I have a Nokia N8 and while some aspects of it are awasome out of the box, some others are downright poor. I think I can say this now even though I work for Nokia as our CEO has basically said the same thing in public.
Most of the frustrating bits have to do with the built-in applications in N8. Luckily there is a pretty good offering of 3rd party apps as well as innovative Nokia ones that have, at least for me, turned the thumb firmly towards the sky. So here's my advice on what to get to whoever wants to live life to the fullest (heh) with N8, C7, E7 etc.:
Social networks: get Gravity. Gravity is an awesome native Symbian application for all kinds of social networking needs. I use it for Facebook, Twitter, Google Reader and flickr image uploads. The version of Gravity on Ovi Store is great, but that's just the starting point. Jan Ole Suhr (@janole) releases frequent updates that have made the great into fantastic since I bought the 1st version. The gret thing is, one can follow @janole in Gravity and get 1st hand info about what he's developing next as well as where to download the latest and the greatest.
Music: I live in India now so this will not help the natives, but Spotify has transformed music for me. Admittedly the Symbian client is awkward at best, but the overall service experience is so good that it almost doesn't matter at all. I would especially wish for better support for headset controls and such.
Browsing: in all the N8 reviews the biggest downside complained about has been the browser. Yes, it's slow and the zooming doesn't really work like it should. After the release of Opera Mini 6.0 this is a moot point now as there's a fantastic browser now available. In India the proxy browsing is fantastic as 3G was just launched and coverage is spotty at best. With Opera Mini GPRS is enough for fast browsing of full-fledged desktop sites.
Profile management: I am one of those people who forget to put the phone on silent when going to bed or entering a meeting and leave it silent for the rest of the day once the meeting is over. Now it doesn't matter anymore as the beta-available Situations does all that automatically. If you tried the first version and got tired of restarting it, try the latest one. It's much better and does what it promises.
Outdoors: Whenever I do any kind of sports outdoors (except swimming), I use Sports Tracker. Sadly they don't ship the heart rate monitor to India so I need to pick one up when I am next time in Finland. Even without it this is a fantastic app-slash-service and I've used it from day 1 when it was a small science project in Nokia. They just announced that they're coming out with iPhone and Android versions too - good for them!
Gaming: there's plenty of good, even great games in Ovi Store. The latest Angry Birds is coming to Symbian with only a few weeks delay :-). Sky Force Reloaded is great too, but I go long back with that game so it's probably just me.
E-mail: here the built-in mail app has developed into a really usable tool. I use it for Gmail and Outlook access and have no major complaints. If I sometimes need the full Gmail UI, I use the iPhone version with Opera Mini.
Maps: in most parts of the world Ovi Maps is great, but not here in India. Here addresses don't really matter or make sense and everything works with points of interest. The PoI database on Google Maps Mobile is a lot better so that works better here.
Bubbles: you don't you need Bubbles before you try Bubbles. I couldn't use my phone without Bubbles anymore.
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