How does it work ?

Menu From New Symbian Themed..

A lot of you must be thinking what does that mean? What it mean's is how does the phone respond to you through use..Is it easy to use? Annoying? Simple or even Flashy?

Unfortunately the N8 doesn't fit into any of those tags but is a rather great combination of all of them ! As most will know the N8 uses Nokia's new Symbian^3 Operating system or just Symbian as it is being called now ( You know...like windows ,Linux. Os X etc) Nokia Has been using symbian for very long time(more than 10 years) and while it has always been popular recently with Competition brought on from Apple And Google Through iOS and Android Symbian has taken a Knock.

With Smartphone market share falling rapidly every year Nokia Had to do something and I thought that something was the N97 but boy was I wrong..even a Nokia exec named the N97 a Failure , Not only that but it was also heavily overpriced. But let's not get too far into that and let's look at the changes brought into the N8 and the comparison to Android and iOS.

I've read that the entire code of The OS has been rewritten so I Expected big changes and to be honest I Never really got too many. On First look the OS looks identical to Symbian^1 and had me disappointed. But as I marched on and started using the OS. I was wrong..What Nokia has done is instead if rush into a whole new experience ( User interface) they've fixed up what was wrong under the hood of Symbian and made useful changes to the interface and how you work with it.

Used a Nokia before? Remember all that waiting and wondering if it's going to even work or crash? Well that is ALMOST a thing of the past. Browsing through the phone is swift and easy with one touch needed to do what you want to do , and it's definitely the best change I've noticed. The next thing you'll notice are the Theme effects which were pretty much none existent before ,The best part is that while they look great they aren't TOO fancy so that you don't end up waiting for the transition to complete so you can do what you want.

When it comes to crashing I can't say it's never going to happen again but it will hardly ever happen through normal use , its happened about twice in my time with the N8 and both times due to 3^rd party Apps. The most important part of preventing crashes is to not only watch which apps you install but be PATIENT! If the phone does lag don't go off pressing buttons and touching all over the screen because that is most likely to cause the crash. I'd say that 90% of the time if you just wait the phone will do what you need it to do.

Drop Notifications

Something that Nokia have done which I doubt anyone will notice but trust me makes things easier is reduced not only the number of options in menus but also the number of submenus. This helps enormously and I'm very happy with it.Better even though is the long touch intgration through out the OS!

The new feature which I like most are the small drop down notifications the phone uses if you're in an application. Whether you received a message , A file or the phone is making an internet connection the little box drops down smoothly and quickly so that you know what's happened but it doesn't interrupt your application . Thank you Nokia for this!

I also liked and noticed the way Nokia has rearranged Settings and other built in Apps , from the way they work to the order they appear in. For a past Nokia user it can be frustrating because you can't find things where you expect them to be but I think it's for the best and simplifies working with the Phone.

New Task Switcher

Old Task Switcher

I've already spoken about the multitasking ability of the phone but here's more detail, The phone allows you to have any apps you want open and kept open while you do what you want in the main app. Put simply it works like minimising in Windows. Nokia changed the task switcher and now when you press the menu button down for a long press you are given a pop-up box that shows you screen shots of the app and lets you close it or scroll to the app you want to switch to. The screen shots are a Nice addition But are rather large so when you have many apps open to find one can require your attention.

The N8 also boasts something else that is individual to it though not new and that is the ability to rotate the screen and view any application or part of the OS in a landscape orientation. This also applies to most 3^rd party applications too. I know a lot of people Say they don't care much for this feature but to me I've found it really useful.

One feature that a lot of users neglect is Symbian's ability to be themed completely , not many people even know about the massive amount of themes available for these phones and its a pity because it can really Add some eye-candy to the phone .

The new Landscape menu Gives you more Space and shows the theme I loved called Strike 2..

The N8 comes with a few themes with thousands more available on the net..

The last thing to mention and this is something that previous Nokia users will appreciate is that the phone give you about 180mb of phone memory ( Not the mass storage memory) and hardly any applications install onto the phone memory meaning you wont end up having no phone memory left due to a lack of space like was experienced on the N97 ( Mines currently has a pathetic 20mb free) and is actually still experienced on the HTC Desire which out the box won't allow you to install any applications on its SD card.

So where does that leave us ? let me put it this way..

Nokia has said there are over 250 new features in the new Symbian^3 and while I would love to its not possible to discuss all of them and their merits..I've told you a few and there are many more . My conclusion about the N8's Symbian^3 is that it moves Nokia to within touching distance of the competition with very few things that need to be fixed though not putting them in anyway ahead of the competition. There are bugs and small annoyances but somehow , Symbian^3 is easy most of the time flashy at some times and simple all the time. So wondering if it's going to let you down? Relax..Nokia has said that in the start of 2011 alone updates carrying 50 new features Will be brought to Symbian^3 and all bugs will be addressed.
The other thing us that even though many may say symbian is a dieing OS ,with Nokia fully behind them and the New QT code being introduced Symbian will not only work better but the millions of developers out there will be able to make applications for the N8 quickly and convert their applications from other platforms to Symbian..that Combined with the New hardware makes it very, very hard to see how Symbian is dieing so rest assured , The N8 won't be the last Symbian phone it may just be the first of the Best Symbian phones .This new philosophy of Nokia's to perfect a phone they already sold may be what keeps me and many other users with Nokia. I believe the N8 can be perfected..

For The Student : Multitasking helps heap loads but being patient can be a bit of a problem for a student on the Go.. that said being able to theme your phones gives it that Edge. I want to make my phone look more like my personality and with the N8 that's what I can do. The influx of new apps will also attract students.

For the business user : Business Users are more likely to have that small bit of patience to truly love Symbian 3.Being able to multitask means you can get more done on the Go. Businessmen also need something that is not only good for now but is going to continue to improve and offer him/her more. Symbian and Nokia have promised that and I can't not see how they could Lie about things so publicised.

For the Tech User : As with every one else techno freaks also need multitasking . But more than that they'll like just how much they can customise their N8 to suite their needs and Change how it works . QT also gives them the chance to write New apps for their phone without having to be a skilled experienced Programmer with hours on his hands to write endless threads of code! The only draw back for them is that they may not want to have to wait for Nokia to catch up to Android because even slightly older versions of Android offer things that Symbian doesn't yet. The question for you if you are a tech person .. is Will you weather the storm? Or will you Jump to the in thing? The .Com crash comes to mind ..