Nokia N8 review: First look

The Nokia N8 is probably Nokia's most anticipated handset to date and we got our hands on a prototype at NYC's Dolby Labs to see exactly how amazing the Finnish manufacturer's smartphone really is.

It may seem a little strange that the viewing was hosted by Dolby, but it becomes quite clear when you see that the N8 is primarily a smartphone (of course) but with a strong leaning toward being a multimedia powerhouse.

A few journalists/pundits got to see - and touch - a number of very early N8 prototypes. Not everything worked at peak performance yet, as expected with early hardware and software. But the video worked just fine.

We all watched a number of movie trailers coming from the N8, all with Dolby surround sound encoding (you knew they had to be involved with the phone in some manner). That was very, very impressive, as was the video quality and the audio playback.

Here's a quick sample video showing the N8 connected to an HD TV via the included HDMI adapter:

For those who don't know, the N8 will be the first device to run on Nokia/Symbian's next-generation operating system dubbed Symbian ^3.

We have no idea how to pronounce the ^ if you're saying that out loud.

At first glance it looked a lot like the last Symbian operating system with some N900 features thrown in for good measure. We'll know a lot more when we get to see a final release version of the phone.

The Nokia N8 looks like a thinner version of the company's Maemo OS-powered N900 smartphone, except the N900 has a real, hardware QWERTY keyboard and the N8's is the virtual type.

There's also a bit of iPhone-esque thought in here too. The N8 is the first Nokia device we can recall equipped with a battery that cannot be swapped out by the user. It also lacks physical send and end keys, a design attribute not common to Nokia handsets.

The N8 is a true GSM world phone. It will work on any GSM network on the planet, whether 2G or 3G.

Nokia says the handset is capable of delivering as much as 12 hours of battery life (from the 1200mAh unit inside) via GSM connections and nearly 6 hours on 3G. If that's true, and battery life approaches that of its E72, then this would be a very strong selling point for the new phone.