Homescreen

I've given the Homescreen on the N8 its own section and that's simply because to me it's SO important. So the N8 has 3 Customisable Homescreens allowing you to have 6 widgets per screen..so eighteen in total . I would say they sized just about right and work well in both portrait and landscape mode ..So what does the Homescreen offer you out the box?

Nokia Has included some handy widgets with the N8 ,some being used to operate the phone , some for updates and some general Shortcuts too. Together they combine to make you feel truly at home with your home screens.
The handiest widgets for me were : Music Player , Social Networks , Favourite Contacts , Battery Monitor ,Short Cuts and Notifications . The music player widget is nice and simple showing you album art ,song title , allowing you to pause and skip tracks or skip straight into the player :) I already spoke about the Social Widget earlier so there isn't much to add except that it may not be perfect but I still use it! The new favourite contacts widget is a real piece of art. Showing you four of your set favourite contacts at a time it lets you set their contact picture so you can see who you're calling instead of taking time to read it . The coolest feature is that you No longer Limited to just four, Give it a swype and it'll spin onto the next contacts which not only looks really cool but is very helpful when you have quite a few people to keep in contact with :) The Battery Monitor isn't preloaded on the N8 but comes from the OVI store where you can find a host of other widgets too . With out getting too into the widget what it does is make estimates of how long your battery will last , with options for different Usages ( shown in screenshot ) and also shows you graphs of your phones usage for the last week. You can pin any usage estimate to the Widget and view it from the home screen. The shortcuts widget is simple. One widget with four app shortcuts to either Bookmarks or applications , I must admit sometimes having to put four apps isn't ideal and I'd love individual apps and I Think its something Nokia should look into in the updates . The Notifications widget is just that , Notifying you of Messages and missed calls it also gives you a sms preview with a contact picture that I like :D The new Nokia search widget is also worth a Mention, choosing between Internet and content search and also between Bing and Google is a nice touch in a widget you may use often ..

Nokia has also allowed you to put individual wallpapers on each homescreen so you can add some spice to your home screen too.

Social Widget

So what are the problems? First of all I don't think that The 3 homescreens are a problem YET and I say yet because right now with fixed sized widgets you can fit more than enough onto the 3 homescreens .But if different size widgets come in this may become an issue because big widgets take place away. And that leads me into the next problem. Fixed sized widgets. Sometimes it's just not easy to operate from a single widget , I found my self straining a few times to read a tweet because the widget is so small! I've heard that Nokia have done this so that they can preserve the widget orientation when the screen is rotated but surely another smaller grid system could do the same job? I think the easiest to solve issue is next and that is the lack of widgets available, which to be honest isn't really up to Nokia alone but as I've said the OVI store is expanding and more widgets are on their way! This last one really isn't an issue for me But since its going to be fixed let me mention it anyway , People have complained about the swyping method between the screens that it is too slow and they would prefer a dragging style like The HTC Desire uses. Personally I think its fine how it is but Nokia have said the next update will be dragable so let's wait and see.

The N8 homescreen lags behind the likes of the HTC Desire in many ways , with the desire offering any size widgets and 5 homescreeens( it doesn't rotate thou like the N8 :D ). The N8's homescreen is still a huge improvement on the one in my N97 and I'm sure as the phone is updated it will improve J