iPhone 4 vs. Nokia N8
Apple's iPhone has been widely regarded as the best smartphone on the market for a while and, a few teething problems aside, the update to iPhone 4 only served to galvanise its place at the top of the smartphone tree.
Many have come up against the device only to fall by the wayside, decimated by its good looks, its fast, simple operating system and its fully-stocked App Store. The candidate we've pitted it against today may prove to be a harder nut to crack though.
Nokia's N8 has been a long time coming but, as the old saying goes, good things come to those who wait. It's a beautiful unibody smartphone packing the very best photographic technology and multimedia features that Finland's smartest can conjure up. So here, for your perusal, we compare two of the finest pieces of smartphone technology on the market today, the Nokia N8 and the iPhone 4.
Camera
Apple's iPhone 4 offers a very user-friendly 5-megapixel camera, which, in the right hands, is capable of delivering excellent results. The Nokia is something of a freak among smartphones though, with its 12 megapixel Carl Zeiss camera with Xenon flash it can hold its own against compact cameras, delivering truly beautiful, vivid photographs.
Both devices shoot 720P video and on this front the iPhone noses ahead with a slightly higher frame rate (30FPS against the 25FPS of the N8) though even with the superior video capture it's impossible to choose the iPhone ahead of the Nokia. It's really quite simple: if you want a phone with the best camera available you buy the Nokia N8 - at this point in time nothing can come close.
Winner - Nokia N8
Screen
When it comes to display quality Nokia's N8 is no slouch. It comes with a large (3.5-inch), vivid AMOLED display which renders media exceptionally well, and owing to the inclusion of Corning's Gorilla Glass it withstands the rigours of daily life without succumbing to scratches and scrapes while it's in your pocket.
Regardless of how competent and functional the N8's display is it struggles to compete against the iPhone 4's stunning 3.5-inch backlit IPS LCD, or 'Retina Display' as Apple have fondly re-christened it. It renders visuals as accurately as your eye can perceive them, owing to an unprecedented 300ppi resolution and surpasses anything currently on offer in the market.
Winner - iPhone 4
Operating System
Apple is well known for its simple, intuitive operating system's and iOS is one of the very best. Everything a user could possibly need is a couple of swipes away and even if you're technophobic, you'll find it incredibly simple to pick up and use. The N8's reliance on the Symbian operating system is something of a thorn in its side, however. Even though it runs the latest version, Symbian^3, which is visually pleasing and nicely re-designed it simply isn't as usable and stable as Apple's offering. Updates will bring the device up to Symbian^4 when it's ready, which may change things, but until then it has to accept defeat at the hands of iOS.
Winner - iPhone 4
Applications
Thanks to Nokia's OVI store you can find a decent collection of apps for your N8, allowing you to stay up to date with friends via social networking, play games or stay productive. You won't find a collection large and diverse enough to pip the Apple App Store though, which is light years ahead of even its nearest competitor, offering over 200,000 apps, which cater to your every whim. Nokia's store is growing though and will no doubt continue to produce great offerings but at the time of writing it simply can't compete with Apple's library of software.
Winner - iPhone 4
This little head-to-head wasn't the whitewash we thought it could be. Nokia's N8 is a fine smartphone, which offers a unique and rewarding experience to those who use it. It's multimedia functionality is second to none and it blows any other camera phone out of the water, but on the key points which we focussed on in this test it came up a close second best.
If you're after a device to enable you to leave your compact camera at home, there can be little doubt that the N8 is that device, however if you're looking for a device which offers the best all-round user experience you have to choose the iPhone, it's an unbeatable mix of simplicity and power which will do anything you ask it to, and do it well.