Nokia’s N8 Smartphone Starts Shipping
Nokia N8 in several different colors
After over five months since the release of Nokia’s flagship N8 smartphone running Symbian^3, the handset has finally started shipping. Sure, it can be considered a long time for a world like ours where we’re used to everything moving fast, being offered fast and becoming old fast. In any case, customers who’ve pre-ordered the new Nokia handset will be the first to receive it, Nokia announced. But the exact date on which the N8 will arrive in stores will vary based on country or operator so we can’t provide specific information. The Finish company did mention that it hopes to have broad availability “in the coming weeks”.
After a long period of mostly being ignored, Nokia seems to have captured the attention of people with the N8. The phone has received the highest number of pre-orders in Nokia history and the company’s senior vice president of smartphones, Jo Harlow explained that “With the N8, and the new Symbian software, we are bringing a familiar, faster and more intuitive user experience to the world’s most popular smartphone platform.” She added that in order to appeal to today’s high-end buyers, smartphones need to offer certain qualities. They have to be enjoyable, useful and beautiful.
The N8 runs the latest version of Symbian, which is still the world’s leading operating system even though in most parts of the world iOS and Android are working on dethroning it. The key feature of the smartphone is its 12-magapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics. Currently dubbed the world’s best camera phone (at least that’s what Nokia claims) the N8 will allow its future owners to take the highest quality photos as well as shoot HD videos. The photos and videos can be edited on screen and shared with friends by transferring them to an external hard-drive or uploading them directly to social networks such as Facebook, Twitter or RenRen. The Nokia N8 also comes equipped with 3.5 inch AMOLED display, 680Mhz ARM11 processor inside the case, HDMI out, FM transmitter, 16GB of onboard storage, MicroSD memory card and a “black belt in entertainment”. If you’re wondering what this means, Nokia was careful to offer the N8 will a whole bunch of applications like WebTV, with channels such as E!Entertainment, National Geographic or CNN, OVi Store, which gives access to plenty of applications and Ovi Maps walk & drive navigation which can be used in more than 70 countries worldwide.
To get an idea of what Symbian^3 is about, it delivers most of the features that you’ll find in other, more modern products, such as pinch to zoom web sites and photos, applications or swipeable home screens. Nokia has been connecting people for many many years. But it was about time that it started playing catch up with Apple, Samsung or Motorola. The iPhone majorly changed the way we perceive phones nowadays and the Finish handset manufacturer didn’t really come up with an innovative product for a long time.
Maybe the N8 will work wonders and manage to gain a pretty impressive market share. This could mean a new beginning for Nokia, who hasn’t yet lost its nr. 1 phone manufacturer in the world spot yet, but was getting dangerously close to doing so. Five months between the unveiling and the release to the market of a phone is quite a long time to ask your customers to wait though.
If in Europe there will be no problems with selling the N8, in the US Nokia might be facing some problems. According to Yahoo, Nokia has yet to find a carrier which will subsidize the handset’s $550 price tag. The company’s US site is however taking pre-orders for the N8 and promising to deliver by the end of October this year.
