Flagship price, yes. Flagship specification, no. Bargain? Certainly not. I don\’t consider the N8 to be Nokia\’s flagship model. It\’s running Symbian^3, the middle-order Nokia smartphone OS. Nokia\’s true flagship phones will be running Meego, surely.

I\’m entirely underwhelmed and unexcited by the price of the N8. I\’ve been waiting since June to get one of these for my wife to replace her out of contract 5800XM, but now I think she\’s going to have to wait a bit longer while we review the situation. Yes, there are other \’new\’ Nokias which look like the 5800XM but after two years you expect technology to move forward and there\’s no point in replacing it with another phone exactly the same. I\’d expect to see the N8 available now for the same sort of price the 5800XM was at launch. I guess the problem must be that Nokia just make too many phones and they\’re all competing with each other with very little difference between them. I dread to think what price they\’ll expect for the new N9!

Agree with Andrew about the price – was expecting something well under £400. There are some attractive parts to the specification for a 5800 owner like myself, especially the camera. But Symbian 3 looks pretty much like what I get on my 5800 now so I am struggling to justify the upgrade. Will wait for some in-depth reviews of the finished phone before having a re-think. Still worried about the number of apps that will be available to take advantage of this phone’s hardware.

Hi Sam, I don’t want to burst your bubble, but the specification of the N8 is pretty mediocre compared to similarly priced phones in the UK. It would have looked okay a year ago, but not in Q4 2010. The internal memory is actually 16GB, not the 32GB you thought it had, and the ‘super’ AMOLED screen is pretty moot because it has a paltry 640×360 pixel resolution. The only technological edge exhibited by the N8 are the superior camera optics and image sensor. I can see that you are smitten with the empty slot for increasing the memory @ circa £85 for 32GB and the micro HDMI connector, but these won’t be high on many average user’s feature lists. Oh, and the processor is an ancient ARM 11 680MHz jobby, propped up with an external GPU and 256mb RAM.

Apart from the camera, the only other redeeming aspect of this device I can see is that Symbian is supposed to be a fairly lightweight OS and so it shouldn’t need too much raw power to run snappily, whilst sipping lightly on the (smaller) battery at the same time (although the N97 never managed this!). Yes, the N8 is better specified than the iPhone 3Gs but that was released over a year ago, not next month. Apple have released a new model now, the iPhone 4, which is better specified than the N8 except for the camera, and I want to say for the record here that I am an iHater, not an iZombie!

We really need to see a features chart here on NokNok so average Joes (and Sams) can get to grips with N8 specification and those of the models it consequently appears to compete with from other manufacturers. The problem for consumers is that the definition of a ‘Smart Phone’ is getting very blurred, with Android touch screen devices being available for as little as £85 on PAYG. I think we need a new category like ‘Super Phone’ or something which would distinguish leading edge phones today running 1Gig processors with 800×480 + displays and high end operating systems from ordinary Smart Phones. The N8 wouldn’t fit this Super Phone category. The iPhone 4, Samsung Galaxy S and new N9 would. I think that today, Apple rule the Super Phone market. Android devices rule the consumer ‘Smart Phone’ middle market, and Nokia rule the bottom end with average ‘talker/snapper’ phones.

The N8 is well behind the technology curve, for sure and I think this will be a problem for Nokia if they are pinning their hopes on it. They’ve launched it with a Super Phone price tag but it only offers Smart Phone capability. If Apple released this phone today, the story would be different of course. They’d be pitching it below the iPhone 4 as a budget alternative with an emphasis on photos and video, but Nokia just don’t have the marketing savvy to make consumers believe any old rubbish like Apple do, and Nokia don’t rule the Super Phone Market in the first place.

So back to the price again. Nokia have already clearly stated that Symbian devices like the N8 are middle order Smart Phones. They have said there will be higher specification Super Phones to come, running MeeGo. So if they accept that the N8 is a mid-range Smart Phone, why have they priced it like a Super Phone?

Peter:

Yes – it will be locked to Tesco PAYG but you can get unlocked (i.e. to sim-free) for £20, still a saving of over £100!