Nokia N8 hands on preview by Engadget

After being excited over Nokia’s next flagship product – Nokia N8, Engadget has finally gotten a comprehensive hands on preview in London. Running on the upcoming Symbian^3, the N8 is something worth looking out for in a world where iPhones, Blackberries and even Android is dominating the smartphone arena.

The N8 built quality seems to be impressive and what’s remarkable is its 720p video shooting and playback performance. During the N8 preview, Nokia had a demo videorecording of a girl on a swing which sounded pretty clear despite the traffic noise in the background. This would defintely take on iPhone 4 in portable HD video recording.

More details and link of the video after the jump.

For photo shooting, the N8’s 12MP camera with Carl Zeiss optics seems to be snappy. It only takes half a second between shots which is unheard of when it comes to camera phones.

On usability, the Symbian^3 OS doesn’t seem to be polished for prime time as Engadget reported the N8 frequently crashed in their hands. Obviously Nokia has a lot of software work to do. Instability issues aside, the N8’s Symbian^3 does retain a familiar feel of previous Symbian versions and its capacitive touchscreen is reported to be more sensible to use. However the touch screen had occasional sensitivity issues which could probably solved by hardware tweaking or screen calibration from Nokia.

Overall the N8 is looking good and we’re pretty impressed with its multimedia capabilities. Now if only Nokia focus in getting the works in its OS right. No confirmed date on its availability in Malaysia yet but we hope that the N8 is stable enough by the time it reaches here.

Check out the video demos below:
N8 Video Recording and Playback Demo
Symbian^3 in action on the N8

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