White Plains, N.Y. – Nokia’s first smartphone based
on the company’s new Symbian^3 OS will be available in the U.S. as an unlocked
phone at the end of September at $549 on the company’s website and through CE
distributors.
The
N8 is a quadband GSM/penta-band HSPA touchscreen phone, enabling operation in
3G HSPA mode on the AT&T and T-Mobile USA 3G bands as well as in foreign 3G
bands. It operates in GSM 850/900/1,800/1,900 networks and in HSPA 850/900/1,700/1,900/2,100
networks.
include 3.5-inch-wide capacitive
OLED touchscreen with 640 by 360 resolution, 16GB of embedded memory plus MicroSD
memory slot, 720p video capture, HDMI output, Dolby Digital Plus surround
sound, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, stereo FM tuner, FM transmitter, A/V playback, integrated
Facebook and Twitter feeds, and Nokia’s free turn-by-turn driving and
pedestrian navigation service. The phone also accesses Nokia’s Ovi store to
download applications and games.
The
12-megapixel main camera features Xenon flash, Carl Zeiss optics, automatic
red-eye removal and face-recognition software with autofocus. A secondary
camera can be used for AT&T’s Video Share video calling.
Video
is encoded at 25 fps and decoded at up to 30 fps. Location technologies include
GPS, assisted GPS, WLAN location and Cell-ID.
The
phone also features on-demand Web TV, with additional channels available
through the Ovi store. A unified email client supports Yahoo! Mail, Gmail,
Windows Live, Hotmail and other POP/IMAP email services, as well as Mail for
Exchange and IBM Lotus traveler. The phone also supports Microsoft Outlook
synchronization of contacts, calendar and notes. The email client supports attached
images, videos, music and documents.
The Symbian^3 OS, compared with the
predecessor Symbian^1 OS, adds multiple enhancements, including multi-touch capabilities
and support for gestures such as “pinch-to-zoom.” Multiple, personalized home screens
can be selected by a finger flick, and a new 2D and 3D graphics architecture
delivers a faster user interface. The OS also provides more efficient memory
management so that more applications can run in parallel for multi-tasking.
For music playback, the OS offers a cover-flow
feature for easier access to albums. An improved photo experience features a large
image grid and transition effects, and a streamlined menu structure with far
fewer prompts.
The device is available for preorder by
consumers at
.
