I bet you weren't expecting that title. I mean it literally. No, really literally.

When this hits the market (in September, probably) 4 years would have passed since the announcement of the Nokia N95. Now, revolutionary as that was for its time, we have to agree that compared to the N8, it now looks like a good joke from the past. And its recommended sales price before taxes was EUR 560.

Four years later, the N8 (check that spec sheet again!)... EUR 370.

This is the single most important thing about this announcement in my opinion (well, aside from the five-band HSPA and Wireless N support). We all knew the specs already, we knew how it looks like even (although some of those color options are surprisingly cool), we all knew it would be running Symbian^3 (though many still have no clue what that is or what the differences between it and Symbian^1 or Symbian^4 are or aren't)...

But to pack all that oomph spec-wise into such a cheap package is quite something.

Something that most of the "tech bloggers" out there, even some self-proclaimed "Nokia fanboys", won't quite understand.

So, ranting off...

Let's get something straight.

There is no such thing as an iPhone killer. And never will be. At least, not a device. If there is a possible iPhone killer out there, it's Steve Jobs. His dictator-ish ways may be the end of the iPhone (or, most likely, not), but never an iPhone copy.

And by that I mean a same-form-factor device from another manufacturer. See, the N8, as many, many, many phones before it, from basically every manufacturer on the planet, is not an iPhone killer. It's an iPhone copy. They all were. This is just the climax of the iPhone-copying movement that has had tremendous influence in all big phone manufacturers since the original iPhone was announced.

Nokia tried to resist this tendency the most, but in the end caved. They seemed to be the only ones above this ridiculous rush to get expensive slates on the market asap.

That ends now.

No, the 5800 doesn't count, and neither do the X6, 5530 and 5230. For a very good reason: price. Those are very well played entries (well, perhaps except the X6) into new grounds for smartphones, slate or not. But they're much too far away price-wise to count in such a comparison.

I'm not sure at this point how well the N8 will sell. It probably won't be a bust. It may even sell better than the N97 and N97mini combined (that's a very hopeful scenario, but plausible nevertheless).

But strategy-wise, this doesn't make any sense to me.

Gizmodo won't love you now, Nokia. Neither will Robert Scoble. See, they appear to want iPhone copies from Apple's competitors, but in reality they can't wait to bash them and call them out for the copies that they are.

They don't like Android because of its similarities to the iPhone OS, they like Android because it's made by Google. Which, as Apple, is a big American brand/company.

Get it now?

This, the slate-form-factor, high-end device, is Apple's game. And playing by their rules means, quite frankly, inevitable defeat. Remember that Google Nexus One? Check its sales please. Yeah, funny, I know. And that was loved by at least half of the Nokia-bashing "press" (well, if they claim they are press when confronted with the police, I guess they are - after all, The Sun is press too, no?).

Yes, the N8 is still high-end, even if it is cheaper than I would have expected it to be.

I don't think this is the right way to go for Nokia, but I'm fine with being dead wrong.

I think the C6 is the way to go, but then they do something as incredibly stupid as releasing that with the 128 MB of RAM we've had since the N95 8GB (in 2007!).

I'm not in any way disappointed with the N8 itself. I can't say I'm very impressed with it either (perhaps except the colors and aforementioned global connectivity), since more or less all the hardware features it has were present before in other devices, albeit not all together, and in most cases crippled by insanely buggy software (i8910, I'm laughing at you). I'm sure this is the first phone to do 720p recording well. And I'm happy because of that, it was high time we moved away from the oh-so-not-digital-y and not 16:9-y VGA.

I'm sure I'll like Symbian^3 (because, unlike others, I know what to expect from it, and it does fix the things I found annoying in Symbian^1, while remaining almost as familiar UI-wise, which, strangely, for me isn't the end of the world), but then this won't be the only device running it, so that's not really relevant. Personally, I'm waiting for the rumored E7, although if the screen really is 4 inches and the battery only 1200mAh and iPhoney non-removable, I may have to rely on my trusty E55 for another year.

So the only exciting thing about the N8, in my view, is the price. Although still expensive, still high-end, it's way less then the 'flagships' of yesteryear, and that's a very good trend. Slates, though, are not, if you ask me.

Now go, explore the N8 some more, by clicking this magical link.

Note: this is a first impressions post, that in no way attempts to be exhaustive on the subject. Expect second, and perhaps even third impressions in the future. After all, launch is still 3-5 months away (likely 5).