The upcoming release of the Nokia N8 is eagerly anticipated by fans of the Finnish manufacturer’s previous N Series handsets. Current owners of the N97 and its Mini counterpart will be interested to know that this older Nokia smartphone is going to look pretty inferior to the N8.
The Nokia N8 will be the first smartphone to use the new Symbian 3 platform, whilst the N97 uses the now ancient Symbian S60 5th edition. Although the N8’s processor is not hugely faster than that of the N97, the software and hardware have now been optimised to deal with complex 3D applications and advanced multi-tasking, which should give it the edge in many ways.
The Nokia N8 and N97 were tested by Finest Fones, with the N8 found to be some 180 per cent faster than the N97 in the Speedy Go! benchmarks. The N8 was also able to clock a consistent frame rate of 60 per second in the FPC 3D benchmark, which is something that the N97 cannot hope to match.
The Nokia N8’s processor is clocked at 680MHz according to rumours, which to many might seem a little low. This is the age in which the likes of the Nexus One and the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 all sport 1GHz processors. Although clock speed is no longer king in the desktop computer market, mobiles are still involved in a megahertz and not gigahertz face-off, which the N8 is not coming close to winning. That said, the combination of hardware and software on the N8 seems to be a winner.
