I bought two N8s in late December, intending to give one to my brother as a gift... but I unboxed one N8, played with it for a couple hours, and just managed to get it back in the mail the same day for an Amazon return

The hardware is mostly nice, minus the silly plastic doors for SIM, microSD, and HDMI slots, and I'm guessing that they opted to leave the USB slot uncovered, just to keep the silly plastic doors count @ 3

And I agree with a few other posters in this thread... web browser is awful, Contacts, Conversations, and unified inbox is a joke compared to the N900, and Symbian^3 just seemed a bit silly and inconsistent, with a mix of 'Exit', 'Done', 'Cancel', etc... to dismiss dialogs, and some settings are buried in submenus, control panels, etc...... nowhere near the well-conceived UI of the N900.

I was really looking forward to the N8, giving the touchscreen-only (no keyboard) phone a shot, for Swype and some other interesting apps... but I wasn't impressed with the N8 at all.

Maybe PR2.0 will breathe some life into Symbian^3 with some real improvements (namely the awful web browser), but I may be more interested in the E7 if/when it shows up in the US as the final chance to give Symbian^3 another chance.

I think the N9 is the more likely next purchase for me, if the N9 actually shows up at all w/Meego.