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

I promise that this will be my last review of this phone. I was very disappointed that the first one failed in 31 days. However, Amazon refunded ALL my money, and I made a point of buying another one from them, rather than a slightly cheaper one from an Amazon affiliate store. BIG difference! The replacement phone was NEW, as opposed to "used" as was the one from the Amazon affiliate store. I know that because:1. The box on the Amazon replacement phone was sealed with a little blue "Nokia" factory seal.2. ALL of the accessories were in the box, and they were all sealed in bags. Both of the 6-inch long USB adapters were missing from the first phone, and the bags that were in there were sealed with Scotch tape.3. The protective stick-ons were super tight on the AMAZON phone. The ones on the "affiliate store" phone had been obviously re-applied, with large air bubbles under them.4. Last but NOT least: The games on the phone that failed were already set up for the German language, and the menus and screen display said "T-Mobile." I had to do all that setup stuff from scratch with the new N8 from AMAZON.The first phone also had the "No camera sound" option, but the American market one from Amazon did not. That means the first one was a Euro market phone.So it's all good now. The phone is amazing, and the photos embarrass those from other smartphones. Sometimes the interface gets a little sluggish, and the screen goes black for a few seconds, but my son's iPhone 4s screen freezes, forcing him to turn it off and back on (I have to do that sometimes too). Part of my problem is that I have over 800 photos on my phone, and a lot of apps, which burden the processor. Did you know that the sensor in the N8 is .802 inches diagonal (21.5mm), not under a half-inch like those in other smart phones and even most point-and-shoot megazooms? So the digital zoom on the N8 works well without excessive pixilation. And then there's the great and fast offline GPS, and the 802g/n WiFi, and the build quality, and the FM broadcast, and the 16 gb internal memory, and the extra memory card capability, and the standard, replaceable battery.STANDARD, REPLACEABLE BATTERY, you're thinking. Is this guy mad? No,look on youtube, or download the free Nokia N8 service manual. If you can change your car's tail light bulb, you can do it. You just need a small Torx screwdriver, and some basic fine motor skills. The battery is an off-the-shelf BL-4D. Another thing that most people don't know is that the flash on the N8 will trigger a Xenon "slave" flash, which greatly improves picture quality in dark settings. I use a little Vivitar DF-120 flash that's about a third the size of the N8 (but it's thicker). It worked perfectly at a party in a Marriott banquet room, which got me designated the official cell phone photographer. You know that TV commercial where the Samsung Galaxy III owners touch phones to exchange playlists, while the iPhone users look on in amazement and jealousy? You should have seen my co-workers at that party when I used my N8 and my shirt-pocket Vivitar slave flash. You can even hold the slave flash at arm's length to avoid the red/white eye problem that haunts most phone cameras. The FM broadcast blows them away, too. Our office pool cars have basic FM stereo radios, but no matter! I just tune to an unused station slot, queue up one of my favorite playlists, or Internet radio, and rock on! You just have to set the phone somewhere near the radio. How do other smartphone owners survive without that feature?TWO must-have apps: Joiku WiFi hotspot, and Camera Pro. Trust me. I have the last version of Symbian ANNA on my phone, and they work great. The Joiku hotspot app is the best I've ever used. Very fast throughput and a cool, useful control panel. Camera Pro takes awesome pix (same as the OEM app), and you can turn off the red pre-focus light and the shutter sound.UPDATE JUNE 21: I now regret purchasing this capable but "glitchy" phone. My next phone will not be a Nokia. ONE DAY after my 30-day return period with AMAZON ended, the bottom 2mm charging socket went dead. The USB mini-port still charges, but in 2 days I head to Ocean City for a week, so now I have to buy a universal USB charger kit at BB so I can use the phone on vacation. Then it's back to Nokia because Amazon won't take it back unless I agree to take a bath on the credit. I'm a professional engineer, so this was not abused (ie: I don't throw my phone around or beat people on the head with it), and I only charged it at home or in my office with the approved Nokia charger. Resetting the phone only cost me my shortcuts: It had no effect on the charging pin. I repaired over 300 laptops when I worked for a computer company called Odyssey, and I've rebuilt or repaired numerous cellphones, iPods, and iPhones, so I'm very familiar with small electronic devices. The pin socket is not loose or damaged. This appears to be a board-level component failure. My web research indicates that there are fusible links on the main board that can open up, and this is most likely the cause. My Nokia chargers work great with my Nokia-China made N82, which thankfully I kept. I thought the Finnish factory phones were better quality?In the beginning, the only thing that acted weird was the flash on the camera: It didn't work at first, but then it started working great, and that ushered in a 4-week period when everything was good. AT&T did discover that I was using a "Smartphone" with a standard SIM card, but they allowed me to do the $10/month unlimited data plan because I'm the primary accountholder and I've been with them forever.All-in-all, this phone is a big disappointment. The N9 is probably just as bad. It's time for me to ditch Nokia!By the way, after the factory reset a lot of built-in applications like the photo viewer and camera button didn't work. After playing with the settings, they magically started working again. Also, when I received the phone, the stick-on labels had obviously been re-applied by a previous owner. When people return devices within their 30-day free trial, Amazon and its sellers should be honest and label them "refurbished" like the cell phone carriers do.ORIGINAL REVIEWThis is my first touchscreen-only phone, and I'm still in a learning curve. But it's not the phone's fault. I have very dry skin, so every touch screen I've tried, including the iPhone, is buggy with me. I restore vintage electronic tube gear, so the dry skin has probably saved my life a couple times.From a build quality standpoint, this phone very solid. The little plastic doors for the SIM and memory cards are typical cell phone quality, but the case is very solid. WARNING: the case is very slick, so when you order the phone, order an Otterbox or similar case at the same time, or you WILL drop the phone.Here are some pros and cons:PROs:- Real GPS that finds satellites even in the men's room at my office. I downloaded the entire US and Canada for free in about 2 minutes using my home network.- Real WiFi, that works for free in a million malls, fast food places, coffee shops, and the like all over the country. Why pay for the cow when you can get the milk for free?- Great signal strength if you go to Settings and set it to 3G. Until I did that, mine didn't get reception down in my basement clubroom. Now it gets 3-5 bars.- Loud, clear speakerphone. I use my phone for small meetings sometimes so this was important.- If you have a standard phone account, and you just slip in your SIM card, AT&T doesn't call you and force you to buy a data plan. Also, the phone doesn't brick within 30 minutes. Stick a standard SIM card in an iPhone and you'll see what I mean. Just kidding, don't do that. You'll have to take it to the Apple Genius bar and have it reprogrammed.- The camera. Go to Flickr or some other photo sharing site and look up pictures taken with the Nokia N8. And the videos are the best 1280x720's I've seen, at least in a phone. Photo sharing sites don't do them justice unless you download the videos and view them from your computer's hard drive because Flickr, Youtube, and others can be jerky with videos. Outdoor pictures rival most pocket cameras. I used my N8 at my daughter's end-of-season soccer team party and no one can believe I was using a cell phone camera until they check "properties".- If you had an N82, ALL of your accessories will work with this phone.- Uses a 3.5mm headphone jack. Has an HDMI connector and the cable comes with it.- The phone charges from a charger or the mini USB cable.- The audio volume control is truly variable, instead of in "steps".- Has the same cool music player interface features as the iPod touch and iPhone, etc. Shows the dates of groups of pictures, the alphabet letter of music albums, and so forth.- All sorts of voice commands but I'm still learning about that.- 16 GB internal mass memory- The adaptive touch screen for texting is impressive.- It doesn't make that annoying "dit-dit-ditdit" sound when I send a text and I'm at my computer (like other phones do) so the shielding must be good.- BATTERY: This uses a standard BL-40 battery: It's just internal. All you need is a #4 Torx screwdriver. There dozens of diagrams with instructions online. Bottom Line: If you're smart enough to use a smartphone, you should be smart enough to change this battery.- Too many other features to discuss here, but the main ones are above.CONS:- Slippery case. Get a nice rubber skin case, or suffer the consequences.- The new Belle OS upgrade supposedly has a better texting keyboard, but it has bugs in other areas.- The audio volume for the Music player is too low, so you have to use high-efficency headphones. Even my UltraSones aren't as loud as I'd like.- The external speaker isn't as effective as the twin stereo speakers on the N82- I haven't found a way to alter the pre-set music equalizer settings, but there's probably an app for it.- No standard Bar Code reader, but there ARE several apps for that, including some that some claim are as fast as dedicated code readers.All in all, a great choice if you have an existing T-Mobile or AT&T account and just want to buy a phone and slip in your SIM card. And the price is very good now that the N9 has gained a foothold. I still wish Nokia had finished their design for the "N99", because it had a keyboard, but I guess that was a pipe dream.By the way, when I see negative product reviews, I immediately read them to see if it's the product, or the reviewer. Phrases like "It don't turn on" or "this phone no gud" in a review indicate that maybe the reviewer was just in over his/her head.

I bought this phone from Amazon, a week back 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. I heard skype is still building an app for N8, so still I am searching for a provider who can offer video calling capabilities, so that I can use the secondary camera.Conclusion: Nokia N8's capabilities in this area are not yet explored.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.