Is Nokia N8 the Fin's answer to iPhone?

If you’re a long time user of Nokia phones and has been waiting to move to smartphone platform but not wanting to jump over to iPhone or Blackberry – wait for the Nokia’s smartest phone N8 – which has just been announced last Tuesday in Europe.

Nokia’s favoured OS – the Symbian is an established and stable workhorse but it is not able to provide the functionality and power needed to run a proper smartphone. The N8 is the first to adopt Symbian’s latest ^3 operating system and will be available in the third quarter in “select markets”. Symbian ^3 represents the Nokia-favoured OS catching up with the Android and iPhone competition with multi-touch, multi-tasking, Flash-compatibility, widgets, social address books and a more sophisticated look to the interface.

Some other cool features of the N8:

12 megapixel camera with 28mm wide-angle optics from Carl Zeiss, Xenon flash and face-detection software.
Capability to play HD video, with editing features and check this out: an HDMI output for playing on your 36 inch LCD TV.
a 3.5-inch OLED touchscreen
16Gb of internal memory
Bluetooth and WiFi including 802.11n.
Location based services with AGPS and comes with free global Ovi Maps walk and drive navigation

True to its reputation as a solid reliable phone, Nokia N8 is carved from a single piece of anodised aluminium and looks catchy in one of five eye-catching colours.

On the downside, it’s processing power at 680mhz is short of the now familiar 1Ghz processor used by other smartphones. Then there is the question of ^3 OS – how polished it is and whether is has done enough to catch up with Android capabilities – many critics feared that it may not have done enough.

In Europe it’s priced at €370 when it comes out in 3Q 2010. So when it reached Malaysia later – we can expect the price to be around RM1,700+.

Checkout the details at Nokia website.