Now that Nokia has finally launched its flagship N-Series handset, the N8 in India, it’s time we took a quick look at how well (or badly) the phone compares to Apple’s new iPhone 4 – which incidentally, is on the verge of being launched in India in the next few weeks. We have already covered the strengths and the weakness of the Nokia N8 in our review here here and here. So you might want to brush up on your N8 knowledge before you read this. But then, if you’re the impatient kind, read on!
We will keep things simple here. This is a pure spec to spec analysis to see which the better phone actually is – although fanboys will claim why their choice is the better of the two, lets keep things analytical here, OK?
Looks
Yeah right. Looks are important. Gone are the days when you didn’t mind if your phone looked like a deformed tin can and be happy about it because it had all the features you want. After Motorola came out with the Razr, phone manufacturers suddenly seemed to realize that phones could also be works of art. Nokia, which is not known for phone with great designs has however come up with decent effort with the N8. Although the “chopped end” look might not appeal to all, trust me, it ain’t that bad when you hold one in your hands – oh and it turns heads as well when you’re in public. At the other end of the ring, we have the iPhone 4 with its classy, understated clean look. Now that we are talking about design, it all boils down to personal preferences so I wont be passing a verdict on what the better design is – although if you ask me, I would pick the iPhone 4.
Winner: You decide!
Screen
The iPhone and the N8 both have similar sized 3.5 inch displays. Nothing much to choose between them eh? Well on its own, the N8’s screen is impressive. The AMOLED display offers excellent color depth and fairly decent sunlight visibility and at a resolution of 360*640 pixels, images and text come to life. Nothing is wrong with the N8’s display until we come to the iPhone’s amazing retina display. It packs in a jaw-dropping amount of pixels in the same screen size as that of the N8. This results in the iPhone 4 comprehensively trumping the N8 when it comes to sheer visual quality. While the N8’s screen is impressive, the iPhone 4’s makes it look less spectacular – thanks to the higher amount of pixels it packs in. While naysayers may counter that the screen is not just about the amount of pixels, let me say that at the end of the day, it matters how visually pleasing the experience on a screen is – immaterial of the technology that goes behind it. Taking that into consideration, we will have to hand this one to the iPhone 4 folks. That said, the N8’s screen is by no means bad or even close to being unimpressive. It’s great in fact. Suggestion for Symbian: Please increase that stupid 360*640 limit for displays for smart-phones running the OS.
Winner: iPhone 4
Operating System
The N8 runs the latest and the most modern version of Symbian – the Symbian^3. However, once you start using the OS, you realize that Symbian^3 still has a long way to go before it erases the feel of a clunky, old OS that it is based on. True, Symbian^1 and its predecessors were all great OS’es but only back during their times. In a world where the likes of the Android and iOS are battling it out, Symbian^3 – even with its 200 odd plus improvements feels a generation or two old. We welcome the improvements though. That said, let us not forget that that it still is a very much capable OS with full support for true multitasking. iPhone 4, with iOS is easily the clear winner here. The OS did have its share of limitations earlier. However with support for multitasking added, and the user experience being top notch iOS has closed the gap between coolness and functionality and proves that an OS can look good and perform well too at the same time.
Winner: iPhone 4
Camera
This one is gonna be interesting. When apple launched the iPhone with its 5 megapixel camera, they touted it as if it was the worlds first ever 5 megapixel phone (at least they made it sound so). True, the iPhone takes great images and and they look equally amazing on that gorgeous screen – but common sense tells us that the N8 simply has more hardware prowess to trounce the iPhone here. Pictures taken by the iPhone tend to over saturate and many have agreed that the color reproduction while remaining vibrant, isn’t actually the original thing. The N8 on the other hand has a 12 megapixel camera and also boasts of a sensor that is the biggest ever to appear on a camera phone. We think the N8 is superior in all ways to the iPhone 4 when it comes to the camera.
Winner: Nokia N8
Applications
This is another no brainer here. The iPhone has at its disposal the worlds largest applications store for handhelds – thanks to the Apple App Store. Launched in 2007, it has in a span of three years gone on to become the largest application store with a count of over 200,000 applications available for download. The choice of applications and their availability is simply out of this world on the Apple App Store. Nokia has it’s own app store in the Ovi Store which has far fewer applications. However, almost all important apps used on the iPhone usually also has a Symbian version. iOS based applications tend to be of better quality – however even that is slowly changing.
Winner: iPhone 4
In the next iteration we would be seeing a head to head comparison of a few other features on both these devices. However, from what we have seen till now, the iPhone 4 has a slight edge over the Nokia N8. But the battle is far from over!