Nokia unveiled the N8 and by the looks of it it's not only a multimedia powerhouse, but its also powered by the latest version of the Symbian OS.

Symbian^3 (pronounced Symbian three) is the first fully open source version of the Symbian phone OS. It allows for some much needed improvements allowing the OS to compete with its modern rivals, such as the iPhone OS, BlackBerry OS and Android. Like Android-powered devices, the N8 will feature multiple home-screens on which you place your apps and widgets. According to Nokia it’ll also offer support for multi-touch gestures including flick scrolling as well as pinch-zoom. The often sluggish performance of the OS seems to have been addressed as the new 2D and 3D graphics architecture in the platform takes full advantage of the Nokia N8’s hardware acceleration to deliver a faster and more responsive user interface.
 
The N8 includes a 12 MP camera with Carl Zeiss optics as well as a Xenon flash and the ability to record and edit HD (720p) videos. It sports an HDMI port to display these videos and images on your HDTV. The smartphone features a 3.5" capacitive touch-screen (640 x 360 pixels), Bluetooth 3.0 and half the internal memory (16 GB) of its other top-end products, like the N900 and N97. The storage space can be expanded by using a MicroSD memory card of up to 32 GB in size. There’s also GPS, Wi-Fi, HSDPA, access to Web TV services and automatic location tagging (geotagging) of images and videos. Nokia phones have always had good speakers, but that is set to improve with the N8 as it incorporates Dolby Digital Plus technology to enhance the audio experience. According to The Symbian Blog the N8 will make use of the fastest processor available on any Nokia smartphone, that being an ARM 11 processor running at 680 MHz. 
 
Nokia’s N8 will be available during Q3 in selected markets, including SA. There is no local pricing available at this stage.