Nseries-Mobile Nokia N82 Review

Goodbye N73 - Hello N82
The Nokia N73 is one of the best handsets ever released in the NSeries range, and has been my main phone since it first hit the market. I've tried over phones, other Nokia handsets, other NSeries, handsets from Motorola and handsets from Sony Ericsson. Most recently I purchased an N95, but even that went in favour of my N73, as I mentioned back in July. The N73 just gives a good solid all round package. It is reliable, dependable, has a very good quality camera, is well built, solid, and hard working. It is simple and straight forward to use, and has a battery that just goes on and on. I know when I leave home for the day I can listen to music on the phone, do some web browsing whilst I'm out and about, view some email, make some calls, send text, just the ordinary things you do on a daily basis with a modern mobile phone these days and the battery won't run down. I've never been caught out without power on my N73, unlike past handsets, like the N80 and N95. My N73 has served me well, and it would take something very good to tempt me away. And something especially has arrived.

Hello Nokia N82. You will have seen from previous posts below, I was at the launch of the N82 in Finland this week. Along with Stefan, from Intomobile, Devin from TheNokiaGuide, Pseudofinn from NokiaUsers, Mark from TheNokiaBlog and the guys from Womworld, we were able to see the virtual launch from inside Nokia house. A once in a lifetime experience, not only did we lucky few get to be inside Nokia house whilst the launch happened, we also got to question the N82 product manager and get our hands on the handset there and then to put it to the test. When you have a bunch of guys together, who know their phones, and are big fans of Nokia and NSeries products, you need to be confident your product is going to be good enough. With all due respect to our hosts and all, if the N82 failed to hit the mark, we would have let them know, how and why. As it turned out the N82 team have a handset they can be proud of, and all of us found it hard to let go of our phones for the rest of the day. Straight away we were installing apps, taking pictures, making calls, browsing the net, testing the features, giving the handset a real going over. The overall impression of the phone was very good, and you could see the delight we all had when our hosts kindly allowed us to take the handset away with us to really put the N82 to the test, in every day usage.

To get straight to the point, the Nokia N82 is a damn fine phone. Very often with a new phone you will find little niggles, something that doesn't work as well as you would expect, or something missing that would have seemed a logical inclusion. It's still early days, but so far the N82 is proving to be a reliable top notch handset. The design is good. The phone feels well built, has a solid feel and is well balanced, with good weight distribution. One of the most important parts of a mobile phone is the keypad. Without a decent keypad, a phone fails. The keypad on the N82 is different, very reminiscent of the W880i from Sony Ericsson, but as the keys are not as cramped as they are on a W880i they are much more user friendly. Sending a text message on the N82 is simple and straight forward, and the keypad is an improvement over the cramped layout found on the N73.

Down the right hand side of the phone you find near the top the micro USB port, in the middle the Micro SD slot and near the bottom the charging port. The N82 doesn't charge via the USB cable. All you find on the bottom of the phone is the microphone. Then, going up the left hand side of theh andset, at top and bottom are the speakers, in between which there is the camera shutter key, gallery shortcut key and volume keys, which double up as zoom keys when in camera mode. The Nokia N82 has a 3.5mm jack point, which you can use with your own headphones for music listening. In a smart move, Nokia have placed this on the top of the phone, so when the phone is in your pocket the headphone lead sits naturally on top. The lanyard slot is on the top right hand corner of the phone, right next to the 3.5mmm slot.

The N82 is designed for 'technology stylists', people who like their phone to look good but don't want to lose out on features. The main focus of the phone is the excellent 5.0 megapixel camera. The camera is equipped with autofocus, a Xenon flash and a Carl Zeiss lens. The lens is covered by a protective cover, which when flicked open automatically activates the camera. The response time is very fast, in no time the camera is active and ready for use. There are various camera options in the settings menu, for changing scene mode, adjusting colour options, white balance, etc. When a picture is taken it stores very quickly. Press the capture button again after taking a pic and almost instantly the N82 is ready for the next shot. The speed is very impressive. The N82 has a large, TFT, QVGA screen supporting up to 16 million colours. As a viewfinder for the camera the whole screen is used and the clarity is superb. Browsing around phone forums and other blogs in the last day I've seen some people complain about the small size of the screen. Personally I think it is more than adequate, and a bigger screen would also mean a bigger phone. That would have upset the balance of the handset.

The N82 is very fast, considerally quicker than any S60 phone I have used to date. From boot up, the N82 accesses straight into the menu without any noticeable delay. Anyone who has used a S60 phone will know that this is not usually the case. Menu navigation is quick and snappy, and the D-Pad is easy to use. I've installed quite a few apps and I will talk about that in a separate post.

There are some nice touches in the menu system. The Active Standby screen has the usual six icons which can be changed to suit your own choice. Underneath the icons is the standard calendar entries, plus a shortcut to the WiFi scan and the search feature. This is all good, but just a quick point, on an old favourite hobby horse of mine. Please, Nokia, include on the NSeries phones the excellent Active Standby Plugins found on ESeries handsets. I posted about it here after finding out about it on the E65. It just enhances the user experience that little bit more.

The search option on the N82 is very good. Highlight the shortcut option from the standby screen:


















Once selected you are presented with the screen of available search options. You can go straight to the internet to search, or search through content on the phone.


















You can scroll down to the selected option, in this case bookmarks:


















A simple flick to the right opens all bookmarks on the phone:


















All options in search work in a similar way. It makes browsing through contacts, notes, messages, etc, simple and straight forward.

Simple and straight forward is a good line for this phone. Not simple in features, just simple to use. Another nifty feature is the small option key, found on the front above the C key. Pressing this takes you by default to the last picture taken on the phone, with an option to view a slide show of pictures or view albums on the front tab. There are 7 tabs which are scrolled through in a kind of carousel design:


















The tabs can be reset into the order you prefer. The tabs available are Gallery, Music, Videos, Games, Maps, Internet and contacts.

There is so much more on the N82. I've used it on Vodafone and Orange so far and had excellent HSDPA connections on both. Data transfer is fast, downloaded from the net and to/from PC via the USB cable. The N82 has an integrated GPS chip and also supports A-GPS. Lock on time is less than 10 seconds. The antenna is at the top of the phone, which makes sense as most people will use the phone in car in a phone holder. The N82 also supports Bluetooth 2.0 so will work with compatible Bluetooth headsets for wireless music playback, and there is support for W-Lan too.

It's been a while since I've been so impressed with a phone, straight from the off. There have been no freezes, no memory errors, no glitches. The N82 is that good that I don't want to go back to using my N73. And trust me it takes a damn good handset for that to happen.