I made a serious a attempt to make good use of my Nokia N8 in 2014 but I gave up on it and put it in a box. It now turned out I need a regular phone for answering incoming phone calls and I had kept my Nokia N8 in a box last years. Also good, I had flashed it with Belle Delight 6.4 before putting it in the box, so without any effort I had a clean and (well) up-to-date mobile.

After a few hours of charging I inserted a mini-SIM and turned my old friend on.

I replaced my Nokia N8 with a Sony mobile, but last years I have used a regular iPhone. This is what I now find:

• The N8 is small (small display, narrow, short, light, but a little fat). The size is great in the hand, but the screen is small (especially for browsing and typing).
• There is a sluggishness in the UI. I remember this was unfortunately true when i bought N8 and did not go away with the much needed, but too-little-too-late upgrades, upgrades that came with it (Anna, Belle).
• The “Home Screen” as a separate UI from the folder based navigation is unfortunately a bit awkward compared to iOS (and home screen was also a too-little-too-late-feature of Symbian upgrades).
• The web browser has outdated certificates and is basically useless. I suggest go to m.opera.com immediately, download and install Opera and use it exclusively. Opera is fine, but everything really feels tiny on the screen. Unfortunately I have some certificate problems with Opera as well.
• Multitasking? Well, kind of, I managed to crash Opera, without being able to kill it. Had to restart mobile.

This is still the way I remember Symbian. It feels a bit like Win95 or MacOS 9 when you are used to Windows 2000 or MacOS X. It is not fast/snappy, not entirely stable and a bit awkward.

Still, the N8 could have been an amazing mobile even in 2019, if it had a good enough operating system and applications. That is never going to happen. I could dream or speculate, but whatever… life goes on.

Nevertheless, my Nokia N8 is back to real duty in my home and it may very well be for another 3-4 years. It feels a bit like a time machine and it brings me good memories. I will perhaps write more about it, and I would perhaps sell it to a genuine enthusiast, but I guess a perfectly fine N8 is easy to find.

2018-12-02: I turned my Nokia N8 on again and it shall live through 2019!

I have a Nokia N8 that I am still quite happy with. More than a year ago I wrote a post Living with Nokia N8 Belle in Late 2012. So how is it going? Here follows my findings for 2014.

2014-01-20 Weather Widget stopped working
The Nokia weather widget stopped working. There are many Weather Apps, but I want a Weather Widget on my home screen. I found that AccuWeather.com WRT Widget does what I need, and is free. Install it from the Store.

2014-03-13
I experience problems with my system partition having too little available space (got a warning message about it). The easiest and most important way to free space is to delete your Sent Mails. And the mails in your Inbox too. It is an incredibly stupid design that attachments are stored on the very limited system drive.

2014-04-01: N8 Xeon & N8 Delight custom firmware
I got a comment from a reader suggesting me to try the custom N8 Xeon firmware – so I did!

These customs firmware are unsupported, unofficial and use at your own risk – of course. That said, it is really nice that there is a little community working to make nice devices like the N8 relevant in 2014!

I first tried Xeon firmware (since that was what I was suggested). The webpage and download didn’t really feel completely reliable – a little bit too much warez-feeling about it. The firmware itself was nice – quite a bit hacker-feeling about it. However, I could not figure out how get a Swedish keyboard with Xeon (and perhaps this is just my fault). So in the end I got rid of Xeon.

I found another firmware called N8 Delight. The webpages, documentation and instructions around N8 Delight gave me confidence, and it was easy to find how to get different keyboards (just download one file, and replace it in the complete Delight firmware download before flashing). N8 Delight feels simple, light and professional when installed, and I have more than 100MB available on C: (I suppose getting N8 Delight immediately, without flashing Xeon first, would give the same effect). I currently have N8 Delight v6.4, and I intend to keep it.

A few comments:

• I provide no links or instructions; use Google and read for yourself, I am not an expert
• N8 Delight is stripped of several standard Nokia Appliations, particularly Social (the Facebook client), and I ended up using fMobi instead, which is ok, but I miss the widget from Social
• Skype is no longer available from the Nokia Store (F***ing Micro$oft), but you can find downloads of the last official version if you use Google.
• My music and pictures were not lost in the flashing process, but my messages, contacts and settings were lost. Some applications were lost, others remained.
• I use Funambol to backup/sync my contacts across different devices.

I am happy with N8 Delight, and I have no plans to get back to the official version of Belle. I am not completely sure I would go through this process again, and if you have an N8 with official version of Belle, and it works just fine, I suggest you think twice before playing with custom firmwares.

If, on the other hand your N8 Belle is a mess and you think about getting a new phone, I would definitely recommend you to try N8 Delight – perhaps that will extend the life of your N8!

2014-04-16
Occationally I forget to charge my N8, and find it out of battery. It happened twice last week, which made me worry the battery is dying. I installed “Nokia Battery Monitor” from the Store. It is unfortunately not a widget. But it gives other useful information, especially the level of charging with more details than the litte standard icon in the top right corner. It is annoying that the standard icon appears fully charged down to at least 51%. I switched off the background clock (which is very nice though) and put a 3G-on/off widget on my start screen as well.

2014-06-18
Well, I finally decided to retire my N8. I was not satisfied with battery life and I was not very satisfied with the web browser and the Facebook app.

It was not that easy to find another phone that really felt like an upgrade in every way though. FM radio is the feature I use the most, so iPhone (and unfortunately!) Jolla was out of the question. After having lived with not having access to the same apps as everyone else for three years, I was not willing to buy another Nokia with Windows. Good camera, good battery life, and compact design were my key requirements.

Sony Xperia Z1 Compact
I ended up buying a Sony Xperia Z1 Compact. It took a few days go get used to Android – first I felt there was so much of everything everywhere. After all, transition from Symbian to Sony Android was very smooth.

For me, even the Compact is on the brink of too big. But it is ok. It came with no headset, and it can be charged in a special magnetic charger, which is also not included. And since the Z1 is waterproof there is a little door that needs to be opened to access the USB port in order to charge. I bought the magnetic charger for about Euro 20. It is a cheap piece of plastic that gets the job done.

The End
A thank you to Nokia and the N8/Symbian community. My (blue) N8 is in very fine condition, I can sell it for a good price if anyone is interested.

Update 2014-01-20: I am not adding any more information to this article. Instead, I have started a new post: Living with Nokia N8 in 2014.

Update 2013-12-23: Still using my Nokia N8 with Belle – doing quite fine thank you 🙂

Update 2012-10-24: Installed Belle Refresh – no need to get separate Weather Widget anymore.

This autumn 2012 I use and enjoy my Nokia N8 – I am actually happier with it than ever. If you have a Symbian Belle smartphone and you are thinking about giving up on it, perhaps reading this post will change your mind.

Why Nokia N8 in the first place
I bought my Nokia in the summer 2011 (when my old feature phone was about to die). At that time the options were:

• iPhone – my employer already supplied me with one, but I like to have a private phone too. iPhones have no FM Radio – a key feature for me.
• Android – feels like the Windows 95 of phones: big market share, depends a lot on the OEM, lots of crappy applications, can do anything if you give it plenty of time to download software and configure it. I felt Android phones had a questionable upgrade path – and too much depended on the OEM, or me downloading and installing and configuring myself.
• Nokia N9 – expensive, not on the market at that time, and a dead on arrival platform, unfortunately.
• Windows Phone – too immature at that time, especially since I have very little patience with bad Microsoft quality

So, the Nokia N8 came out as a proven, stable, safe choice with some unique features (HDMI, decent camera, offline maps, etc). In principle I prefer “web” to “apps” and I dont really care much about apps.

Symbian and Nokia N8 since purchase
Symbian^3 was not pretty (with home screen shortcuts locked 4-and-4, and T9 keyboard in portrait mode) and Anna was much needed. However, Anna was both a big step forward, and a disappointment. With Belle, the N8 finally felt like a smartphone (free widget/shortcut placing, easy to turn on/off WIFI and mobile data, and more consistent and less like “home screens on top of S40”). But when Belle came out in the beginning of 2012 the Symbian platform was essentially dead, very few apps are developed. I have to say it died (even) faster than I expected. I believe Belle brought stability issues to many people too. I didn’t suffer from this at first, but more and more my N8 has grown slow, sluggish, apps crash and even the phone crashes.

Resetting the N8
At the time my N8 started crashing daily, I decided it was time for a fresh start, or it was coming to an end. So I did:

1. Backup everything using PC suite
2. Factory Reset (Settings->Phone->Phone Management->Factory Settings->Delete data and Restore
3. Restore as little as possible from PC suite (Contacts, not Apps)

I actually did this twice. First I restored Apps; it was a mess and the phone was slow again. So I ended up just restoring my Contacts and Photos. This factory reset clearly made the phone faster and more stable.

Configure N8 Belle cleverly
Now, I wanted my phone to be fast and stable first. And it does not need to impress on anyone. I configured two home screens (instead of the 5 I had before).

First home screen:

• Clock
• Profile
• 7 application shortcuts
• Weather widget (see below)
• FM Radio widget

Second home screen:

• Email widget (that shows mail)
• Twitter widget
• Facebook widget (the small one-liner)

It is of course a pity to use just two homescreens when Belle allows so many but I believe it makes my N8 faster. Also, the normal app-view is quite quick, and much improved over Symbian^3 and Anna (which had a S40-like menu/app interface). The apps I dont open every day, I actually find them faster opening the application grid and scrolling, than swiping through all my home screens.

So, Belle brought much needed new and more powerful homescreens, but it also improved the standard interface, reducing the need for homescreens.

Applications
I use the Nokia Web Browser. I used to have both Opera Mobile and Nokia Browser, but since I go for simplicity I now only have Nokia. I made a new refreshed bookmarks list with up-to-date mobile sites. I found that mobile sites are better now than they used to be, even video often works. In this sense, the N8 is actually better now that when I bought it last year.

(This weather widget is standard with Belle Refresh, now available for N8)
There are different weather applications for Symbian, none of them really that good. With Belle FP1 (Feature Pack 1) a new weather widget was released, but FP1 never made it to N8 (I AM disappointed). But you can get the Nokia Weather Widget from the Beta Lab sites. It is the right thing todo – I used to have several weather apps not being happy with any of them. Now I just have this Weather Widget, and I am happy with it.

I listen not only to FM radio, but also to podcasts. I purchased Podmaster from the Nokia Store when Belle came out, and I still use it. Remember to search for all podcasts within the application (do not copy/paste links), and if you dont find what you are looking for, join gpodder.net and add your favorite podcasts there – then you can search for them in Podmaster.

I also found a tool called Funambol (you can get it in the Nokia Store for free) that synchronizes your contacts and more with a free cloud. They also have the sync tool for IOS, Android, Mac OS X and Windows. Best way to synchronize contacts in Belle?

To do tethering (sharing your 3G connection over WIFI) you need to download JoikuSpot. Not very cheap, for the premium version. But for occasional use the free version works.

Finally, I must advertise my own ParrotCopy for copying files between your N8 and your computer. Easy to use if you are familiar with TCP/IP, avoid otherwise 😉

Performance Problems
Is the N8 getting slow? Not just slow (because it is), but sometimes it appears/behaves froozen for not so short times, and simetimes you need a forced restart? One important factor is to have as much available space on C: as possible. It is really retarded that the Device comes with 16GB, and everything critical ends up on a little 256MB C-partition. I have 25Mb available on C. For me, the key was to get rid of that QuickOffice appliation.
(updated 2013-12-23)

Conclusion and summary
If you have an N8 (or similar device) that you have updated from Symbian^3 to Anna, and then to Belle, then chances are it will work better if you do a factory reset. Focus on a simple configuration – only use the best apps and the apps you need, dont exaggerate with home screens.

My N8 actually works pretty well for me now – better than ever. It is probably the last Nokia I ever buy, but if it dies tomorrow, I really have no idea what to replace it with.