have been using an N8 daily for the last two weeks and have been posting video Q&A sessions on the phone. From their reports, I suspect it's rather more rounded as a device than Crave suggest, and as usual, just because a phone isn't the same to operate as a fruity phone doesn't make it wrong - a constant problem with reviews these days. I was planning one of these for the Mrs and I've not seen anything yet to put me off (except launch price). I asked the wife what she would most want her new phone to do best (other than calls) and she wanted to take good pictures.

I bet the N8 GLOBALLY sells shedloads more than any single Android or iOS device. Not sure about the profitability though!

Re: N8 has begun SHIPPING!
 

Try Opera Mobile 10 (and not Opera Mini). Opera Mobile is usually much faster than the Nokia default browser and features like Speed Dial are very useful.
And I myself am looking forward to C6-01 :)

Re: N8 has begun SHIPPING!
 

no it is not the way nokia will get back people they need to succes with a meego phone NOW.

As many here says techspec may be nice for people who is camera freaks. IF the camera take as good pics as the specs says. pixels doesnt say all...

In all other stuff N900 is better.

But there is one good thing with it and that is QT and that is a BIG step forward for symbian/meego developers :)

Re: N8 has begun SHIPPING!
 

MeeGo is intended to be their high end. This move, with the N8, despite me not wanting the phone, honestly makes sense for that segment of the market. The pricing and the sector they're gunning for, it'll sell quite well.

Let's see/if the N9 lives up the hope we've put into it. I hope so.

Re: N8 has begun SHIPPING!
 

n97 feelings came up if i saw this vid.

Re: N8 has begun SHIPPING!
 

I think that phone wasn't responsive because she used fingernails, but touchscreen is capacitive. :rolleyes:

Re: N8 has begun SHIPPING!
 

N8, E7, C7, C6-01 will outsell all androids and iPhones together many times over, except maybe for SE X10 mini and X8. Even the 5800 has sold more units than any other touch screen phone.

Nokia use a cheap CPU and a cheap GPU to produce better results than those with premium CPU that cost at least 10X as much. The end result is a cheaper phone that is more profitable.

Take for instance the C6-01. It will sell for around 200€, Clear Black Amoled, 8MP camera, 720p video, Ovi maps and battery life that Android can only dream of, plus Ovi store full of music and apps (for those interrested in that).

Re: N8 has begun SHIPPING!
 

I just played with it 3 days ago at the Nokia shop in Terminal 5 at Heathrow London.

Wasn´t very exciting device. Changing between programs looks choppy when you are scrolling through the open programs, not smooth like N900.

In fact the whole device seemed choppy / laggy. I half like the way it looks, but it does not have a camera lens cover!!! What good is a 12MP camera if it´s all scratched up in 3 months?

Physical keyboard and lens cover are minimum demands :)

Re: N8 has begun SHIPPING!
 

CPU might be an ARM 11, but GPU in the S^3 devices is one of the fastest, if not the fastest ever in a mobile device ;)

Re: N8 has begun SHIPPING!
 

C'mon ppl.. evn wen n900 or iphone came out.. they were crappy(software wise) .. let n8 spread out and get an update.. then we wil see how it works out for the phone.. its too soon to comment about it I guess.

FYI, I'm not going to buy a symbian phone as i'm waiting for a meego :Dphone

Re: N8 has begun SHIPPING!
 

Different segment.

Yes.

Orly! Such strong arguments... Can Ovi Maps suck more than on N900? Doubt it. How about the battery life of N900? The out of the box experience? Would you be willing to argue the usability on N900 is better than iOS, Android, or S^3? The flippin' USB port stays where it should remain where it ought to be on any smartphone, including this one? Scratches on screen? Since Nokia N8 will be widely shipped in volume, and since Nokia tend to support their Symbian devices better (N-Series and E-Series flagships), I expect better software support from Nokia for this device than for N900.

The last Symbian OS versions (not S^3) for touchscreen were just 'hacked' versions; not completely optimized, written from scratch. S^3 is a lot like MeeGo in that regard, and both will benefit from Qt-based applications eventually, but S^3-based devices are shipping now whereas MeeGo-based ones aren't.

Note here above I'm not saying blah sucks -- just this 'blah isn't as good as bleh but for the rest it is better' is a friggin' joke.

It is called Qt, Symbian, MeeGo.

Yeah, it shouldn't be choppy out of the box, but it isn't as if we didn't have to hack our N900 to makeit responsive (hildon-desktop, swappiness, overlock, ...)

I'm giving swype a chance.

[edit]On the note of N8 versus N900 features it seems like N8 supports USB OTG out of the box:

[/edit]

Re: N8 has begun SHIPPING!
 

Off-topic, but have you tried Swype on any handset? Would be interested in hearing your experiences.

I have been using Swype beta on a Nokia X6 and it is ok but a little laggy at times. I hope that Swype performs better on new phones as the X6 has a fairly slow (by 2010 standards) CPU and swype probably needs to check a number of possible key combinations to figure out what you might have been spelling.

I will still prefer a QWERTY slider though :)

Re: N8 has begun SHIPPING!
 

I'm using it on the Captivate. Friggin' fast, takes a while to get used to - like 15 minutes - then it's rapid. It's also pretty darn accurate as far as word choice goes... all but curse words or foreign words (I'll probably need to include German too if I can).

If I'm in a rush, I'll switch from the Samsung keyboard to the Swype keyboard and I'm pretty rapid with it.

Re: N8 has begun SHIPPING!
 

just used an iphone like this chick. Got the same results. ITs getting kinda lame.

Re: N8 has begun SHIPPING!
 

I doubt the UI from that movie Minority Report could keep up with that chick.

Re: N8 has begun SHIPPING!
 

Same here :) and in the meantime my N900 will be full of different states of meego and nitdroid :)

Re: N8 has begun SHIPPING!
 

Right. Incredible, isn't it? In fact, even though probably not even Nokia could do anything that'd prevent me from buying the N900-successor (or could they?), I toy with the idea of getting the C6-01 just as a Symbian^3 toy. You know, you never know when you need one ;)
I assume it'll be amazingly cheap after a few weeks/months, even if you don't get it on contract.

Re: N8 has begun SHIPPING!
 

geez, why is anybody here bothering anyway?
none of the average user here is the target audience for the n8 -.-

just hope that the n9 will get the same awesome camera and wait.

Re: N8 has begun SHIPPING!
 

Oh for ****** sake! What's the ********* point with it if it ******* can't type ****, ****, ****, ****, ******, ****** or ************?

Re: N8 has begun SHIPPING!
 

I doubt that was in reality a UI. It was probably more of a movie with a few interactive buttons, or carefully synchronized. Saves a lot of costs compared to designing and using a UI merely for a movie otherwise not used in practice. (Or is it in use? OMFG CONSPIRACY!!)

Re: N8 has begun SHIPPING!
 

Hey bsving.. Were you just bsing or do you have any data to back that up? :) i don't see such significant difference (in terms of components vs end product pricing) between current nokia line up vs their past ones (mid and high end smartphones). So i'm not sure where the profitability optomism is coming from...

Re: N8 has begun SHIPPING!
 

Serious much? Twas a joke, sorta.

John Underkoffler is the gentleman's name that came up with the Minority Report UI. There was a lot of science, research and investigation that went into the gestures, look, feel and other portions of it. To be honest... I've heard that there is enough research to fill three books (from people that worked with the effects) and they had to condense it to a brief.

Here's John Underkoffler talking about it, and showing it off, at a TED conference [ view here ] (warning: video will autostart)

I've actually read a little from the official documents (but not much, there's not much that's public, I don't think) about "g-speak" - the UI and the research - but the "joke" was merely how fast she was going and how fast the gesture UI in that movie was.

But there's a ton of science in a well-researched item.

Re: N8 has begun SHIPPING!
 

begun shipping.................i hoping its not a fail that has begun.

EDIT: oh a short review on the first page.......hmmmm i think im gonna eat my word on top....well i'll get the Sym^3 with the qwerty keyboard....and hoping that it has an external memory (saw some specs and says no SD card slot).

Re: N8 has begun SHIPPING!
 

Nonsense. That's Xenosaga, not Minority Report!

Re: N8 has begun SHIPPING!
 

Bang for the bucks. That is what Nokia is all about. Take the 5800, with the newest firmware it has kinetic scrolling, turn by turn nav, it is unbreakable, and with a music quality that is unsurpassed. And by "coincidence" it is the best selling touch screen phone ever. This phone is over two years old. Try doing the same thing installing Android on that rather mediocre hardware, or any Linux, it wont work. That is why Nokia still is the number one smart-phone manufacturer.