Do you keep in mind Nokia telephones, with their Symbian OS? Lifeless and gone, you may assume, however even they’ve devoted fanatics right here in 2026. A few of them have gone as far as to supply a brand new ROM for the daddy of Symbian telephones, the Nokia N8, and [Janus Cycle] is giving it a spin.
For many individuals, the smartphone period started when the primary Apple iPhones and Android gadgets reached the market, however the smartphone itself might be traced again virtually twenty years earlier to an IBM gadget. Within the few years earlier than the beginning of at this time’s platforms many individuals even had smartphones with out fairly realizing what they’d, as a result of Nokia, the market chief within the 2000s, did not make their Symbian platform person pleasant in the way in which that Apple did. The N8 was their try to supply an iPhone competitor, however its lack of an on-device app retailer and that horrific Home windows-based set up system meant it could be their final mass-market flagship earlier than falling down the Microsoft Home windows Cellphone rabbit gap.
Within the video beneath the break he takes a pair of N8s and assembles one with that stunning digital camera absolutely working, earlier than putting in the brand new ROM and giving it a spin. We get to see ultimately what the N8 might have been however wasn’t, because it positive aspects the final Symbian launch from Nokia, and the essential lacking app retailer. Even fifteen years later it’s a really slick gadget, sufficient to make us sorry that this ROM gained’t be made for the sooner N-series sitting in a drawer the place that is being written. We salute its builders for conserving the N8 alive.
Oddly, this isn’t the one Nokia from that period that’s acquired a bit of 2020s love.
