Nokia n8-part-4

Performance

We tested the quad-band (GSM 850/900/1800/1900) Nokia N8 in New York using AT&T service, and call quality was decent. For the most part, conversations sounded clear on our end, with very little background noise, but there were times audio would cut off the end of a sentence. Our friends reported good results and didn't have any major complaints.

Speakerphone quality was pretty good. It didn't sound quite as tinny or as hollow as other speakerphones, so we had no problems hearing our callers, and there's plenty of volume to hold a conversation in noisier environments. We also had no issue pairing the smartphone with the Logitech Mobile Traveller Bluetooth headset or the Motorola S9 Bluetooth Active Headphones.

We got reliable 3G coverage from AT&T in Manhattan. We didn't experience any dropped calls, and data speeds were satisfactory. CNET's full site loaded in 35 seconds; the mobile sites for CNN and ESPN came up in 7 seconds and 5 seconds, respectively. We were able to play YouTube videos from the browser, and clips loaded within a couple of seconds and played back without interruption. Our own MPEG-4 videos looked great on the N8, with good quality and synchronized picture and audio. We also enjoyed rich-sounding music playback through our On-Ear Bose Headphones.

The N8 did well as a navigator. The phone was able to get a GPS lock in less than a minute, and it accurately tracked our position even as we trekked through the urban canyons of Manhattan. Also, because the maps are downloaded to the device, redraws were quick.

General performance on the N8 is a bit sluggish. It's equipped with a 680MHz ARM11 processor, and we encountered some delays launching and switching between apps. Though it never crashed or froze on us, there were a couple of occasions where the lag was significant enough to make us think there was a problem.

The Nokia N8 ships with 1,200mAh lithium ion battery with a rated talk time of 12 hours (GSM)/5.8 hours (3G) and up to 16 days (GSM)/17 days (3G) of standby time, and as we noted earlier, it's not user-replaceable. We are still conducting our battery drain tests but will update this section as soon as we have final results. So far we've been impressed with the battery life. With moderate use--checking email, Web browsing, and some music playback--we've been able to go about a day and a half before needing to recharge. According to FCC radiation tests, the N8 has a digital SAR rating of 1.12 watts per kilogram.