So what's your own opinion? My opinion is clear: I can't stand any "multimedia toys" such as Apple's famous Iphone and upcoming N8.

Many people will probably say that n8 features a nice 12MP camera.
So what? 12MP means only larger picture size(in both bytes and pixels)! Pictures taken with my n900's 5MP camera are sized from 500Kb to 1,1 Mb. I'm wondering, what will be the size of a picture taken with a 12MP camera? Surely over 2Mb each. This could not be a good argument but that should be taken into consideration, especially if you take several pictures a day. (especially when the internal storage of the N8 has been stated to be only half of the n900's 32Gb.)

Ok, there's nothing to say about the HDMI-out and HD video recording (<-but again, the memory capacity!)

N900 has a physical qwerty, which may be small, yet providing better tactile feedback than any of on-screen keyboards.
And open source, Linux based, easy to use Maemo 5.
And that's it.

Additionally, I nearly went speechless, when I saw that n8 will be featuring a symbian OS. Maybe a new symbian, but it's always symbian to me. It's ruining Nokia's leadership, when competitors are Mac (mobile) OS and Android. They must have went for MeeGo (for example),instead of keeping Synbian, I think.

So it's up to you to judge, which finally is better.(N8 can be now pre-ordered in Finland).

I'm so stealing that term "multimedia toys"... it's much more fitting than smartphone on some phones.

But with that said... the N8 is... an odd beast. It's the last Symbian^3 N-series phone, it's being hyped heavily compared to the N900, it's not even part of what will be coming from Nokia in the future - which is Symbian^4 and MeeGo.

But it's being billed as "the Nokia savior" somehow... makes no sense. But think of it this way... 12mp in a camera now means it'll show up later, with improvements. 720p recording... perhaps that will end up at 1080p down the line. Media sharing, et al... it'll be improved in the future.

And more than likely on MeeGo. That is if things continue to progress.

Right now though... it seems like Nokia's biggest competitor is Nokia.

Multimedia toy? It's probably gonna be a lot better as a phone than N900 will ever be.

The n900 as a phone is fine. The N8 isn't going to improve on this.

Symbian kills anything for me, so automatically I have zero interest in the N8. In fact, by default, the N8 sucks. It has no redeeming features in my eyes because you have to use Symbian to use any of them.

symbian is by far the most feature rich and versatile phone platform there is, its the outdated ui and underpowered devices it has been put on the last couple of years that is the problem, all of which is being rectified.

Hmm yeah the N8. Symbian 3 or whatever they call it this week. What are the chances it'll get an update to 4 ? Its very delayed and thats all I can say. I personally would of drowned it at birth. Gerbick - totally agree, Nokia main enemy is itself, and all the symbian middle management who have infected Nokia.
Symbian is a shambles of an OS. If it was a horse it would now be thinly spread across the back of millions of stamps.

not really fair to compare the two...

Seeing as how the N8 will be running Symbian^3 I pretty much stopped there. the overall hardware and form factor of the N8 is pretty nice, nothing really to complain about there.

The N8 does have some nice features such as HDMI out and OTG USB.
If only they placed those on the N900 I wouldn't upgrade my device for a loong time.

So what if the N8 is Symbian-based? It is a stable OS, has tons of wigets and programs ("apps"), multi-tasks, is power efficient, and has a good Bluetooth stack. The N8 hardware? 12Mp camera, Xenon flash, and it is a penta-band 3G/Quad-band GSM phone.
True, it is a brand new variant of Symbian, but after the 1st update, my little Nokia 5800 has been the best phone I have ever owned.
After getting stung with Maemo (I *love* my N900 anyway), I'm going to wait things out for MeeGo, and go with a proven winner for my next phone OS.
My € .02.

No need for them to be bigger. The level of compression applied is totally arbitrary, and there won't be more signal in the 12MP sensor, so if there's no added noise, or the noise is effectively filtered out in DSP, you should be able to compress to the same size with equivalent image quality.

Of course, there will be extra noise (the biggest downside of 12MP), but I doubt it would be over 2MB. Then again, the better flash may help to compensate for the noisier sensor in flash pictures -- I'm certain it won't be horrible in any case.

Camera aside, the hardware is neither compelling nor weak -- it's pretty much what you expect from a high-end media-phone these days.

But no way will I be getting one. I've nothing but respect for Symbian as a phone OS, but I don't want a phone OS; I want a desktop OS (more specifically, a free UNIX) shoehorned into a phone, so I'll be waiting on the N9 (or whatever the Meego-Harmattan-confusophone turns out to be).