Small background info: I'm a businessman, and a phone-freak. My view is strictly from a business and process-management's point of view. I've used the the iPhone 3GS lately, and I dare to say that I know every little trick there is to know with the software version 4.1. I've used the iPhone
mainly for Microsoft Mail for Exchange (which is also pre-installed in the N8), handling incoming and outgoing issues with sms/email/mms and passing contacts, copying text + images from the web and pasting the material to emails, etc.The reason that I'm about to compare the iPhone into the N8 is simply because the N8 is clearly Nokia's latest targeted answer to the iPhone-craze, and there are so many copied little software-issues from iPhone that I think the software of the N8 would have to be commented on a bit. Straight from the gut.
Software
1st issue
Texting / emailing is of course important with a business-phone, so you really need to be able write a lot, and fast. The N8 really lacks the possibility of true speed-writing as you can only press a 1 button at a time to get them registered correctly! Usually when you press 2 buttons with the iPhone, the one that is released earlier, gets registered earlier. Simple. There's no multiple-key registering on the N8, which is terrible if you try to cope with something like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNcTE5WJGdw
Now for a business-phone, I can't really suggest any touch-pad to begin with, but this video makes you wonder..
2nd issue
Mail for Exchange: You receive an email on the iPhone, be it HTML or normal text, you can easily copy some text to be pasted anywhere, but on the N8, you simply can't mark and copy any text at all from the received email, unless you forward the email and then go and copy the text needed. It's unbelievable since so much time has passed since I used the Nokia E71, and its MFE for example didn't forward any attachments and the forwarded emails couldn't be edited at all !! Imagine, if you can't edit the text of the forwarded email! So on the N8, it's better than on the E71, but still you need to go and forward the email first in order to copy an important address for example from the email...then cancel the forwarded email.) It's also quite hard to place the cursor to the right point, as the Nokia N8 doesn't have any magnifier (like on the iPhone) that beautifully let's you move the cursor to its right point before you take your finger away from the text.
3rd issue
Let's say you have an address or a cast-listing in a text format you want to copy from a web-page to be placed in your calender for a certain day. On the iPhone, you can easily mark and copy text and images from web-pages to be pasted to almost anywhere. With the N8 you can't copy text and images from web-pages, there's no possibility for doing that. For me this is also a serious issue, since you'd expect these things to be possible on a smartphone, not having to pull out your laptop and continue..
4th issue
When you're typing text on the N8, it ALWAYS has a separate FULL-SCREEN window to type the text into, everything else on the screen goes white except the part where you're supposed to write. In case you have a chat on, using Fring for example, you don't see the other person's chat while you are typing, since when you press the area where to write, it pops up with the white blank screen again where you can only write, you don't see anything else! This issue is truly highlighted when you are registering to receive your forgotten password for OVI-services. Nokia is using CAPTCHA on confirming that it is in fact a person in the other end (i.e. you). When you start to write the necessary letters/numbers, you don't see the CAPTCHA-anymore, why?? Because of the white screen that overwhelms everything else when you are writing!! You'd have to go back and forth if you don't remember the CAPTCHA-code. I guess these guys at Nokia haven't really thought of everything, or it's a huge compromise when trying to still keep the Symbian alive.
On the iPhone, whenever there's a text-filling-area (form or whatever), surely you can write there and you see the rest of the screen at all times. It's very useful when you are commenting a post on a web-page for example and you need to go a bit upwards on the page to check on something and then swipe yourself back down to the "form" to continue writing.
The rest
On the N8, you are searching for a contact by pressing the starting letters of your desired contact, but there's no qwerty, instead the contact finder has a very quirky input in a format of a b c d e f g h... And let's say you want to find ANNA, you press A first, and then the input-keypad changes corresponding to the directory of contacts what would be the next letter. So in case you don't have a contact starting with AA, then the keypad looses A totally and re-configures itself; meaning that all the letters are in a new position on the screen! Whoever came up with this strategy, I'd like to have a word with him/her. It's super-slow to try to find people like this from your contact-list. Why can't they use the normal qwerty that stays the same, and you could simply just write ANNA as you've used to, and the contact would pop on screen?
On the N8, Nokia has finally agreed on loose some of the quirkyness how and when different programs are using the internet-access. If you have a known network (say WLAN), it knows to use it like the iPhone, so the push-emails are suddenly offline from the EDGE / 3G, and switched to using the available WLAN, etc. Just like on the iPhone. But still the N8 sometimes pops up with the connection-question that it doesn't know which network to use, so it still has a lot of room for improvement.
On the iPhone, when you have sounds and vibrate on + you have a "call waiting" switched on, it's annoying to have an on-going phone-call when other calls are coming in: the phone vibrates a bit and makes a quite loud sound. Also this happens when you are notified with a calender-issue while you have an on-going call. Why can't it be just a discreet beep, why does it have to freak you out? Also when you want to end the call, and you've gotten some calender-notifications, these calender-notifications are on top of the screen that you are unable to press the end call button! First you need to close the calender issue, and then the call. I think the other way around would be more important. (I still need to see how this is handled on the N8 though.)
And this also have to be said that as I was watching a movie-trailer that came with the N8 and I had a call coming in. (This must have been the second call ever with this phone.) The call stopped the trailer which of course is ok and it popped up with the answering / reject buttons.. I tried to press the answer-button, but there wasn't any response. The phone kept ringing and I couldn't answer for like 8-seconds or so. Then all of a sudden, it opened up the line. Sounds like N97 all over again?
Hardware
The screen is great, the picture-quality is superb, the camera is faster than ever on a Nokia-phone. Jumping a bit to the software-side still: the camera knows where the faces are in the picture so it knows where to focus on. You can attach additional memory-cards to it, and even use usb-memory-sticks with the bundled cable-adapters. The video-recording quality is something you've never experienced on a mobile phone, and the fact that you can watch the shots and pics on your modern TV with the praised HDMI-output. So you basically just hook the N8 to your HDMI-TV or an external screen and off you go.
The iPhone is nothing like the N8 in this respect, however, all the functions (shooting a video + taking a pic and sharing it) are much easier on the iPhone. And when you have your beautiful image or a footage taken with the N8, you'd want to transfer it immediately to your laptop to be shared. Usually just the opposite happens on the iPhone; you share it and edit it on the device itself. Good software, less hassle.
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