Six months have passed since the Nokia N8 has been my main phone and now it's time to take a look back and see how it has serverd me these past months. This post is not only about the N8, it's also about the evolution of Nokia Store during that period and about what will be coming to the N8 in the near future.
The beginnings
When I got the N8 back in December 2011 it was equiped with Symbian Anna. The phone was fast and reliable with Anna, but I was eagerly waiting for the announced Belle update that eventually came in February. The Nokia Store app repository was growing at the time and more and more Qt apps, some of great quality and others of questionable one were emerging in the Store. Some apps were just released and later evolved into mature apps, reliable apps.
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Back in December there were only a few social apps that one could use on Symbian. The already famous Gravity took care of my Twitter needs, the well known fMobi was my de facto Facebook client with Facial acting as a sidekick. Tweeties was just released as an alternate Twitter client, but was not even close to Gravity as far as resources and usability is concerned.
The battery life was decent, the phone survived more than a full day of heavy usage and photo taking. I took well over 5000 photos with it and more than 20 hours of video footage.
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When the Belle update arrived the battery life increased and now the phone lasts around two full days with the same heavy usage as before. The tweaks under Belle's hood worked very well for me. The speed of the user interface however slightly decreased since the Belle update, but nothing I that a non-obsessed user, such as myself, might notice.
Battle scars
My N8 survived a few drops with no visible signs left on the device. I keep my phone mostly in my pocket or on my desk so I did not use any covers to protect it from damage. Still, the phone looks as well as it did when I first took it out of the box.
Here are two photos of the phone that clearly show how well it still looks after the six months battle with my pocket ahd heavy usage.
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The present
Now, I take even more photos than I did when I got the phone, somehow the enthusiasm factor never wore down during this six months. I even started the N8PictureADay series because I felt like I should share some of the amazing photos I took with this phone. That is also because since the Belle update the camera software seems to be improved, with the phone now taking better quality pictures than it did when Symbian Anna was calling the shots.
The app repository has exploded with lots and lots of quality Qt apps coming to Belle. To name only a few we now have Facinate, Tweetian, Blob, Notekeeper and many many more that we did not dream to have six months ago.
What is about to come
It's been more than two years since the phone was announced and I have to say that Nokia did a stellar job with the software updates, which only goes to show how much they care about their existing customers. The phone got two major operating system updates going from Symbian^3 to Symbian Anna and now on to Nokia Belle. And that's not all. Recently Nokia announced that a lighter version of the Fearture Pack updates will be coming to the Nokia N8 in the form of the Nokia Belle Refresh update. The N8 cannot take on the full featured Feature Pack because of the lower hardware specs compared to it's youngest brothers, the 701 or the 808 PureView, but still a third major update of the OS is way better than any other phone I heard about, being surpassed only by Apple's updates for the iPhone 3GS. The new update is said to bring some minimal overclocking with little to no impact on battery life that will breathe new life again into the now aging N8.
Conclusion
I am very happy to own this phone that has one of the best cameras in business being surpassed only by it's younger 808 PureView sibling. The N8's camera can take on any other cameraphone still winning every battle. Not too bad for a 2 year old design.
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