Nokia N8 unveiled: biggest 12-MP camera sensor, 720p HD video recording, HDMI and Symbian 3

After the disappointing Symbian S60-based Nokia N97 and the Maemo-based N900, it’s a bit difficult to take any new Nokia flagship seriously. So when the company launches the Nokia N8, based on the new open-source Symbian^3 operating system, the great hardware on board convince us as an iPhone-killer.

So what does the phone come with? For starters, there’s a 3.5-inch AMOLED capacitive touchscreen (16 million colours, 360×640 pixels), 680MHz processor and 3D graphics accelerator, 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS and A-GPS, 3.5mm audio jack, VGA videocall camera, 16GB of onboard storage, microSD card slot (up to 32GB), a battery with 12 and half hours of talk-time, and pretty much everything else you can think of.

On the back of the phone, users will find a large 12-megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics, autofocus, Xenon flash, geo-tagging, smile and face detection, and it can also record 720p video with the flash doubling up as LED video light. And all of the HD videos can be viewed directly on an HDTV, thanks to the HDMI connectivity the phone offers.

Nokia has already put up some sample pictures and videos taken from the new camera, and they are seriously impressive! GSMArena found out that the new sensor is about 1/1.9-inches in size diagonally, which is a lot larger than other camera-phones like the Sony-Ericsson Satio and Samsung Pixon12. That size of a sensor, the site says, is competitive with most compact digital cameras!

The N8 is expected to retail at 370 euros in Europe, which comes to approximately Rs. 22,000. We would expect the cost to be a lot more by the time it gets slapped with custom duty and taxes in India.

Last week, Eldar Murtazin of Mobile-Review.com got his hands on the N8 and did an early review where he panned the device. Nokia has now stated that the handset he was using was an unfinished piece with early software, and hence users shouldn’t pay much heed to the review.

Anyway, rather than us rambling on about the phone’s features, we would advise you go through Nokia’s 17 demo videos for the N8, which really showcase all its usage potential well. To whet your appetite, check this out: