Disclaimer: This is my personal opinion base on my experience with Symbian^3 on N8. This review will focus more on Symbian^3 rather than the N8 itself.on Nokia N8

Symbian^3

History:

A slight history before I begin. My first smart phone was a 5800 and everyone knows that, that comes with a Symbian^1 OS. It wasn't that bad of a phone, but as a smart phone its just too green and feels very rough. It has problem with memory running out, browser crashing, poor camera, and after a while a rather annoying screen size etc. It was still usable mind you, with plenty of CFW for me to flash and flashing was a breeze. It made the OS better but you still can't shake the feeling that deep inside although it could do all the things other smartphones OS can, it does so just mediocrely. I swore I will not get another symbian phone and was actively looking at a new phone with Android in mind. So many choices and worst still they come out so fast from every glory hole you can find; its hard to make a choice. And they all looks the same on paper, one slightly and upgrade from another. It seems like Android phone user is just cursing themself with every new "slightly" better version of the same phone 6 month after they purchase the current one. So I continue to wait for the ONE. But sadly that did not came. What did came however was the N8. Damn you Nokia...

The camera alone is worth getting the phone. When the sample picture got out, I was amaze by the detail of it. But at that point I was thinking, this thing gonna cost a bomb compare to other smart phones. More so this is going to be Nokia flagship phone. One that defines how good a smart phone camera will be. So I ignore it for a while. Then it came out. Bamm.. RM1690 (official price). My jaw drop and I thought Nokia was mad or something. At the point most smartphones in Malaysia cost in the region of RM2200 to RM2400 and iphone 4 cost close to RM3000. And here Nokia flagship is selling RM1690!! Holy shit dude... So i went around looking for one and finally got it for RM1550 from a dealer. Nice...

So my initial impression is great. Much better then Symbian^1. Obviously. But after a while I notice that the new feature that Symbian^3 brings cause a new set of problems and the cycle of feeling disappointed with Symbian slowly came back.

What I don't like about Symbian:

I'm a pessimist. So I will start with the cons first. Symbian^3 on hand feels very snappy compare to Symbian^1 either due to the faster processor or the OS itself, I don't know. But after using it for a while I notice something. There is a pause.

Problem #1

Pause. With each action there is a pause. It happen at random moments but frequent enough that you will notice. Its not long enough for me to go make a cup of coffee so I'm kindda reluctant to call it a lag. At other times it fluid. And this is a problem. With 5800 it lags and it lags all the time. So you get used to it and adjusted. But with N8 it lags sometimes and quick at others. Example of how this is a problem would only be apparent when combine with Problem #2.

Problem #2

Screen sensitivity. I'm not sure if this is a screen or a software issue but i feel sometimes that it doesn't register a touch. So i hav to touch again and then sometimes again wit a slightly adjusted position to make it register. To make matter worst sometimes the touch is registered, and you can see the icon glow or a haptic feedback vibrates the phone ever so slightly, but nothing happens. Its as if the phone momentarily lost memory and go dumb. This is a more apparent problem when combine with Problem #1, when you touch, nothing happens. You touch again thinking it was problem #2 but in fact it was problem #1. When the pause end it register 2 touches and perform some operation you did not want to do. f***ed...

Problem #3

User Interface. This is more of a design issue. For the most part of Symbian life before touch came into the picture, they were the leaders in phone user interface. The whole people centric motto of Nokia revolve around the notion that they understand people. They were so good at it, Nokia user interface was once referred to when talking how phone interface should be. Keyword = was. The whole UI was design around a D-pad. Placement of icon was all revolve around this. Information was pack close together and it looks great. Great until touch interface comes in. Then its not so great. Fat fingers make the old UI a nightmare in Symbian^1. Things improve slightly on Symbian^3 but not by much. And this is apparent in many places; power saving mode, that top right notification box, the settings, and many many more. I will go into detail below.

Problem #4

Power saving mode. New feature in Symbian^3. Sounds like a good idea but the lack of customization makes it useless. Make worst by the ability to activate it. Try it yourself and you will understand.

Problem #5

Settings. Not the setting itself but the settings UI. Certain stuff just doesn't make sense. I am not sure if this is a fundamental flaw in the underlying OS or just failure in the part of graphical user interface design. Example would be in the browser, go to access point setting and choose. One click to select and second to confirm. This was a huge issue in Symbian^1 and it seems that its still is on Symbian^3 at certain place. Another example would be the camera interface. For custom setting its already selected, but you have to press "select" and then press select again to confirm. UI 101 down the drain. This are just 2 examples. You will notice more as you used it yourself.

Problem #6

Connectivity settings. I separate this specifically cause its that bad. Hard to put it in words. But go take a look of it yourself. It looks like a frigging maze down there. There is one time i wanted to turn my DNS settings to auto. Guess what? There is no option to turn it auto. Instead you have to type both field with 0.0.0.0 and then it will turn to auto. Like i say, UI 101 down the drain.

Problem #7

Browser. One of the main issue to most reviewers. Forget about the promise of a better browser in the future. Lets talk now. As it is, the browser is shit. Unable to process javascript properly lags the hell out of it. Worst still you cant stop as it hangs the whole browser. You just end up killing the browser from the task manager. They could at least put one button to disable it and replace to say, oh i don't know, user guides icon perhaps? or maybe search keyword icon? or even send url icon? I means who uses this things? No one ever reads browser user guides. Keyword search is shit without ability to select, copy and paste function. And send url function is a useless function no one ever used. And also the access point setting when set to "Ask when needed", only allows you to show you the first access point from the Internet list. What's up with that?

Problem #8

Keyboard. Another famous issue with reviewers. The keyboard initially was horrible when i transition from Symbian^1 to Symbian^3. The close together keys are ok on a resistive screen as you can type with your nail with quite a high accuracy but on a capacitive screen the same keyboard is ridiculous. My first 2 weeks was a nightmare of spelling mistakes and long period of staring at my n8 trying to construct a simple sentence. After that 2 weeks, i slowly get used to it and the autocorrect starts to kick in. Thank god. But ultimately the design is still shit. I uses the Chinese keyboard version as it has the numeric keys on top so i don't have to switch. (I don't know chinese btw) They keys are also bigger here i think. But problem still is the same. There are too many keys cramp into the small space. Typing error is always an issue and if not for the autocorrect i would be cursing every time i'm sending an sms.

Problem #9

Autocorrect. Even though it help me alot there is still alot to improve here. Autocorrect is great when its correcting the correct words you were looking for. What happens when it doesn't? Ok lets see, type one word. Lets call A. Autocorrect corrects it and shows B word and showed the word you type below it. No no.. thats not it. I want A word. I bring my thumb to click the A word and B word got selected instead. Fuuuu.... You see the placement of the words are so close to each other that you will frequently face this problem. And worst still unlike other phone OS that shows you suggested words as you type Symbian does not do this. Instead you have to click on the words and a list of suggestions will be given in a pop up window. UI 101 down the drain.... again

Problem #10

Copy and paste. What copy and paste? Exactly...

Even if there is one, the implementation is crude and inconsistent at best. I wonder why no one ever make noise about Symbian inability to copy and paste while in WP7 and iOS it was a big issue.

Problem #11

Widget. Nice try Symbian. But your widget choice are weak at best and plaque with problems from the widget itself, choice of widget and stability of the widget. There is also an apparent lack of control as to which widget can and cannot access the internet. Its either all or non.

Problem #12

Notification widget. A failure but a nice thing to have while its working. I suspect this is causing my other widget to die after a while. Normally takes about 1 1/2 day before this happen and the only solution is a restart of the phone.

Problem #13

Social widget. Nice idea again but without notification from facebook this is just useless. This is also on my shortlist of things that jam up my widgets.

Problem #14

Contact widget. When u add this widget you have two icon that cannot be remove. One icon to add and another to remove. Logical right? Wrong... I don't want to see this two icon there. Its an eye sore. It looks like my homescreen is on permanent edit mode. And there is no option to remove it.

Problem #15 (betalabs)

Nokia bot. This is not officially a Symbian^3 problem, yet. But I feel its worth mentioning nonetheless. Nokia bot is a great idea. In it there is 5 different bot, a battery bot, contact bot, shortcut bot, profile bot, and an alarm bot.

Battery bot is good idea but useless ultimately. It was not smart enough to keep track of when i last charged and advice me accordingly to begin charging. And worst still it does not have location awareness. Not so smart then.

Contact bot is the only bot I am still using. I use this to replace the useless contact widget. Contact bot is a great idea with location awareness. Problem is this: One, you have no control on who is on the contact. Second, its location awareness is kindda buggy as it keep switching from blank to work/home. As a result my contact keep on changing which i find kindda annoying. Third, I can't seems to find the logic it use to determine who is worthy to be on that contact list. I got my girlfriend on there which was fine, then i got 3 more contact which 1 i've never call for years but i did went and update his phone number, and another 2 phone number that i have not call for weeks. What happen to all my recently called contacts? Why are they not worthy? Its just weird...

Shortcut bot is ok but kindda useless coz I want my regular icon where my muscle memory remembers them. Having them swicth over so often confuses my poor brain.

Profile bot. Useless for me because i don't do meetings. They should try to integrate this with Nokia Situation in my opinion.

Alarm bot. Again useless cause i dont do meetings and randomly pick a number to wake me from my weekend nap is not a good suggestion.

Problem #16 (betalabs)

Nokia Situation. Good idea but should have been integrated with Profile bot. And also it is plague by the problem contact bot have which is it keeps on switching between profile when the signal is not strong.

Problem #17

Battery monitor. They should have integrated this with battery bot. The battery bot notification to recharge is just downright ugly and crude. The battery monitor blinking red icon is just beautiful to look at. But ultimately even this widget was useless. The widget is smart enough to estimate your usage but was downright dumb to advice you on your next charge. I cannot understand why is it so hard to implement location and time aware charging point and couple that with the already available estimate usage to use it to advice when a user should charge their phone so that it could last till the next charging point.

Problem #18

Screen saver. A new feature on Symbian^3 but ultimately a buggy one. This has cause alot of despair to me. At some restart, the screen saver process did not want to start. It seems like it was blocked or something. The screen just turns on and dim slightly but not off. Many people gave lots of different way to solved it but i find that a restart till it works approch works best for me. Still its not a solution and this is made worst that every restart drain a ton of battery. Sigh...

Problem #19

nHD. Nokia unique screen format. Some might not notice this but not all 3.5 inch screen is tha same. For example Iphone 3.5 inch is not the same as nokia 3.5 inch screen. Iphone screen are wider and nokia opt to be more slender and taller. Both ends up being diagonally at 3.5 inch. The issue with this is that when the phone is hold on portrait mode everything look squash. This was one of the reason we've heard that Nokia has opted not to include a portrait mode qwerty keyboard. I rightfully so. With a crappy autocorret can you imagine how much mistake you would make? Insanely alot... This is just a personal opinion but i believe you should design the UI to fit this unique screen format. But when yo look at Symbian^3 it looks exactly the same as other OS, except it look squash. I don't know if this again is a fundamental OS problem or just failure in UI design but isn't it more logical to make things stretch more to the side? I can see lots of the space there being wasted for nothing. Make worst still by the Option/Back menu on the bottom that takes a whole lot of space. Some apps like the browser make this worst by placing additional icon on top of those making the viewing area even smaller. Why won't all this menu button hide itself!!? Why isn't the widget wider? Why the notification on top isn't smaller? Too many why to list down...

Problem #20

Legacy. Similar to Nokia famous old non touch UI legacy was something Nokia proud of in the old days. A consistent UI, familiar flow, familiar icon, etc all makes the Nokia experince a unique one. And transition from one phone to another was made simple by this fact. It was ok when the UI was good on the phone its on but unfortunately that is not the case anymore. When touch interface starting to pick up pace Symbian has nothing on its table to offer. iOS flooded the market with its fancy OS and everyone was taken back. Even microsoft has no answer to that and their aging Windows Mobile platform and all the device they were on was a dinosaur in comparison. After a while microsoft throw in their hat and call it the day and dump winmo all together.

From its ashes, WP7 was born. A brand new OS from the ground up. No legacy issue, good. No legacy at all, bad. So much so it feels like using the original iphone os just 3 years late. Now having to compete with iOS 4 which has had 3 years to mature. Microsoft takes the ballsy move to reinvent itself to free itself from the shackles of the past so that they can move forward with a new and clean OS meant for touch interface.

Symbian took the other direction and build on top of its OS legacy. Pro of this is that you retain all the awesome function that is already there. Con is you retain ALL of the function that is already there. Including a framework that was not meant for touch interface and all the other crap that plaque symbian including UI issue. Symbian now has the job of slowly and i emphasis the word "sloowwwwly", evolving itself to match its competitors. I'm sure it must be one hell of a technical challenge.

Problem #21

Dying organization. Some people does not see this as a Symbian^3 problem but i assure you it is very much a Symbian^3 problem. A lot of symbian users are waiting for an improve symbian. Its hard to be optimistic really when your rival has a whole dedicated company working on their OS and symbian itself now is broken up, people being let go, even nokia has loose hope and move on to meego. What signal does that give out? Symbian future is dark. Instead of saying we would make Symbian our ace they are saying we would just keep you around and we will see how. Not very encouraging is it? A company is only as good as people they keep. Because the people they keep is the one developing the vision of the OS and making its future a reality. Without its people they only own Symbian in paper and that itself is worthless. How will you compete with the likes of Apple and Microsoft with such a small staff? The staff is unmotivated with no common goal. Its like asking them to walk towards a black hole.


Stay tune for Part 2: What I like about Symbian



Part 2: What I like about Symbian


What I like about Symbian:

This is going to be a very short list unfortunately. And most of it got to do more with apps rather then Symbian itself.

Like #1

Garmin. Just simply the fact that Garmin can be installed on Symbian, to me is already a Symbian win. Support for Malaysia map is excellent here with MalFreeMaps. Ability to send location by SMS to another Garmin equip phone is a huge plus.

Like #2

USB on the go. Big plus. One of the things i don't like to do is copy movies on to my phone. Now i can play them straight from my USB.

Like #3

HDMI. I never used it cause i don't own a HDMI monitor. But if i have i will surely use it. Big plus

Like #4

Attached as mass storage. Big plus. Unlike some other OS this mode is not possible. This allows me to go to any PC without a need to install a driver or software in it and still able to transfer my stuff.

Like #5

Radio. Sounds basic right? But some OS still doesn't have em.

Like #6

Nokia phone transfer. Not sure what it call exactly. From one nokia to another i can easily switch over all my contact, messages, bookmark etc etc. Big plus when i switched over from my 5800 to my N8

Like #7

Tethering. Big plus when my main internet line goes down. Some phone OS still fails at this.

Like #8

Memory usage. Much better compared to Symbian^1. No more out of memory problem as longs as you avoid engadget full website.

Like #9

Ovi social widget. Usable while it last, need improvement

Like #10 (betalabs)

Nokia Situation. Nice idea, need improvement


Conclusion:

All in all Symbian OS is not a disappointment. Rather it is a collection of small inconvenience. And accumulate overtime it becomes more and more bitter to hold in. I do not know what Symbian as an organization have to do to pick themself up from this rut but something have to be done and done soon. Nokia can survive without Symbian but Symbian cannot surive without Nokia. And the struggle to once again proof themself will be a hard one in the world of WP7 with it promised XBOX feature, Iphone with their fanatic mad as ballz fans and Google with its massive geek squad development team (if you can dream it they can make it). All i can say is, good luck Symbian.


eXtra. A little of topic.

What i like about N8:

Like #1

Camera. MASSIVE plus. Better then my Canon digital camera. So good that it by itself receive numerous standalone publication.

Like #2

Video chat. Important to see my girlfriend face to face something you know... hear that Apple?

Like #3

Durable. I've so far drop it 3 times. 1st time from my computer table to the floor. It drop flat on the screen side. No scratch. 2nd time from my car as i was getting out and landed on the tarmac and did a roll a few times. No scratch. 3rd time from the couch to the floor and landed on its top side corner. No scratch. Can't argue with an unibody aluminum shell can you? Big plus

Like #4

Screen quality. I saw the Galaxy S and i still swear the N8 one looks better.

Like #5

Weight. Much to do with the alu body. Feels solid and good in hand. Love it.


What i don't like about N8:

Dislike #1

Speaker. Even though its clear and loud. There is an apparent flaw in the design. When place flat on a slightly soft surface like a book for example. The sounds starts to muffle. When put on the bed or sofas the sounds is totally muffled. You bare able to hear it even with the volume up at maximum. This is particularly annoying when you put it in your pocket and in a busy shopping mall you will not hear it ring. The soft vibration also does not help.

Dislike #2

Menu button. Should have made this one a capacitive button instead.

Dislike #3

No shutter cover. I don't mind its a little bit thicker Nokia.. You hear that? It sure as hell beats the need to wipe the oil off when ever you want to snap a picture. The placement of the camera also doesn't really help as it's where your finger would be. Many people end up getting casing that covers this area anyway. So it still getting thicker no matter what you do.

This post has been edited by WhitE LighteR: Dec 29 2010, 04:38 PM