Nokia N8 official! Price, specs and pics!

GLOBAL – The Nokia N8 today officially emerges into the daylight, stepping out of the shadows equipped with a host of smartphone talents. The first device to be powered by the brand new Symbian^3 platform, the Nokia N8 will launch with a new breed of camera that promises to capture photos and video to rival dedicated point and shoot cameras. Read on to explore Nokia N8′s full list of talents.

The biggest feature on the Nokia N8 is its 12-megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics and Xenon flash. It features a substantially larger sensor than any ever used in any other Nokia device – even bigger than many found in dedicated cameras. Recently, we caught up with Nokia’s resident camera guru, Damian Dinning, to get the full lowdown on what went into fine-tuning the N8′s camera and video capture skills – you’ll be able to read the full fact-packed story right here on Conversations this week, so stay tuned.
 

The Nokia N8 also introduces the ability to record high definition videos and edit them with a smart built-in editing suite on the device. Playback quality is just as important, and the 3.5-inch HD capacitive touchscreen is the ideal window for assessing your flicks and footage. There’s also a HDMI connector allowing you to hook the smartphone to your HD TV and share your media with friends and family in superb quality. We wanted to find out more about the benefits of HDMI in the Nokia N8 so we spoke to Paul Wheeler, a software program manager at Nokia, to get the full story – again, be sure to keep an eye out for our full story this later this week.

The Nokia N8 also doubles as a portable entertainment centre. Watch HD quality video with Dolby Digital Plus surround sound and hook into a dedicated Web TV application for access to news and entertainment on the move.

It’s not just its 12-megapixel camera and HD video skills with HDMI support that set the Nokia N8 apart from the crowd. Packing more memory than most, the Nokia N8 has 16GB of built-in storage and is expandable up to 48GB with a micro SD card.

Joining the social messaging fold with the likes of the latest Eseries and Cseries devices, the N8 enters the fray with live Twitter and Facebook updates direct to your homescreen. Comment, read and send messages, update your status and share your location and photos with one touch.

Embracing location based services, the N8 is location-savvy and comes with free global Ovi Maps walk and drive navigation with support in more than 70 countries worldwide.

Powering the Nokia N8 is the all-new Symbian^3 platform. This latest incarnation introduces major new advances including multi-touch and support for gestures such as pinch-to-zoom. Onboard there’s also three customisable homescreens that can be loaded with applications and widgets and flicked through by a swish of the finger. There’s also improved 2D and 3D graphics for a faster and more responsive UI, greater memory management and a visual task manager.

Of course, the Nokia N8 comes with access to the full range of Ovi services and it’s Nokia’s first smartphone to be integrated with Qt. Got and idea for an app? Qt is a software development environment that makes it a cinch to build apps and deploy across the Symbian and other software platforms.

Not to be outdone by its innards the Nokia N8 is carved from a single piece of anodised aluminium and looks glorious decked in one of five eye-catching colours (we’ll shortly be bringing you an entire article dedicated to the colours). It will cost €370 (before the usual local taxes and subsidies) when it starts shipping in the third quarter of 2010.

Over the coming week we’ll bring you heaps more insight and info surrounding the new Nokia N8, including designer interviews, exclusive videos, and much more. Stay tuned for all our unmissable coverage throughout the week. In the meantime, share your instant reactions and let us know what you want to know about the Nokia N8 by joining the conversation below.