Nokia N8: Most powerful camphone

Touted as the most powerful camera phone, Nokia N8 rallied as one of the many high-end phones hoping to put Apple iPhone under extreme pressure. We know for the fact that Nokia has been struggling to retain its earlier dominance in the high-end phone category, a foothold once wielded by the Nokia Communicator.

This time around, Symbian^3 seeks salvation fait accompli in the form of Nokia N8. But what else does this phone do aside from having a monster camera.

Outside it is enclosed with an aluminum chassis perfectly blending with my similarly aluminum MacBook Pro. One notable physical characteristic is the Home button oddly placed at the bottom far left side and the protrusion of the camera at the back. Fret not because this packs the biggest image sensor yet to be clad by any phone, Carl Zeiss optics and a Xenon flash combines a megapixel power. Best of the feature has yet to unfold, it also comes with the HDMI port that outputs recorded video, images, and even music.

Under its hood is the ARM 11 Microprocessor at 680Mhz clockspeed with 256MB RAM. This configuration is a giant leap from previous Nokia devices but not as monumental as the ones sported by the competing manufacturers like HTC, Samsung, and Motorola. On the connectivity feature, it comes with 802.11N wifi, Bluetooth 3 Plus A2DP, GPS, USB On-The-Go, and an HDMI Port. 3.5inch AMOLED display at a 640x360 screen resolution is quite impressive, however it isn't as commandingly detailed as the Apple iPhone 4G. It may produce vibrant images due to its high contrast ratio but not as a sharp as the iPhone 4g.

The verdict? It may wallop megapixel pound-for-pound with other smartphones in the market, and has the recently updated Symbian flavor, however it still glaringly cut short against the Android and iOS competition. But if you're a long-time Symbian user, this might just be a good buy for you at Php20,990.