Nokia's N8 announced with 12 megapixel camera

It seems like we’ve been waiting decades for Nokia to release their next N-Series device. Long rumoured, the N8 has finally arrived.

Well, it’s finally been announced. It actually arrives in Q3 this year, so it’s a good 4-6 months away still.

But it’s a looker and it boasts a specifications page about 8 screens long on my browser.

At an expected retail price of around €370 / £320 / $494, it’s going to fit beautifully into the mobile operator stack, free for contract subscribers (I estimate) at somewhere around £30-35 per month.

Notable features include the 12 megapixel camera that will capture 720p H.264 video at 30 frames per second. Plus there’s Nokia’s famed Xenon flash, 16GB memory on-board with support for a further 32GB via memory card.

Qt support has arrived with the N8, too. I have been banging on about Qt for quite a while now and it’s something that mobile developers focus upon closely. You’ll be able to write apps using the Qt developer environment that will run beautifully on the N8. Check out qt.nokia.com for more information and to download the IDE.

The third edition of Symbian (“Symbian ^3 for Nokia”) also makes an appearance so it’s going to be interesting to see how that functions on the device. Indeed, the whole N8 experience is something that deserves further investigation. The zippy, flashy, gorgeous promo videos may well do the handset justice. But we have been there before though, haven’t we?

I’m excited to see how the N8 performs. It’s shaping up to be one of the company’s top handsets, the specifications are fantastic, the Ovi Store is integrated as are the now-familiar Ovi suite of services (including unrestricted Ovi Maps navigation and voice directions).

The device looks promising. I think the N8 experience may well surprise and delight. Will it be enough to persuade customers to turn away from a similarly priced iPhone or Android device? We shall see. There’s a lot of love in the room for Nokia.

Find out more and check out the whizzy videos here: http://europe.nokia.com/find-products/devices/nokia-n8