Nokia gave the media a first-hand look at the upcoming Nokia N8 this morning, as it kicked off its usual pre-CommunicAsia show this morning with its Connections event.

After playing with the phone briefly at the media event, I’d say my impression of this nifty little number hasn’t changed from when it was unveiled two months ago.

Without a doubt, the hardware and multimedia are great, but the Symbian OS, even in its latest version, is not as attractive as Android or iPhone OS.

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It’s been a while since we saw a sleek phone from Nokia. So it’s refreshing to see the new N8, unveiled today, look the part with a large 3.5-inch screen as well as widget-like shortcuts for social networking sites on its front screen.

More interestingly, it comes with a camera that boasts no less than 12 megapixels – the Carl Zeiss lens here actually captures more info than a lot of standalone cameras out there. It also comes with a handy Xenon flash, though we won’t go so far as to say you can junk your SLR camera. …