Perhaps it was the request for Rafe to find out "whether it was possible to respond to email and forward it to three people, while holding an umbrella and standing on one leg" (see the messaging part of our N8 coverage), but the real value of the Nokia N8 is out in the so-called real world.
Thus it falls to me to investigate the potential of the N8 around Edinburgh, but thankfully I can call on an assistant from a previous video review to help me...
Now, will it be a year before Steve, Rafe and the Nokia Press Team let me loose on another video review? Until then I’ve been living with the Nokia N8 for over a week now, so I’m writing up my experiences with a slightly more serious tone for later this week (along with more reviews and a look at Gaming on the new Symbian devices).
Production Notes
The eagle-eyed viewer will have spotted, right at the very end, our Nokia press review unit was cunningly switched out for a stunt double – Rafe and Steve thought that this would be a sensible precaution given that this N8 is on loan and we're meant to "look after them."
But here’s the thing. The green N8 went through six drops from the railway bridge for the filming. While it’s not as stressful as Nokia’s Farnborough Test Centre, on close examination back at the office, the only damage was a paint chip on the back of the unit. While I can’t say exactly what the electronics would suffer, if my real N8 really was to fall from a railway bridge, I’m pretty confident that it would both survive and still function afterwards.
Of course if Nokia really want to put it to the Emu test...
-- Ewan Spence, Nov 2010.