You lucky lucky lucky lucky guys!!!!!!!!!

I will probably wait for this cell to have user reviews on its full retail version. but the cover says, the book must be awesome....

When closed, its having a slightly familiar look of n 95 8gb, dont you feel so?

Hey, In one of the screenshots, I saw road sync. Does it come as a standard package with the phone???
If so, then this is a fantastic thing. If standard, hope they are giving away the licenced version and not the trial one!!!

They really need to be done with QVGA at this point. Seriously. As much as we may hate it, the iPhone (with all new 'Deceptive price points!') is rapidly making 80-character-wide screens a standard.

Also no US 3G is downright offensive. If it had that I'd at least consider it.

hi
can the themes used on nokia phones? (s60 fp1?)
can someone post the themes? they look great!

wow so no US 3G? why why why would they exclude that? at least the screen is QVGA so it doesnt make the n95 (and nokia in general) look too outdated. if i switched to samsung, however, i would miss lots of the little things like nokia specific apps and services, which wont work on the samsung. however this build quality surely must be awesome compared to the n95. still not sure what nokia is thinking regarding N series and build quality.

I've pretty much implemented a 'Nokia only' policy in my life and then this beast comes along. I must admit to some adulterous thoughts.

Does that mean I'm a bad person? Look even Steve was talking about a quaking N95 8Gb.

Strikes me how much it looks like a camera at the back.

Good work guys.

oh no..it beats N96 doesnt it..
this is bad..
i somehow dont like the design of innov8 but it has better features than n96..
which one should i choose =(

Rafe, very good review. I'm deciding whether to purchase the N96 or the INNOV8. Both devices have impressive specs, but what will tip the balance will be the applications. Question - seeing the INNOV8 runs symbian FP2, can we install nokia symbian apps? e.g. nokia's mail for exchange, nokia maps, etc. thanks.

looking at the features this device has, samsung should call this as N96 UPGRADE

Yes it does feel a lot like the N95 8GB. It feels slightly smaller, but quite so smooth (more lumps and bumps). As I said in the review the design language is more mechanical to Nokia organic, but thats subjective. You see some side by side photos in the Gallery.

Not known yet as this was a proto. It would make sense given MfE.


QVGA is a tricky one - I'd like to see higher resolutions and they will arrive soon. That said QVGA is still the standard mainly because it's good enough for most people. The top users always want more of course.

US 3G - as I said this would have to be an operator request. S60 has very low market share in the States - partly because of the type of the devices, but partly because of operators being gate keepers. It doesn;t make economic sense to make a band variant when you can only sell it SIM-free. Its not good... but...

See above for US 3G. Will have to wait for final hardware and some testing time to see how build quality stacks up longer term. And yes the Nokia software is a major consideration IMHO.

I nearly drop dead from shock when Steve made noises about the INNOV8 replacing his N95. But no you're not a bad person. Thinking is fine, its the doing that is really bad...

Indeed I think for those use to Nokia's this might be the biggest factor (along with software compatibility). We'll put both devices head to head to help you make a decision.

Yes you can install third party apps. Obviously we could not do any extensive testing, but we did install a few and they seemed to work fine. Handy Taskman, Screenshot etc. However Nokia apps will probably not work. This may be a restriction in the .sis header or a missing certificate... At the same time I think it would make sense for some of Nokia services / apps to be made available. Nokia Maps is compatible in theory but will not have been tested (and thus is blocked 'artificially'). However given the business model (subscription) why not get it onto as many handsets as possible?

Yes, it is an important question for me too. I bought the G810, without realising that nothing can be installed onto the phone.

If you move from a Nokia S60 to a Samsung S60 (or Samsung S60 to Nokia S60), that's really really good for the platform because it gives both the manufacturers an incentive to make their S60 devices better.

Nokia's dominated S60 for so long, it's become the default choice for anyone who likes the platform, but if people buy Samsung S60 models too it'll create a lot more variety and competition within the Symbian world. It should also encourage Samsung to support S60 more, and having both Nokia and Samsung behind S60 will definitely bring it to a larger audience.

The problem with the UIQ-S60 situation was that people couldn't move to and from each platform as easily, because they had the same OS but not the same interface, and their apps weren't compatible. But now that Symbian is unifying into one single platform, direct head-to-heads like the INNOV8 vs N95 8GB should become more common, which is very good news for Symbian users.

Non-Nokia S60 phones will not have the Nokia content signing root certificate, so Nokia-signed files will not install. They have to be from Symbian Signed.

Note that some applications might have embedded .sisx files that are Nokia-signed, even if the actual application is Symbian Signed. They won't install, either.

Seeing it's not possible to install native Nokia Apps in non Nokia phones, will porting Nokia's certificates to other S60 phones work. Could this force the app to think the phone is indeed a Nokia phone and then it could be installed ?

Thanks N/A - that's a very good point. There's more than one certificate that things can be signed againt.

No that's not going to work. The platform security would prevent it. This is going to become a bigger and bigger issue as software and the value it adds becomes more important. One area to watch with all the platform stuff I guess - how much is included in the platform and how much are licensees going to have to add themselves.

Great work on the preview,I just want to know,how was fast is the UI as compared to a fresh N95 8GB or N82?

Also we know the INNOV8 has 128mb RAM with around 70mb left free,very similar to the E90,but less than the N95 8GB or N82 (which have around close to 90mb),why is that,does the OS need to more to run or is it to to with Demand Paging etc...

UI seemed fast enough - hard to judge as things may change in final firmware though. Ditto for free RAM, this will change a lot as the firmware gets finalised. Take the 70MB figure with a pinch of salt.

This is much better than any nokia device that on market or planned.

I see no mention of TV out.

No TV-out = FAIL.

And on a separate note, N96 = FAIL.

The best handset Nokia has currently on the market, all things considered is easily the 6220 Classic. Give me that any day over any other handset in the world.

The INNOV8 seems to be what the N96 should have been. I'd be interested to see what the software compatability will be before I commit to buying one although I think it's a cert that Ngage won't work and all the games I've therefore bought will be useless.

Actually it does have TV-Out though we were not able to test this (sorry should have mentioned this in the review). Can't be 100% on this though.

It looks like it has TV out according to a number of reviews

and alas no mention of the PowerVR MBX lite chip or the OMAP2430 SoC inside, what kind of review you guys conducting?

If you bothered reading the article you would see it is a preview not a review based on limited time with the device. I doubt at this stage Samsung are willing to officially confirm what's inside (though we can make assumptions).

I often use the edit/pencil key on my N958GB for selecting text,URLs,& multiselecting files. Will i still be able to do this with this Samsung innov8 phone?