It's strange how times change. There was a time where the best mobile phone manufacturer was undoubtedly Nokia. The phones they producted were good quality and reliable. And that's what people wanted.

But then the SmartPhone revolution came. Mobile phones nowadays are more like personal PCs that just a phone. And Nokia have fallen well behind in this market. The N8-00 is a perfect example of this...it highlights exactly what Nokia good at and shows exactly where they have gone so wrong.

So we'll start with the good points. Nokia have always made good quality models from a physical point of view and this is no exception. It has a lovely aluminium finish and is a nice shape to hold. When you hold it, it feels like a quality phone. The battery life is very good. The screen resolution is quite good. Unfortunately, this is about as far as it goes.

So the main downfall is the OS. The whole user interface is annoying and doesn't work properly. Spending 5 minutes with this phone, I got extremely annoyed by trying to hold down slide bars on the side of the screen to scroll down; on any Android or iOS device, you just swipe up or down the center of the screen which is much easier! Also, you have to double touch the menu items to get them to open...which seems pointless. The desktop widgets also leave a lot to be desired....initially there are loads of them squidged into a small space...and people may not know how to remove some of them.

Another big part of smart phone technology now is the ability to be able to download apps. iOS and Android have their own AppStore/Android MarketPlace respectively which are fairly similar and work well. Nokia has Ovi. Not only does that not work, but it is mostly more expensive than it's competitors. And people generally aren't developing for Ovi...so be prepared to be jealous when everyone else has really nice apps and you can't get them for your N8-00.

Nokia has now lost a lot of market share and I can understand why. I went from Nokia to my iPhone and I probably won't ever look back. Even if an iPhone is out of someones budget, there are so many good quality Android devices coming out from manufacturers such as ZTE and Huawei now that are really well priced that Nokia are just fighting a losing battle. They still make really good simple candybar phones, but as far as smartphones go, and in this case the N8-00, you should look elsewhere before considering this one.