We told you a few hours ago how a Nokia staff member had told us that the Nokia N8 would be hitting UK shops on 25 August and now we bring you a video of it in action, courtesy of Nokia Conversations, compete with a sneaky first peek of its Symbian^3 operating system.

Symbian^3 allows you to select three separate homescreens, all with space for up to six widgets on them. Each homescreen is also customisable by adding a photo wallpaper.

The multitasking display looks nice, there's decent sized snapshots of all the apps you have open and flicking between them looks pretty quick.

The text message centre has been updated to include a conversation view, which is basically a carbon copy of the speech bubble style display you get on the iPhone. The Email app has also undergone a revamp, and separate email accounts can be displayed in separate widgets.

Browsing is Flash compatible so websites should display Flash content without any fuss, and this will also increase your video browsing capabilities.

We have to say, the latest Symbian version does look a darn sight better than previous incumbents, with much faster app switching and more features included. It still looks a bit unresponsive though. A couple of times Chris Bennetts, the Nokia guy in the video, does have to push his desired target twice before anything happens.

It'll be interesting to see how well the N8 does. Nokia had years of little or no competition in the smartphone market and now it faces an uphill struggle to get back on terms with the likes of Apple, Google and HTC. Will the N8 be a big enough success? Only time will tell.