I'd love to get feedback from people about how well the N8 noise cancellation works for call quality in noisy settings (cafes, bars, on the street).

I have a N86 and my biggest complaint about it is how the microphone picks up background noise and overamplifies it. Everyone I talk to complains about this. Often I don't even think it's loud where I am and people ask: "What's that crashing noise?" "Are you standing under Niagra Falls?" Etc.

People always talk about how great Nokias are for call quality, but my experience has always been that they are good except in noisy settings, in which they are often the worst phones.

I've been thinking about switching to a Motorola Droid or Nexus one just for the noise cancellation. Actually if anyone has experience with these phones, I'd love to hear a comparison between their noise cancellation and the N8.

I can't believe the All About Symbian didn't cover call quality and the active noise cancellation in it's review so far. I blows my find that when reviewing a *phone*, it's actual pefromance as a phone is often treated in one or two sentences, ignoring any serious testing of the phones calling abilities.

hm i wonder are the trolls starting to come out ! ive no props with the call quality on my n8 or any other nokia phone ive ever had .

me neither...

cb474, are you softly spoken?

Ditto...

Never had a problem with call quality on any of my Nokia handsets. :biggrin:

My question is a serious question as a long time Nokia user. So just because my experience with Nokia phones is different from yours, doesn't make me a troll. I take offense at the totally gratuitous and childish insult.

If you actually read my post, I said that Nokia call quality is "good except in noisy settings, in which they are often the worst phones." This has been amply documented by cell phone reviewers who take the background noise issue seriously, like Steve, at Steve's Southern Ontario Cell Phone Page.

Yes, high end Nokia phones have good audio volume and reproduce your voice in a high quality natural way, for your caller. And yes Nokia phones are often very good at reception, where other phones have trouble.

But Nokia phones consistently have the gain on their microphones turned up very high. This works well in quiet settings to pick up your voice. But in a noisy setting (on the street in busy city, in a cafe or bar with other people talking and backbround music) they pick up the background noise and overamplify it, creating distorted crashing noises that are very annoying for the caller. This is especially true when you're not talking. They will momentarily turn the microphone off, blocking all sound, but then pick up any slightly louder sound, turn the mic back on, and create some weird noise to blast in your callers ears. All of the people I normally talk to with my N86 comment about this. If you're not experiencing this, then perhaps you are just not in very noisy settings.

I have also tested this in noisy settings with the N95, N82, N80, N73, even the old 6230 and 6131. This is a very long standing problem with Nokia phones.

Motorola has long put noise cancellation in their phones, going back even to the RAZR, with their crystal talk technology. But more recently with active noise cancellation in the Droid and Droid X. Apple put it in the iPhone 4. And it's in the Nexus One.

Given that Nokia has recently started putting active noise cancellation, through the use of dual mics, in several new phone models (the N8, C7, E7, E73, E72), following the lead of Motorola and others, they clearly recognize there is a problem to be addressed.

Again I am a long time user of Nokia phones. I prefer Nokia phones. This is a serious question I'm asking.

So for people who actually have an N8, I'm curious how well does the noise cancellation work in noisy settings? And if you have any experience with other phones that have active noise cancellation, I'm curious how it compares.

Alright, I've answered my own question about the active noise cancellation on the N8, if anyone is interested.

According to the following review, the active noise cancellation is only used for video capture and not for calls.

http://www.techradar.com/reviews/phones/mobile-phones/nokia-n8-692448/review?artc_pg=3

What a shame. I don't know why Nokia doesn't address the problem of background noise in loud settings. It is an ongoing (years long) blemish on their otherwise stellar call quality in higher end devices.

And it makes absolutely zero sense that they have the second mic in the N8 and they have the signal processing capability for active noise cancellation, but they don't use it for calls. I care much more about audio quality in calls than in video capture.

Perhaps Nokia doesn't like the processed sound that active noise cancellation can produce in calls (more robotic or muffled sounding). Their audio call quality does tend to sound very natural, at least in ideal (quiet) settings. But if they're worried about that they could just let users choose to turn on or off the noise cancellation in calls.