Nokia N8 Unlocked GSM Touchscreen Phone Featuring GPS with Voice Navigation and 12 MP Camera (Silver/White)

Let me describe an event at work,.......during a meeting when 30+ people are present, someone's phone rings... It is a familiar and typical iphone ringtone. most of the people start fumbling their pockets or start looking at their(i)phone to check if its their phone ringing. iphone has become real common commodity.., believe it or not..For those who really wants to be unique, especially from iphone users (as per my experience) and feel special about it, this is the phone for you.All right, sentiments apart...Here is my take on this phone. I bought this phone from Amazon shortly after its launch and using it ever since.Since so many users have posted very good and accurate reviews about Nokia N8 with Pros and Cons here, I am focusing mainly on user experience and some WOW factors that other phones can not/do not offer (for free).- Only smartphone that dose not mandate you to subscribe a smart phone data plan without loosing most of its functionality (or without rooting/jailbreaking etc.) savings of $35 a month since day one....I bought this one at full price but its free after a year of use just because of data plan savings. I still use low priced data plan and take full advantages of smartphone features like anywhere email, upload pic directly to facebook, local searches etc etc.- Internet on the go anywhere anytime (with data plan subscription, of-course). I just plug in my phone to my laptop using usb cable and my laptop is connected to internet. I can also use my phone as wifi hot spot and tether data to my ipad hassle free. saved few hundred dollars and bought only wifi version of ipad. saved hundreds more when no data plan needed for ipad. More savings.......and same great ipad experience!!!!- Great camera, takes amazing natural looking pictures unlike other smartphones which tend to over saturate colors to look them better on phone screen. I regularly use nokia n8 to take pictures at work and add it as a part of my presentation. Looks really hi quality even if projected on big screen. I did receive many complements from my (mostly iphone using) co-workers.- Free GPS with no data plan requirement added spoken direction with street names in more than 30 languages, online traffic updates and many other bells and whistles...Self explanatory....I never have to carry my gps while on the go, as true with any other smartphones. Where n8 beats every one is native voice guided navigation in multiple languages without using a data plan (and using it if you want to)I set my route in the phone and let it sit somewhere on dashboard. 95% of the time I could navigate just by listening to the voice guidance without looking at the tiny map screen on the phone. The voice guidance is very clear and spoken street names really makes the driving in unknown place a breeze as you are simply focusing on driving. My wife is so jealous just because of this feature.- HDMI out - I connect my phone to my lcd tv using the provided cable and play Need for Speed (free with phone).Can wirelessly connect to the Laptop !! DLNA sharing app lets me connect and stream my pics and vids from my phone wirelessly to my laptop, which i connect to my tv and share my pics as a slide show to friends at home while me sitting on couch holding the phone in my hand.Well, these are the features and experiences that makes me love this phone, the part I love the most is that these things come with it at a substantially lower price upfront and significant lower monthly cost, not to mention freedom of using it over any GSM network and not having sign a two year contract.!!!!Obviously, this phone has its shortcomings and trade offs, and many reviews here describe them accurately.For me, the cons are,- screen could have been larger,- clunky user interface- soon to be obsolete OS- speaker on the back of the phone right below the camera module, significantly reduces the sound volume if the phone is lying on bed speaker facing downwards.- App store experience could have been better.However, it has been more good experience than bad. Constantly attracting curious looks from people when they see me using this phone, and many of them drop their jaw when they hear that it has 12 MP camera.I dont mean to show iphone down by any means and I personally feel that iphone s user interface is much better.However I do not regret buying Nokia N8 at all.America is a country of freedom and this is the only device that gives me true freedom of choosing any service provider, choosing to opt for a smart phone data plan or not, not binding myself into two year contract and still able to enjoy a smartphone experience and not to forget freedom of using (free) GPS signals without paying for navigation service using the device you own.

I bought this phone from Amazon and I own a Nokia N900 too. I wish to compare these two, as Nokia N900 is one of the greatest phones from Nokia.1) First let me go to internet browsing.Nokia N900 is the first phone to have full flash player and the major capability is it will play videos directly in the browser, for sites like youtube, facebook etc. Once facebook moved to latest flash player, N900 is not able to play the videos(eventhough there is a hack).Nokia N8, does not have full flash player, but it has flash lite. I was expecting that the youtube and facebook will not be able to play the videos directly in the browser. To my surprise, both the sites played the video in the site itself, thats really great.With respect to Nokia N900, every site determines it as a computer and hence will show the full page, instead of the mobile site, which is good, if the wifi or 3G is really good.With respect to Nokia N8, every site determines it as a mobile and hence will first display the mobile site, but if you re-route it to the full site, still it displays the sites like charm.Conclusion: with respect to internet browsing Nokia N8 does great.2) Playing videos.Nokia N900 has a resolution of 800x480, hence the videos look very good.Nokia N8 has a resolution of 640x360, so I expected videos(good videos like HD videos) will look less attractive, but to my surprise, it looks great in Nokia N8.Nokia N900 can almost play any video format directly, like wmv, avi etc, including flv. I am not sure whether any other phone can do/compete with this.Nokia N8 on the other hand, has the ability to play any video format, but for avi and flv there is a little trick. When you copy an avi file, your PC may complain that this device is not capable to play it, but you can still use it as a storage and say yes to it. To my surprise, media player picks and plays well. For .flv files, after you copy, the media player is not going to pick it, as if it doesn't support it. If you go to file manager and click on this .flv file, media player picks it and plays well. I haven't tried .mkv file yet, as the mkv files that I have are all big and it is not allowing me to copy those.Conclusion: Playing videos is very good in Nokia N8.3) Camera.Nokia N900 has 5MP camera and in this area, Nokia N8 stays way ahead with 12MP camera and xenon flash.Nokia N8 has xenon flash, which normal cameras use, still even normal cameras cannot take good pictures in dim night lighting. Similarly N8 photos come good, if taken in close shots in night. In daylight, photos come really good. The beauty with N8 is its photo and video editing softwares out of the box, which are really good.HD video recording in N8 is good, provided you don't show quick movements to turn the camera to a different angle and this is mainly due to the 25 frames per second video recording.Conclusion: Nokia N8 camera and its capabilities are one of the best.4) GPS.Nokia N900 is pretty dumb in this area too, as it doesn't have voice guidance out of box. So lets directly jump to Nokia N8.Nokia N8 has one of the best GPS with voice guidance, one major disadvantage that I came across is, it needs 3G connection to work(I am not sure whether this is correct, what I am quoting is just my experience). Once it connects, it works good. I just found two minor issues, one is it informs you to take a turn just when you are few feet away to take the turn, whereas Garmin GPS informs you well ahead. Similar way when you arrive at your destination, it says you arrived at destination, it does not say, whether your destination is on the right or left, whereas Garmin GPS tells which side your destination is going to be.Conclusion: Nokia N8 GPS is definitely good.5) Widgets.Nokia N900 stands out with respect to widgets and its definitely the best in the industry. You can place the widgets whereever you want, even one on top of the other. Widgets are really useful in N900.Nokia N8 on the other hand has fixed dimensions for widgets and you can't place it whereever you like. You need to place it in the designated places. The main drawback for this that I found is, in email widget, you don't get much required information from the widget, you still need to jump into the mail app to know what email came to you now. Still widgets look good in N8.Conclusion: Nokia N8 widgets are still good.6) Chat and Voip.Nokia N900 stands out in this area too, as Skype worked with Nokia to have the skype integrated into the contacts. Like that, google, yahoo, even sametime all are integrated into the contacts itself. You just need to go to contacts to see who is online. You can call that contact through various options, like gsm call or voip call using skype or skype to skype call or skype to skype video call, same way for google, yahoo etc. It is very powerful, none of the mobile has it integrated like this.With respect to Nokia N8, I believe it is not out of box and I am not sure whether I need to install anything to get a similar experience. Skype has an app, but still video calling is not available and speaker phone capabilities are not available. Fring has video calling capabilities, but only between Fring to Fring.Conclusion: Nokia N8's capabilities in this area are still to be improved.7) Social networks.Nokia N900 has beautiful widgets and integration to contact well.Nokia N8 is not less to this. It has widgets and integration to contact also well.Conclusion: Nokia N8's social network capabilities are good.8) Bluetooth.Nokia N900 has the usual bluetooth version and it works good even with A2DP.Nokia N8 stands out in this, with latest bluetooth version 3.0. The transfers are really fast compared to the older version. The beauty comes with out of box drivers to support bluetooth devices like mouse, keyboard etc. Imagine, I paired my bluetooth keyboard and mouse to the phone and it reduced the time that I spent to do the typing, a lot. I don't have a monitor to connect using the HDMI port, if I have, then it becomes a complete system.Conclusion: This is one of the best in Nokia N8.9) Battery life.Nokia N900, in line with all the other powerful smartphones, with all the widgets constantly checking the internet and all the chat softwares too constantly checking internet, it comes for 75% of the day and you need to charge it after that.Nokia N8, to my surprise even with all the above said things, it is able to withstand for atleast 2 days.Conclusion: Battery is really good in N8.10) WebTV.Nokia N900 doesn't have this capability.Nokia N8: need to explore in this area.Conclusion: Need to explore in this area.11) Micro USB capabilities.Nokia N900, not much to say.Nokia N8, can read your memory stick out of the box and will show it as a drive in the file manager.Conclusion: Micro USB in Nokia N8 is capable of more things.12) Speakers.Nokia N900, has stereo speakers and it can produce loud sounds without any external speakers.Nokia N8, doesn't have stereo speakers, but to my surprise the sound is equally loud as N900, but I found only one problem in this area, as the speaker is in the camera compartment which directly comes in contact to the ground. If you keep the phone down on a desk, you will not be able to hear any sound, as the speaker is blocked by the desk. Similarly even the mic is on the same side, so if you talk over phone handsfree, by keeping the phone on the desk, both the parties are not going to hear properly.13) FM transmitter and internet radio.Nokia N900 is outstanding in this area. If you find to get your popular radio stations URL from internet, you just need to grab the URL and give it to the media player, then N900 can stream your radio station live from internet either using wifi or 3G, which means even if you are in any part of the world, you will be able to hear your favourite radio station live. Using the build-in FM transmitter, you can transmit to your own car radio.Nokia N8 has the FM transmitter, which is equally good to N900. Even though N8 has internet radio concept, it is basically app based, which means whatever stations the app is providing, thats what you are going to hear. If you want to do the same things as above(like grabbing an url and feeding it to media player), I am not sure how to do it.Conclusion: FM transmitter is really good, but internet radio needs some improvement.I hope, I covered the review of some distinct features apart from the usual ones.