N8 is the latest smart phone from the Nokia family and like all the phones from Nokia it lives up to its expectation of being an excellent phone. It is the first smart phone globally that boasts of Symbian^3. N8 with its anodized aluminum exterior has an elegant and smart look to it. The top end contains the power button, headphone jack and the miniHDMI port while the charging port is located at the bottom.

The N8 comes with a connectivity cable, stereo headset, an adapter cable for HDMI CA-156, a charge, a cable for USB OTG CA-157 and a Nokia Stylus SU-36.

The screen is made of gorilla glass and is scratch resistant and the excellent pixel density and good viewing angles gives sharp and bright screen. The 3.5 inch size is pocket friendly without becoming too tiny. However, the menu button is placed in the left hand corner instead of the middle which proves a little problematic when using it single handedly.

The Nokia N8 has the ARM 11 microprocessor with a 256MB RAM which is an improvement form the previous devices. The Symbian also seem to have better memory capacity. However, N8 isn’t particularly a very speedy device and often takes time to load larger websites when compared to iPhone or Android phones. N8 runs on Symbian^3 which is an upgraded version of the Symbian^1 and has several features like multiple homescreens, multi-touch pinch-to-zoom, visual multi-tasking and a more streamlined menu structure. It is the top version of the Symbian but still has to be perfected.

One disappointment is that it does not have a portrait keyboard. There is an onscreen keypad and if you turn the phone sideways you can use the QWERTY keypad. This takes some time to get used to and many people do not prefer it.

If you are looking to buy a phone with a good camera the N8 excels as a camera phone. It boasts of a 12 mega pixel camera with Carl Zeiss lens and Xenon flash for low light conditions. The digital zoom feature in N8 gives excellent result unlike most phones. The images are clear and of excellent quality.

The call quality is clear and loud. The speakers are located in the back and are pretty loud. The new features in the music player are cool. The sound quality of the headsets is good and gives a good bass effect.

N8 is an efficient smart phone with solid hardware and superb camera however it still has certain drawbacks and scope for improvement.