Nokia have started to ship their new cellphone the N8. Nokia, the world’s leading cell phone manufacturer in product numbers sold is in need of some positive news. They have had a number of smart phones that have failed to capture the imagination of the cellphone users.

Nokia is facing increasing competition from Android based phones as the Symbian platform just does not seem to be able to draw developers to it. The N8 will be the last N range phone that will feature the Symbian operating system as the newer N range phones will be using MeeGO software. Symbian will however not be forgotten but will be used on X and E Series cellphones. The first impression that struck me when looking at the N8 is the fact that the phones look similar to the Apple iPhone. The lines and screen layout of the N8 is similar to the iPhone and one can only speculate that Nokia is taking some inspiration from the Cupertino company. The N8 features the latest version of Symbian called Symbian^3.

Nokia provide some detail on Symbian^3 operating system software. “ Powering the Nokia N8 is Symbian ^3, the latest edition of the world’s most used smartphone software, which introduces several major advances, including 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 also raises the bar in performance by delivering greater memory management allowing more applications to run in parallel for a faster multi-tasking experience.”

I think the one feature that will have BlackBerry, iPhone and Android owners breathless, is the fact that the N8 features a 12 megapixel camera with a Carl Zeiss lens.

There a few things that is of concern for possible owners of the N8. Firstly the phone does not have a removable battery and the full metal case does not provide you easy access to the screws to loosen it. The 12 megapixel camera with Xenon flash bolted on the back of the phone makes it, not very pocket friendly. It is not a slim phone so it could become difficult to carry around and continuously looking for a place to put it might become an irritation.

I think time will tell whether non Nokia owners will get the N8. I suspect that Nokia owners that are in the final months of their contract might look at getting the N8.