Review: Nokia N82

Here is the long awaited N82 review. About 2600 words stressing my love or in some cases dislike to the Nokia N82 which was announced 3 weeks ago. But first of all, I want to thank WOM World for giving me the chance, to trial this device. In a lot eyes is the N82 just a N95 copy in candybar format. However, is it true and is the N82 worth buying?

Main advantages:
-5 megapixel camera with Xenon flash
-built in GPS
-strong 1050mAh battery
-neat formfactor

Main disadvantages:
-thin keys
-fingerprint magnet
-no US 3G support

N82 image gallery

Sales package:

The N82 comes in a silver box which looks just like every other Nseries box. On the front you can see the N82, a 2GB microSD Card and Carl Zeiss Optics logo. The back shows three images of the N82, the key features and some trademarks. After opening the box you can see the N82 behind a plasticshell which you maybe know from the N81 (8GB) or N95.

The box has two floors. In the first floor you can find the N82 (RM-313) itself, the battery (BP-6MT) with powerful 1050 mAh, the 2GB microSD card and the stereo headset (HS-43). The second floor contains the manual, a little box with an DVD in it, the charger, micro-USB cable (CA-101) and a TV-out-cable (CA-75U). The stereo-headset is good and looks cool, but I´m missing the remote control for the music which is really useful when you’re jogging or do other activities. The little charger fits perfect into the N82, you can even hear a little ”click” which ensures you that the cable is on the right place.

Built quality:
My first impression of the N82 is pretty good, it’s handy, light and looks awesome. The upper part of the N82’s front is made of perspex and seems to be scratch resisted. Nevertheless, the mirror-finish front and especially the screen, is a real fingerprint magnet. If you don’t like that, you have to clean the front at least once a day. More over I already found dust under the perspex and also dust on the front camera. Anyway, the device fells good in your hand and although it’s built mainly of plastic and perspex, it’s fells nobly. The backcover is solid like a rock and isn’t loose. Due to the white back and the little metallic flicks, it has a stylish and nobly look. The camera part, which is built of steel, with the flash and the camera looks just like a real camera does. The camera shutter, which protects the Carl Zeiss lens before dust, scratches and other things, opens and closes well and with a ‘’sexy’’ noise. Due to Tomoharu Yazawa, N82 Product Manager, are there no big, annoying or ugly gabs. Just the transition between screen and key is for my taste a little bit to big – I already saw there some dust. On the left hand site of the N82 you can find the microSD card slot which isn’t loose and which opens pretty wide after some days of use. On the right hand site you can find the stereo speakers which are actually just some little holes matching visually to the whole device.

Keys:

On the front, right under the screen you can find 20 of 24 keys. Besides the number keys, * and # you can find following 8 keys:

1. Green sent key
2. Red end key
3. Left soft key
4. Right soft key
5. Clear key
6. “The Anssi Key” – Multimedia key
7. Navi key
8. Menu key

To bear one thing in mind, keys are a personal issue, so I can only judge the keys of my personal point of view (and also a little bit of my dad’s). Anyway, let us begin with these 8 keys. The send and end key is pretty big, but both got the pressure point in the very middle so you have to press exactly the middle, the upper and lower end don’t react as good, only if you press very hard. The navigation key is really good in use and reacts good anf fast in all directional. It’s much softer than N95’s navigation key but in the first days of use it made weird noises when I move it around. Furthermore is left besides the navi key a little gab and thus light leak ( picture above) . The chromed menu and left softkey aren’t separated but nevertheless they are really good to use and they make no noise. On the other site you can find the clear and right soft key which are separate through the thin multimedia key. I don’t like the multimedia key at this place because it’s a little bit to high for my taste. However, the other two keys are just like the menu key, pretty good and quite. The numberkeys, which are made of plastic, are really tiny and on the first day really annoying but the more time you use the N82 the more you like these keys. More over they are spaced out and pretty high so they are easy to press. The pressure point is good and the keys don’t make loud noises.

Besides these 20 keys, the N82 has also four other keys on the side or on the top of the device. On the top you can find the S60 typical power button. This button has three functions.
1. Turning on the device
2. Switching of the device
3. Choosing a profile (eg. ‘’Outdoor’’)

On the right hand site of the device you can find the volume key, gallery key and finally the capture button. The volume key is to change the volume up and down and to zoom in and out. The gallery button, I really like, is to jump immediately to the picture/video last taken. The chromed capture button is just to focus and to capture a picture. All these keys are good in use.

Size:

114g, that’s the official weight of the multimedia computer. That’s a pretty good weight because if your bear in mind that the N82 has GPS, Wi-Fi, a 5 megapixel camera and a lot more, is it really light. Besides his weight it has also a neat size : 112 x 50.2 x 17.3 mm. So it’s perfect for the daily use, whether in the tight office suite or in the baggy pants.

Multimedia:
One who want to take a lot pictures or videos needs lot of memory. The N82 has 132MB internal memory which isn’t enough for a long photo-session or for a long movie. Therefore the user has the possibility, to insert a microSD card. Like I’ve already written, the N82 comes with a 2GB microSD which is really generous. According to Nokia, the N82 supports only cards up to 4GB but I think 8 and even 16GBHC cards are supported as well.

The N82 is promoted as a camera phone. Indeed, with a 5 megapixel camera (2592 x 1944), Carl Zeiss lens, auto focus, and a Xenon-light , the N82 has the right to call itself a camera phone. If you want to take pictures, you just have to open the camera shutter and rotate the N82. However, the N82 offers you a lot picture modes. So you can choose in the toolbar various modes to improve your pictures.

So you can choose the close-up mode to capture intricate detail of small objects. Of course you can zoom to enlarge the motiv, but you have to bear in mind that the 20x digital zoom affects the picture quality. After you chose the right mode, just press the capture button and within 7 seconds the picture is saved. Now you can upload the picture immediately to flickr, VOX or sent it via Bluetooth, email or MMS. The most interesting part of the whole image issue is the really bright Xenon flash. Using the Xenon flash you can see much more details in dark conditions. Here are two picture , one taken with the N95 (left) and one taken with the N82 (right).

You can see, that N82’s picture is brighter than N95’s picture. However, the flash is not only useful in dark condition, it’s also useful for light that’s against you. To show you what I mean, I took two pictures, one without flash (left) and one with the Xenon-flash ( right).You can see using the flash, you can see more details and you aren’t blinded by the light.

Of course the N82 can record videos as well. With almost full DVD quality, 640×480 and 30 frames per seconds, is the taken video pretty good. To record a video just open the camera shutter and choose video mode. To improve the video, you can choose between various modes. For example colour tones like sepia or negative, white balance like sunny or cloud and finally scene modes like auto or night. One minute of taken video is about 20MB big. However, the video quality is pretty good – sharp and with good sound. Using the TV-Out cable you can watch the recorded videos on a huge TV. You can resize the video quality if you want to sent the video immediately from the device via Email or MMS. Jump over to see some videos taken with 640×480 pixels.

Nseries mean multimedia and what is a multimedia device without a good music player? Nothing! Therefore the N82 has the new version of the music player preinstalled.

It’s divided into Music and Podcast. In the folder ‘’Music’’ you can find 6 other folders like All songs or Albums The N82 has a 3.5mm jack, thus you can use also your favorite headphones. The music quality with the provided headset is good but if you uses other headsets e.g an Apple headset, the music quality is much better. Just like on your Computer you can create easily own playlist of all your favorite music on your N82. To improve the music quality, you have an equaliser with 6 modes – Default, Bass booster, Classical, Jazz, Pop and Rock. Furthermore you can improve the look of the current song. You can choose between four visualisation – album art, circles, oscilloscope and spectrum. Album art just shows the album cover, the other three showing cool animations. The music player supports following audiofiles: AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, MP3, MP4, M4A, WMA, AMR-NB, AMR-WB, Mobile XMF, SP-MIDI, MIDI Tones (poly 64), RealAudio 7,8,10, True tones and WAV.

Connectivity:
The N82 offers nearly every connection you need. W-Lan (802.11b/g, 54 MBit/s), HSDPA, Bluetooth, UMTS, GPRS, micro-USB and GPS everything in this handy device. Some user may miss the Infrared port but I never used infrared in the last 4 months. More over the N82 doesn’t support US 3G which is a pitty because I know a lot over in the US who are using 3G every day. Anyway, in the test Bluetooth works fast and great with my N95, my computer and also with my SU-8W. Transferring a 4.2MB Mp3 from N95 to N82 took less than 1 minute ( 54 seconds to be exact). When you insert the USB-cable into the N82, you can choose between four modes – PC Suite, Data transfer, Image print and Media player. I usually use the Data transfer but if you like to have access to your internal memory you have to choose PC suite.

Of course can the N82 receive and sent emails. The internal email client is good and easy to set up. Unfortunately the client doesn’t show the email you’re used from your desktop at home. You see only the text, but not the graphics. However, if you like to see the emails just like on your computer, you should try Profi mail, a neat email-program. Nevertheless you can receive emails and with attachements like pictures mp3 other files.

Thanks to S60’s excellent open source webbroser or 3rd party applications like Opera Mini you can have the full internet on your N82. Using GPRS or rather W-Lan you can enter the world wide web really fast. The pretty nifty mini map helps you to navigate through the website. More over you can zoom in and out the pages and download pictures from websites you like. To be up to date you can also subscribe to RSS feeds .

One of the things, upcoming user are looking forward to, is the built in GPS. It’s Nokia’s 5th cellphone with built in GPS. The N82 comes , just like the N95, with Nokia’s own Maps application. So you can see where you are or where you friend lives. Furthermore you can see how to come to the train station or any-other place.This all is for free but live navigation, which most the user are looking for, isn’t. You have to buy licenses to use Maps as good as possible. A 7-day license cost about 6€, a 1 year-license 60€. The GPS work good and in addition with A-GPS (Assisted-Global Positioning System) you can a faster GPS-fix. It always depends on your location but you should get a GPS fix within 10 seconds. Nokia is offering a program calls Sports Tracker using the built in GPS of the N82 to give you information about speed, altitude and many more.

Usage:
The N82 runs on S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 1. I have to confess, that I can’t judge this category so good because I’m a S60 user since some years. However, for a new user it’s pretty tricky to find into the menu. I’ve seen a lot user pressing the navigation key to get access to the menu which is the wrong way. After pressing the menu key ( Ying Yang) you can find plenty of icons and some folders. The Icons already say what they are stand for and furthermore you can read the application’s name. If you don’t like the menu structure you can create new folders, delete some, move the application as you like or change the menu view from Grid to a List. Furthermore you can choose between 5 standart themes and hundreds more which are in the World Wide Web. For those with bad eyes you can also change the front size. Thanks to the ARM 11 processor with 332MHz and 94MB of RAM after a boot you can navigate fast thought the menu.

If you like to use the N82 in landscape mode, you just have to rotate the N82. This is pretty handy when you’re looking at some pictures.

Business and Organizer:

Every S60 device is on the one hand a multimedia device but on the other and also a smarphone. The N82 offers you a folder called ‘’Office’’ with Adope PDF, Converter, Zip, Barcode, Quickoffice, Notes and Wireless Keyboard. Quickoffice enables Word, Exel and Powerpoint files. Unfortunately you create files or edit them without upgrading your version and thus spent money on it. To don’t miss any meeting you have the calendar entries on the Stand-By screen and the calendar in the menu. You can create a to-do list, a memo ans also some more.The calendar, the contacts and your bookmarks you can synch with the PC using the PC Suite. In the test it worked pretty well with Outlook Express.

Verdict:

To put it in a nutshell, the N82 has a brilliant camera with Xenon flash, is solid and really handy. Offering you built in GPS and many more features makes this phone to Nokia’s newest flagship. Furthermore it’s a good replacement for all those who always wanted the power of an N95 but who didn’t wanted a slider-phone. However, if you live in the US and you’re a heavy 3G user you should maybe choose the N95-3 or wait for an N82 US version.

Here you can find previous posts about the N82:
N95 vs. N82: Who is fatser?
N82: Videosamples
More P1 and N82 pictures
How strong is N82’s battery?
N82: Image samples
N82: A little picture gallery
N82: Unboxing

~ by Norman John on December 10, 2007.