Nokia today took the wraps of its most strategically important product designed to take on the iPhone and Blackberry in the smartphone market, the unibody Nokia N8.
The N8 is the first Nokia phone to run Symbian 3 software and won’t ship until the third quarter. Features of the $493 device aren’t bad – a 12 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics and Xenon Flash, a 3.5-inch HD touchscreen and HD video capture along with video editing tools.
Symbian 3 offers support for gestures such as multi touch, flick scrolling and pinch-zoom. The Nokia N8 also offers multiple, personalizable homescreens which can be loaded with apps and widgets. The new 2D and 3D graphics architecture in the platform takes full advantage of the Nokia N8’s hardware acceleration to deliver a faster and more responsive user interface.
“Symbian 3 is evolutionary not revolutionary, but N8, if reliable, is a first step in efforts to make Nokia’s high-end phones credible again,” said Ben Wood, head of research at CCS Insight.
The N8 has 16GB onboard storage with the ability to expand up to 48GB with a micro SD card. Ovi Maps and free turn-by-turn navigation for 70 countries also feature.
The phone provides access to Web TV services that deliver programs, news and entertainment from channels like CNN, E! Entertainment, Paramount and National Geographic. Additional local Web TV content is also available from the Ovi Store. Facebook and Twitter apps also feature.
We note the device is carved from a single piece of aluminium (hence the unibody crack), the N8 will be available in five different colors.
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