Nokia N8

Nokia announced the launch of Nokia N8 during the last week of April. The world leader in the mobile phone market promised a lot and created too much expectations for people regarding the N8 which would become another crown jewel, just like its predecessors N97. If you’re too excited to get your hands upon Nokia N8 then you’ve have to wait until the 3rd quarter of 2010.

Pros

• Flash enabled
• 12MP Carl-Zeiss auto-focus camera with a large sensor
• Real video format
• 720p HD video playback
• HMID card interface to TV
• Dolby Digital sound
• Xenon flash
• 4000 x 3000 image resolution for crispier and sharper images
• Aluminium body

Cons

• Doesn’t offer anything new and innovative except the powerful camera
• Won’t be available until the 3rd quarter! (A very bad strategy to create a hype around a product that dosn’t exist!)
• Zoom : 2x for images , 3x for videos
• Touchscreen without QWERTY – typing long messages will be a nightmare
• Will be available in very few countries, initially!

Price

The N8 is priced at 370 euros which translates to approx Rs. 21500 in India before taxes! The pricing really confuses the user as to which phone among the N8 and its sibling N97 should be purchased as there isn’t much price difference between the 2 phones! Also, choosing a QWERTY phone in favor of a fancy new toy is very difficult given the price range for both is almost the same.

But as the market has shown N97 wasn’t as glaring a success as Nokia had anticipated. Some even called the N97 an iPhone killer!

While it certanly is difficult for any phone company let alone Nokia to shatter Apple iPhone dominance in the smartphone market given the depth and breadth of the app store.

Comparison of the Apple iPhone and Nokia N8

Whenever any new smartphone enters the market people start comparing it with Apple’s iPhone which is only natural given that the iPhone has become THE gold standard among smartphones.

I find it very difficult to compare N8 and the iPhone because its no Apple to Apple comparison (excuse the pun)!

Some of the hard hitting features to compare that come are -

Flash-support – It’s what made the iPhone notorious. There was a whole fiasco going over in the Flash community over Steve Job’s decision to stop supporting Adobe Flash. Adobe then spent millions in publicity to persuade Apple to take back its decision and start supporting flash again! Well the rest is history…he bottomline is Nokia N8 supports Flash.

Camera – The N8 beat iPhone (or ANY other phone in the market) over its 12MP Carl-Zeiss camera. The iPhone pales in comparison with a measly 5MP! If you’re photographically inclined then the N8 is the phone you must consider getting.

Multitasking – Both the iPhone and N8 support multitasking. Interesting thing to note is that both started supporting multitasking with the new Operating Systems introduced by both the phone giants – iPhone OS 4 started supporting it now and also Nokia’s Symbian^3 also introduced multitasking for N8.

I’d like to ask DailyPandora’s readers to share more comparisons between the 2 phones in the comment box below.

Some lessons for Nokia

Don’t try to fill new wine in old bottles – If you compare Nokia N8 with N97 and X6 you’ll come to realize that all these phone have very similar (if not similar!) feature with regards to -

• Display Size
• Dimensions
• Weight
• Video format support

Should I buy the iPhone or the N8?  ( tips for new buyers )

Both phones are great in and among themselves but when it comes to making a choice between the 2 its a difficult stance to take!

If you’re using a smartphone for the 1st time then an iPhone is definitely a better option. Many iPhone users, majority of them infact, suggest that it’s extremely difficult to switch to another smartphone after using an iPhone. Apple fanboys!

More serious users and reviewers chime that Nokia N8 might be a glaring improvement over the N97 (which was an overall failure) with its memory management, 2D and 3D graphics rendering, more sensitive capacitive multi-touch screen and the grand daddy of all camera phone a 12MP, HD supported Carl-Zeiss optical camera!

Some Lessons for Nokia

• Differentiate the brand – Can you tell me 1 peculiar similarity between Microsoft and Nokia? No It’s NOT software! Both great companies don’t know how to differentiate brands. With Microsoft it was MSN, Live and Passport all at the same time which led to confusion among users. With Nokia, it is the series and obscure, meaningless numbers – N-series, then E-series, etc Which leads to undue confusion and provides little insight to customers when making a decision to purchase phones!
• Popularize Publisize your services – Did you know Nokia provides unlimited photo storage, complete phone backup and sync, offline maps and apps through its integrated service platform Ovi? If you do then kudos to you! That’s because not many Nokia users aren’t aware of the existence of these amazing services!
• Instead of using same old features Nokia should focus on developing its marketplace by providing some sort of incentives for app developers.

I’d personally prefer iPhone although if Nokia’s interested in changing my mind I’d be more than happy to give my address

Edited: Corrected spelling mistakes, thanks to the 1st commenter of this post!