The N8 was released in October 2010, the closing of the Symbian Foundation was announced the following month and Symbian was publicly deprecated early in Q1 2011. i.e. the N8 had a very small window of opportunity to be successful in. Not only that but it had a 680Mhz processor and 256 MB of RAM (and that was a big improvement over NOKIA's previous Symbian devices) whereas the Galaxy, which you have chosen as a suggested alternative, had a 1.2GHz processor and 1GB of RAM. The difference in grunt power was HUGE but the difference in performance wasn't. NOKIA's problem at the time was not Symbian, in fact Symbian was it's saving grace, what other multitasking OS would have run so well on such modest hardware? The problem was their hardware specs looked feeble and their designs (N8 excluded?) were dreadfully bland. Now NOKIA are finally getting close to their rivals in terms of hardware and design but unfortunately their CEO has lumbered them with an unloved OS.