The Nokia N95 by all means and purposes is one of the most full featured Nokia phone that has ever come out from Nokia’s woodwork. With GPS, a 5 megapixel camera, cool multimedia functions and even a 3.5mm jack, it had almost everything you’d look for in a phone. Well except the fact that not everyone liked the N95’s shape and design. Well with Nokia’s N82, Nokia has now given us a phone that rivals the N95 but this time in candy bar format. Well we managed to get our hands on the N82 and so read on to see what our take on the phone was like.
I'm a candy bar phone kind of a person, which made the N82's candy bar design perfect for me. Measuring at 4.4 x 2 x 0.7 inches, it fitted perfectly into the palm of my hands and had that solid feel to it. The size of the phone was neither too big or too small and was to me had the perfect width and feel. It was kind of light though not so light that you would think it was a toy phone. The N82 comes housed in a sleek, silvery chassis, which at first glance looked as if it was metal. However, after getting a feel of the phone, I was disappointed that that silvery sheen on the phone wasn't really metal but plastic. Of course that didn't mean the build quality was bad though as the N82 still felt solidly built to me, it's just that I'd like to see Nokia come up with a N-series phone with brush metal surfaces instead of being mostly made of plastic for once. Now as shiny as the front surface of the N82 was, it's bound to be a fingerprint magnet which was exactly what it became. Combined that with its generous 2.4" screen and well, you can imagine the amount of times I was wiping it down so it wouldn't look so grimy. Then again sometimes half the fun is in wiping the phone down, just so you can stare more at it.
The N82 has the hallmarks of Nokia user friendly and intuitive design. The function key placements were, what I would say, in the most logical of places, making the N82 really easy to use and didn't require you to actually take out the manual. One thing that bothered me a bit though was the size of the N82's number keypad. The other keys on the phone were generous in size from the menu button to the receive and reject call buttons. However, the number keypads were a different matter as they were quite small. Now as I said before, the N82 is not really a small phone which meant that it had ample space for bigger keys. However, I guess Nokia, for the sake of giving the N82 a creative design, gave the phone smaller keys reminiscent of the Sony Ericsson W880i keys. For a guy with big hands and thumbs like me, it took me a while to get used to the keys. Fortunately though, Nokia did space the number keys out a bit which meant I didn't really end up accidentally pressing the wrong number keys often.
The N82 of course uses Nokia's S60 operating system, which is till today, my favourite phone interface/OS. I doubt I need to describe it for all of you as you're most likely to have played around with a Nokia S60 phone or you might already own one. However I would like to mention a few "add-ons" that the phone came with like the built in accelormeter which allowed you switch the N82 interface between landspace and portrait mode just by tilting the phone (sort of like the iPhone or iPod Touch). Also added was the Nokia N-gage application which bundled in two games on a trial period FIFA 2007 and Asphalt 3 Street Rules. Now unlike the N81, the N82 is really set up for games so don't expect to play FIFA 2007 on the N82 in landscape mode.
Camera
Now, what really makes the N82 a joy to use is its camera functions. The phone comes with a 5 megapixel camera and a Xeon flash which made it one of the better camera phones I've come across. The user interface, though I have heard some people complain about it, wasn't much of an issue for me. It has an extensive range of settings that includes manual white balance, ISO sensitivity, exposure compensation, sharpness and contrast settings, as well as various effects.
Another similarity that the N82 has with the N95 is that it has a built in GPS. Now the built in GPS works hand in hand with Nokia Maps which is essentially a free download (in this case it's already preloaded into the N82). It work fine and is quite accurate though the major issue I had with the GPS was its slow initial satellite lock. Not to say that it is always slow but the average time for the initial satellite lock was between 2 to 3 minutes sometimes longer when you're like say in a moving vehicle. However, once your position is locked on, things go pretty smoothly from there. You might be tempted to get third party GPS software to use with the N82 but I'd recommend that you stick with Nokia Maps as it is really good and easy to use. Best of all it's free, though you do have to pay extra for the voice guidance navigation.
Another similarity that the N82 has with the N95 is that it has a built in GPS. Now the built in GPS works hand in hand with Nokia Maps which is essentially a free download (in this case it's already preloaded into the N82). It work fine and is quite accurate though the major issue I had with the GPS was its slow initial satellite lock. Not to say that it is always slow but the average time for the initial satellite lock was between 2 to 3 minutes sometimes longer when you're like say in a moving vehicle. However, once your position is locked on, things go pretty smoothly from there. You might be tempted to get third party GPS software to use with the N82 but I'd recommend that you stick with Nokia Maps as it is really good and easy to use. Best of all it's free, though you do have to pay extra for the voice guidance navigation.
Multimedia
Now although the N82 does not come with dedicated Media keys, it does pretty well for a Music/Video player. The D-pad of the N82 is more than sufficient for navigating all your music playing needs. Best of all, the N82 comes with a 3.5mm jack which rocks as you can plug in whatever l33t headphones you have, and not just stick to the standard Nokia ones. Sound wise, the N82 does ok when not plugged to any speakers. Its sound quality is pretty crisp and if you're a little hard in hearing you don't have to worry as the built in speaker are loud enough to partially wake the dead.
As for video playing, like all Nokia phones, the N82 comes with Real Player and watching videos on the 2.4" LCD screen was pretty neat. Picture quality on the screen was really clear (whenever it wasn't grimy) and although it doesn't come with a huge memory bank, at least you have the option of adding in microSD card to the phone.
Connectivity
As I mentioned before, the N82 is in all respect similar to the N95, and this includes its connectivity options. With support for HSDPA and 3G, the phone is excellent for web browsing especially when paired with the Nokia web browser. And if you do splurge on Bluetooth stereo headphones, the N82 also comes with Bluetooth A2DP support.
Conlcusion
The Nokia N82 is a great phone and comes as close to a perfect phone to me. With GPS, a great camera and a host of connectivity options, it's pretty hard to not like this phone. Even its battery life is pretty good lasting a good 3 days of normal use (this includes mucking around with the GPS and camera). At around RM2,499 it only comes off as slightly pricey but seriously the camera functions and GPS more or less makes up for that. Now if only Nokia can come up with a brush metal version of it.article create by Nigel Yap
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