Had the chance to play around with a Nokia N8 display unit. Build is very good. The body is mainly made of anodized aluminum. It’s not stainless steel but it’s reasonably tough. The display is covered with Gorilla glass so it should also be tough. Even the plastic ends and port covers seems to be of a durable material. No flimsy rubber here like that on the E51. It comes in many colors but no black. Only a watered down dark gray.
The camera is great. The main selling point of the N series has always been the camera and it doesn’t disappoint. The lens is Carl Zeiss and it has a Xenon flash. It is good for general purpose shots and even has macro. The shutter is a two-stage focus then shoot button. It also takes 720p video at 25fps. There’s supposedly a hack out there that makes this 30fps. The trade-off is that the camera module is quite big and significantly protrudes from the back.
As for the apps, I took a look at the photo browser, email, and web browser. The photo browser is good. Almost as fast as that on the iPhone 4 and HTC Desire. Pinch to zoom works. Email is also good. It’s similar to the Nokia Messaging for Email app I have on the E51 and on the 5800. You can set up most popular email accounts quite easily. You can pinch to zoom messages. The web browser is also good. It’s similar to the 5800 but again with pinch to zoom. But I think Opera Mobile is still better. Not sure if pinch to zoom would still work with Opera Mobile though as I didn’t have time to download and try it.
The bummer is the virtual qwerty keyboard. Aside from taking up the whole screen like in the 5800, it only shows up in landscape. I find the keys a bit too far apart in that mode so I would have preferred a virtual qwerty keyboard in portrait similar to a Blackberry. Unfortunately, in the N8 like in the 5800, you only have a regular phone keypad in portrait and you have to use multiple presses or T9.
In summary, the N8’s hardware, especially the camera, is quite impressive. Unfortunately, the software, the vaunted Symbian^3 is nothing but an evolution of S60 5th Edition and you can clearly see and feel the similarities. It felt like I was just using a faster 5800. With pinch to zoom.