How Does Symbian V3.0 Benefit The Brilliant New Nokia N8 Handset

By Author: Emma Rosher
Total Articles: 195
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Up until a couple of years ago, if you were asked to name the leading mobile phone brand, then there is a high likely hood that your anwser would have been Nokia. Due to the boom of the iPhone and the growth in popularity of newer operating systems such as Android, Nokia has seen its market share reduce significantly. In the 3rd quarter of 2010 figures reveal the brands market share dropped to 31.5%, a huge drop from the 56.8% it enjoyed in the second quarter of 2009. For this reason a saviour was needed for the brand, a phone that not only oozed features, but one that also incorporated a revamped version of the Symbian operating system, and in the new N8, Nokia may have found such a model.

So what changes has the OS undergone that makes this handset so different to previous offerings from Nokia. Starting right at the very beginning, and the first thing you will see when you use the phone, the homescreen. The new interface offers a selection of three screen which you can populate with an array of widgets of your choice. These items do seem a little restrictive in that they are all of identical size, but this clever ...
... sizing does enable the phone to not only quickly flip the screen to landscape mode, but also enables the homescreen to maintain its look and layout, unlike the iphone where the homescreens do not flip to landscape mode. This attempt doesn't quite live up to the excellent Sense UI offered by HTC on their Android offerings, but none the less it is a big improvement of previous Symbian versions, and in practice, once you've used it for a while, the whole interface is both functional and fun to use.

The Nokia N8 does offer the user excellent multitasking options, where simply holding the home key opens a new window which displays ll of your applications that are currently running. From here you can select the item you wish to use, or by tapping the cross in the corner, shut it down. A problem encountered by earlier Symbian handsets was that the software would often crash or freeze, especially when more than one item was running, so it is pleasing to see Nokia have improved this aspect, with v3.0 proving a much more reliable platform. Performance wise you can also expect longer life from your handset thanks to the better management of power by the operating system, meaning you can expect the N8 to offer you around 390 hours of GSM standby time. Amongst the other two hundred plus improvements, multi media functionality has been given a boost thanks to support of HD video playback, a huge advantage to film lovers.

It is evident that the improvement to the Symbian platform make the Nokia N8 a more appealing proposition than many of its predecessors, and it could well prove to be the model to place Nokia back at the top of many peoples charts.

The Nokia N8 and the Nokia C7 both use Symbian 3.0 and are available now.