Nokia N8 GSM Phone With GPS And 12 MP Camera (Gray)

Cellulare Nokia – Nokia N8 usato garantito, funzionante e in buono stato, ma mancano gli accessori ed è marchiato con logo “tim”!

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 REVIEW

This 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 1280×720’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.

A bit of an introduction: I’m a retired computer professional, having written software and managed software projects for 45 years. I have been a vocal critic (on the Nokia forums) of Nokia’s software failings in recent years (I had an E71, a beautiful piece of hardware, and my wife had an E62 and a 5800). Most of my objections were to their pathetic ovi.com website, the attempt to replace PC Suite with something else named ovi (which broke something that wasn’t broke! I suspect “ovi” is Finnish for “full of bugs”), and their penchant for issuing “upgrades” that introduced more problems than they fixed.

I had a two-year fling with Android, where I saw a serious mobile system gradually turn into a circus act; the latest version of Android on the top Samsung phones looks like a video game to me. They are obviously targeting the young, which is probably a smart business decision. But if you are a mature adult who wants a serious appliance that helps to keep you organized and to communicate via voice and message, all of this extraneous nonsense is a distraction and an annoyance. Yes, some of what bothered me could have been customized away, but there were other issues that led me to conclude that the latest Android was not for me.

I had watched, with interest, the introduction of the N8 by Nokia and its impressive specifications, and the subsequent tribulations of the product, plagued by problems that resulted in too many dead devices. But two years after its introduction, with the price dropping and unhappy with the direction of Android, I decided to buy one. I’ve had the phone now for a little over a month, and I must say I’m pleasantly surprised.

First of all, the hardware. It is typical Nokia, just beautifully made. It makes a difference, as it is not only a pleasure to hold something well-made, but it feels better in the hand than anything I’ve owned from other manufacturers (Motorola, Samsung). It was delivered with Symbian Anna, which exhibited some of the old, confusing user-interface design that has brought Nokia to the brink of extinction. After consultation with some folks on the Nokia forums, I decided to upgrade to Belle, about which the signals were mixed. I decided that the people who seemed to know what they were talking about liked the system and I went with their advice. This turned out to be a good decision. The user-interface is greatly improved and finally gives Symbian a look and work-flow that is competitive with Android or the iPhone. Unfortunately for Nokia and Symbian enthusiasts, it comes too late. But it’s good, nonetheless. They also fixed some bugs that I cared about. For example, the FM radio application, which I use, did not work correctly in Anna, at least for me. The Belle version is fine. I am happy with everything else that I use — contacts, calendar, email, browser, occasional text message. The camera is excellent. The only thing that does not work well, and never has, is Mail for Exchange, at least when you attempt to use it to sync with Google contacts/calendar. This software was broken three and four years ago and it’s still broken. I have resorted to going back to maintaining my contacts, calendar and todos with Microsoft Outlook, which is an inconvenience for me, since I use Unix/Linux most of the time, not Windows. But Nokia’s synchronization application works well, as does Google’s application to sync their stuff with Outlook. A bit of a Rube Goldberg setup, but it works. It would have been far better for Nokia to have fixed Mail for Exchange — they certainly had ample notice that it was bug-ridden — but that won’t happen now that they are fighting for their lives, hoping to be rescued by Windows 8.

To summarize, if you want a superbly-made unlocked phone made for serious adults at a good price, this is a great choice. Be aware, though, that Nokia has, of course, abandoned Symbian (Accenture is maintaining it now) and it is unlikely that there will be any further development of the system. It’s a dead-end for application writers as well, though there is a large body of Symbian applications already available. Whether they work well with Belle is a separate question (I purchased a financial calculator for my E71, and got the latest version for the N8. It worked fine with Anna, and while it works with Belle, the results appear in a font about 2 pixels high, and so it is unusable. I have contacted the author and he is unable to fix the problem, due to some authentication issue. It’s obviously a side-effect of Symbian now being a dinosaur.)

Update (3/24/2013):

I’ve now had the N8 for almost 6 months, and my opinion of the phone has not changed. If anything, I’m even more impressed by its quality and usability. One issue: battery life. Running Belle, with light usage, the battery is exhausted by the end of the day and has to be recharged for the next day’s use. However, there is a so-called “power-saving mode”, and it works beautifully. With this enabled, the battery will last for days, at least the way I use the phone. For me, the phone is perfectly usable in this mode, and the improvement in battery life is a real plus. Before I discovered this, there were times when I was inconvenienced by having forgotten to put the phone on the charger overnight, needing to use it the next day, and finding it dead. Yes, it recharges quickly, but an inconvenience when I want to use it NOW. The tremendous improvement in battery life in power-saving mode essentially eliminates this problem.

I would also mention that there is a battery monitor application available from the Nokia store that is quite useful, and I recommend it to anyone using an N8.