The Nokia N8 flew out of the leak machine and into officialdom today. We’ve already spied its lovely shell from every angle in our photo gallery, and seen it demoed on video, but what secrets has Nokia stashed underneath the N8′s skin? Read on, and we’ll spill the beans on the Nokia N8′s secrets.
Wi-Fi workhorse
Sure, the Nokia N8 has Wi-Fi inside, but did you know it’s actually N-standard Wi-Fi? That’s incredibly rare in a mobile phone. The Google Nexus One has N-standard Wi-Fi chips inside, but hasn’t yet had the software updates that’ll make them work at full pelt. So what’s the advantage for the Nokia N8? A Wi-Fi range of 250 meters outdoors, or around 70 where it has to pass through indoor walls, as well as speeds up to 160Mbps, that’s around seven times faster than previous generation Wi-Fi, and should make streaming photos, videos and music to the N8 a breeze.
Biggest ever camera
We’re not talking megapixels here, although the Nokia N8′s 12 megapixel count is mighty impressive. No, we’re concentrating on the physical size of the Nokia N8′s sensor. According to the chaps at Nokia Conversations, the Nokia N8 “features a substantially larger sensor than any ever used in any other Nokia device – even bigger than many found in dedicated cameras,” and where there’s a larger sensor, there’s more room for pixels to receive light without also adding noise to the images it produces.
Speedy shutter
Nokia says the latency between jabbing the shutter button of the Nokia N8 and seeing a snap is about 150 milliseconds. That’s “as fast as many dedicated cameras and actually faster than some,” meaning the N8 should finally mean you stop carrying both a camera and a phone, at least for point and shoot pics.
Nokia N8: First video sighted
Surround sound inside
The Nokia N8 has Dolby Digital Plus technology inside, as well as a HDMI output. Load it up with HD movies, and connect it to your TV. If you’ve got a surround sound setup at home, the N8 will blast out soundtracks with different channels for each speaker. Load it up with clips in the right format, and you really are looking at a portable home theatre system.
Flash as standard
Apple might still be bickering with Adobe over Flash support on the iPhone and iPad, but Nokia is forging ahead, adding Flash support to the Nokia N8, so web pages load in full, no matter what ads, video or games are embedded in them. Thanks to its N-standard Wi-Fi, the Nokia N8 should be pretty speedy at loading hefty Flash files too.
TV pre-loaded
Nokia’s new Web TV app means you won’t have to visit the Ovi Store, visit streaming sites or negotiate any barriers when watching TV on the move. It’ll come pre-loaded with feeds from CNN, National Geographic and E! as well as local channels too. There’s no word on BBC iPlayer support within Nokia’s Web TV app, but we’re hoping to see that nailed down soon.
Nokia N8: All the official photos
New music player
The Nokia N8 has an all-new music player. From our first glimpses, it looks pretty slick, boasting a new coverflow-style interface, and since the Nokia N8 has up to 48GB of storage, assuming you slip in a microSD card, it should be set to take on Apple’s next generation iPhone, even before it launches.
Stonking battery life
The Nokia N8 doesn’t just pack in capacity and a new music player, Nokia says it’ll keep pumping out tunes for a full 50 hours. That’s more than any Nokia we’ve seen before, and even in standby mode it’ll keep kicking for over 16 days between charges.
It will use a stylus
Nokia has fitted the N8 with a capacitive touchscreen, which usually only works with finger tips. However, it also states that a capacitive stylus can be used, and boasts handwriting recognition for entry of Chinese characters. It remains to be seen whether stylus fans (and yes, there are some out there) will be swayed, especially as the Nokia N8 doesn’t come with a screen-prodder of its own, or even space to stash one.
Qt support built-in
The Nokia N8 is the first device to support Nokia’s new Qt development platform. It means coders will love the device, since they’ll be able to build their apps in one device and instantly know there aren’t any compatibility problems with other Nokia phones. It’s already released an SDK for code fans to tinker with, and now they’ve got a device to try their apps out on too.
Out Q3 | €370 (£320) | Nokia
