Review of Nokia N82: Stranger From Ad DreamNokia N82 was one of the most expected Nokia smartphones in the last year. The computer-refined pictures, which appeared in the Net several months before the announcement, showed an unusual to the company silver device, which was considered a new concept or a fake.Table of contents:
Anyway, there were no doubts that the similar devise appeared, as after the flagship phone Nokia N95 appeared on the market, everyone was waiting for the multifunctional smartphone with the affordable price, which could succeed to the N73.  Really, the N82 looks like a black ship in the model range of Nokia due to its silver-white design. Nevertheless, it can be accepted as one of the main handsets of the N-series in 2008 thanks to the uncommon combination of the functionality and acceptable price (especially in comparison with the N95). Everyone also noticed that besides the positioning our guest inherited the obvious rival by Sony Ericsson from the N73. The latter used to be contrasted with the K790i, while the N82 has to compete with the K850i for customers’ attention, as the Sony Ericsson device can boast about the 5megapixel camera with autofocus and big display. Nevertheless, if we compare the number of various functions, the N82 has no competitors at the market nowadays. There is hardly a device, which offers the quality camera and numerous multimedia capabilities along with GPS and Wi-Fi for this price. Specifications:
Sales package Besides the smartphone itself, you find in the box the following devices: BP-6MT battery, AC-5 charger with the thin plug, wired music headset HS-43, PC connectivity cable USB-micro USB (CA-101), TV- connectivity cable CA-75U, 2GB microSD card. Design, casing, keypad Nokia N82 looks like a solid bar; in general its dimensions, nowadays, are common for the devices of this class; they are almost the same as of the N95. The future is likely to bring about the thinner solutions.  Due to the large size, the smartphone feels great in hand, but at the same time it can be comfortably carried in pockets of jeans or trousers.  The casing is finished in quality plastic, which gives nice feedback. All details fit each other firmly. The colour of the casing is silver-white, though it doesn’t make the device look bigger, than it is. All in all, the smartphone looks modern and universal, though reminds the youth style a bit.  The front panel is made of the silver plastic reminding metal, thus it shines in the light and looks stylish. Thought the ad pictures show the front panel looking as if it made of metal, in the shop the “trick” is exposed after several seconds, as the texture is absolutely different. Though it doesn’t affect the general impression.  The third of the panel is occupied by the big display, over which you see (from left to the right) the light sensor controlling the backlit brightness, front camera for video calling and earpiece.  Under the display you find the keypad consisting of large navigational keys with the square five-way navipad with the chamfered edges in the centre. It is notable that the navipad is the monobloc unit which declines under the pressing. The left and right soft-keys are united with the Menu and Clear keys correspondingly. The right side houses the thin, as the digit keys, multimedia key (it will be discussed later). The numerical keys are narrow; they seem, at first sight, unhandy in use, but it is not like this. I got accustomed to the keypad after 10 minutes and didn’t have any problems with it afterwards. Despite the tiny size, the keys have sufficient space between and have an appropriate soft travel distance. This feature of the phone is very pleasing; the keypad in Nokia 6120 Classic seems a bit tough in comparison with the N82 All in all, to understand whether the keypad is convenient to you, you’d better check it out in the shop by typing several text messages.  The keypad backlit is of the milky colour, soft and pleasing. In the darkness you are enabled to see all signs perfectly well, that is the most important.  The back panel is finished in the patterned layered milky plastic, which looks very interesting.  Besides the company logo and series printed on the battery cover, the back panel houses camera unit consisting of the camera lens (the ad hypes the well-known Carl Zeiss brand), xenon flash and small slider hiding the lens under the protecting cover. All elements are framed by the silver rectangle with printed specifications of the camera on it. The lens cover is designed to protect the lens from dirt and scratches, which it, actually, perfectly does. The slider itself, to my taste, could have been more elegant, though it looks not bad. With the cover open, the camera application is automatically launched.   The battery cover is removed rather easily. The SIM card fastening placed under the battery is very handy and keeps you safe from the broken nails.   The side edges of the smartphone are beveled, that’s way it looks a bit slimmer. The top hosts the strap/pendant eyelet, the round Power button and 3.5 mm standard audio jack. The latter is big merit of the device. I suppose lots of music addicts will agree with me, as with the most phones they have to use either the adapters or the remote control. As to the N82, you plug your favorite headphones right in the device without any adapters.   The bottom is almost free from elements, the only is the microphone pinhole.  The right side of the smartphone features the camera key with the half-shutter mode, the review key providing quick access to the picture gallery and doubled volume key. Here you can also see two stereo speakers. Their position is convenient to watch video files in the landscape mode. As to the common situations this location of the speakers gives no discomfort.  On the left side are the memory card slot covered by the lid, the charger plug and the microUSB slot to wire the interface cable. The memory card slot lid is handy and looks rather sturdy.    Display The smartphone is equipped with the big display featuring 320x240 pixels resolution. Thanks to the 24” diagonal to use it is a pure delight, as you haven’t strain your eyes to read a text on the screen. At the same time the image is clear, there are no grains at all. The brightness and colour rendering are perfect, though it is a must nowadays. The backlit is even and doesn’t annoy you, the automatic tuning works well with the help of the light sensor. Camera The smartphone ships with the 5 megapixel camera with the Carl Zeiss lens and xenon flash on board. I’d like to note beforehand, that the picture quality, as well as the video is perfect; I’d rather say, it is almost the best one among the whole bulk of mobile devices nowadays. The camera is a well-balanced solution, thus you really want to use it. As a matter of fact, you use it oftener, than the poor standard solutions with the 2 megapixel resolution and without autofocus mounted in the cheaper devices. The autofocus works properly and quickly. There are extensive settings, which are handy to use due to the well thought-out camera application.  The settings icons are placed in the vertical bar, when choosing any of them, the signs with functions name pop up. Let’s look at all functions in order they are placed. The top icon is in charge of switching between video and photo modes.  Scene modes. Here you can choose the program of shooting. Apart the auto mode and user settings, there are all main modes.    Flash mode. The flash works in three modes – on, off, automatic and red-eye remove.   Self timer. The timer settings provide three degrees – 2. 10 and 20 seconds.   Sequence mode. In this mode you chose the mode of sequence shooting. Besides the single shot and standard sequence of several snaps, there are modes allowing to capture an image every shot period, which varied from 10 second up to 30 minutes, till the memory runs out. If you wish, you can productively make use of this function.     Colour tone. This setting collects several standard colur effects, they are Sepia, Black & white, Vivid and Negative. As usually, we recommend you to leave these operations to the later stage of taking pictures, as the graphic editor copes with these tasks much better.   Show viewfinder grid. Here you are enabled to turn on/off the showing of the viewfinder grid.   White balance. At first I was prepared to the manual tuning of the white balance in the white sheet, but instead this menu item provides 5 modes, including the automatic one. They are: sunny, cloudy, incandescent, fluorescent.   Exposure compensation. The compensation of the stills is done with the 0.5 step that is very convenient.   Sharpness. Here you can tune the outline sharpness of the objects on an image. Besides the normal mode, there are hard and soft ones. But again, any image editor has much more settings.   Contrast. Here you can adjust the contrast of an image by small steps.   Light sensitivity. It is rather useful setting of the matrix sensitivity. To those, who are ignorant of photography, I’d like to note, that in case we a have a deal with the matrix, as in the N82, you’d better choose the lowers value (it is Low here), in order to avoid noises.   When video recording, the amount of settings is significantly smaller. There only two scene modes, white balance (no changes) and colour tone (without changes).        In the setting of the camera application you are enabled to hide the settings icons, as well to get access to several useful functions located in the submenu Image settings. Let’s look at the main ones.   Image quality. Here you can choose the image resolution, which varies from 5 megapixels up to more compact size. Everything is implemented very clearly. You are told which prints you can get using this or that quality and how many files there is a room on the memory card for.  Add to album. In this item you are able to turn on/off the automatic adding of an image to the smartphone album. Show captured image. Here you decide whether you’d like to use the automatic preview.  Default image name. Here you can adjust which name you’d like to give to the files. By default it is date. Extended digital zoom. If you like you can switch on the digital zoom. Capture tone. You are enabled here to choose the camera shutter tone.  Memory in use. Here you choose where the stills are saved. Rotate image. It is an automatic rotate of an image, depending on the orientation. Restore camera settings. As you guess from the title, here you just renew the settings. The pictures are of a good quality, thus they even can be printed. Anyway, the stills produced by this smartphone are rather quality and can be further processed in the image editor. The video quality is another issue to be discussed. Unfortunately, the automatic rotate was out of order (it is the only our complaint), that’s way you have to view all clips with the head bent. But the high quality of the picture and sound are obvious, now you can record clips with up to 1 minute length. Sample photos.
 Sample video. Video sample 1, mp4, 2.9 MB >>> Video sample 2, mp4, 6.2 MB >>> Video sample 3, mp4, 9.1 MB >>> Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, USB There is Bluetooth 2.0 supporting EDR on board, all standard profiles are implemented including A2DP (transferring of the stereo sound to the devices with Bluetooth). When transferring data to Nokia 6120 Classics, the transfer speed was about 80-120 Kb/s, that is a standard result. Wi-Fi module can also boast about the good implementation; there are all necessary settings, the stable and speedy work is beyond complains. The smartphone finds the net everywhere, where it is any. As well as all smartphones running Symbian, there are 4 profile of USB work supported; you can choose among them, when wiring a cable. Data transfer – In this mode the smartphone is seen as the external detachable disk; usually it is the most demanded mode, as in this case you get access to both the phone memory and the memory card. PC Suite – In this mode you work with the device with the help of the PC Suite, as well you can upgrade program software, synchronize and edit the information saved in the handset. I recommend you to visit Nokia Beta Lab, as they have lots of interesting for you device. Image print – From here you can send the captured images to the printer. Media player – In this mode you are enabled to synchronize media library with the Windows Media Player library. It is useful, when you buy the DRM music, as the each loading to the device is counted. GPS Thanks to the built-in GPS-chipset and the large screen, the N82 provides rather convenient navigation, though those driving cars are likely to have a device with the bigger screen. But the pedestrians are likely to appreciate this device, as the work with the on-board application Nokia Maps is very comfortable.  The smartfpone quickly finds satellites and determines the position on the map, moreover, if there is no the necessary map of the region or its part, they can be downloaded from the Internet (Wi-Fi comes in handy in that cases). The application works well either in the landscape mode or vertical one. The modes are switched between right on the go.   The 3-dimensional view is supported, as well as standard two dimensional one. Of course, you can adjust different objects to be shown on the map (restaurants, filling stations and so on), as well as search either by address, or by object types. You are also enabled to plan the rout, to point out the start and finish of the rout, as well as to fix the kind of moving (by foot or by car).   The maps are detailed enough to the everyday navigation. Despite the free of charge basic maps, for the additional sum of money you are allowed to obtain the extra services, for example, guides and the more detailed information about objects. Audio Thanks to the 3.5 mm jack you can use the smartphone as the genuine player without buying additional adapters and remote controls. I found the sound quality very good; you will be able to feel the difference between our quest and a MP3-player in fewer headphones, while in the street you don’t notice any of it. The built-in music player supports all popular audio formats, except, of course, Voris Ogg and Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC) and APE. You can also download almost all tracks from your library without limits on bitrate and its type (constant or VBR).    The player also supports ID-tags, including those of the album cover, which is depicted when listening to the album. There is an adjustable equalizer and screen visual effects. All these tricks make listening to music with the N82 not just possible, but very convenient and pleasant pastime, while the device becomes an all-purpose handset. Besides the music, the player comes with the special menu item for podcasts. You choose the necessary podcast by publish date, by title, as well as playing back the recently added. You add new podcast in another menu.   Apart from the podcasts, you find an application allowing to search for the necessary canals in the podcast-directories by key words.   The last audio application, that is worth mentioning is Visual Radio dedicated to listen to the radio with the information downloaded from the Internet and possibility to search for the stations by directories.   Platform, menu The N82 is running 332MGz processor with the 3-D accelerator and big amount of the RAM (about 128MB), thus the performance is very high in all situations. I haven’t faced glitches or any effects of low capacity. The special tests haven’t been carried out. The installed OS is S60 FP1, the latest nowadays. The menu is common to all Nseries smartphones. Let’s look at the main capabilities. The Active Stand-by screen is divided into several horizontal parts, by default there are 6 of them in Nokia N82.  The top part shows the service and backup information – clock, date, battery charge, signal receive level, service icons (new message, Bluetooth etc.). The clock view is adjusted in the menu; you can choose among the traditional clock, as well as the most convenient digital one and nice analog clock, that is not less convenient. Beneath you find the bar with icons for quick start (Active standby) programs and some menu items. In the setting you can change any of this sex menu items for those you need more. To cycle through the icons you press horizontally the navi pad. The third part is given to the Search application installed in the phone. After it goes the standard line of events, notes and memos from the calendar, which is expanded if it necessary. One from the bottom line is the quick access to Wi-Fi, after pressing it you are offered to switch on the sender and find the available nets.  The lowest part is soft-keys functions. The left key, by default, provides access to the messages menu; the right one starts the music player. If it is necessary, the soft-keys functions can be changed in the menu. With pressing the menu button the installed task manager opens. You can cycle through the opened applications and menu items, as well close/open them.  Pressing the power button you call up the menu of quick switching profiles, remove the memory card and turn off the smartphone.   The quick dial is performed with the help of the digital keys; the contact phone numbers can be attached to a number in the special menu item. After pressing the corresponding button on the device, you get to the grid-like main menu. The icons of main items have some animation, though the latter isn’t so beautiful as in Sony Ericsson, it looks not bad.  The small blue circle in the right top corner of an icon means that the app is started or a dialog window of the submenu is opened.  The movement sensor works well in any menu item, you should just turn the smartphone and the screen orientation changes.  Let’s look through the menu items in the way they stand in the main menu. Contacts  The main window of the contacts list comes with two tabs – the contacts and created groups. There is a search in the real time by several entered letters and symbols in the line in the bottom part of the screen. You are allowed to assign individual ringtones to each group.  After you choose a contact, you can scroll the other with the horizontal pressings of the navi pad.  When creating a new contact, by default, you can fill in the big number of different fields, which, as a rule, are sufficient. If you wish, you can add fields in the submenu with the help of the right soft-key.     Messaging  In the messaging you can apart from the standard folders (inbox, drafts, sent, outbox and mail box) create your own folders to sort out messages (My folder submenu). Here you can also find the delivery reports (Reports).  When choosing the New message, you are offered to choose a type of the message – text message, multimedia message, audio message and e-mail.  When creating a text message you see the current typing mode (T9 status, letters size etc.) and the number of the available symbols. The opportunities of the editing include copy, cut and paste commands; they are available via the menu of the right soft-key, as well as the changing of the language. There you also find the sending settings with the message centre, their main settings, the delivery report, which you can switch on or not.  Apart we’d like to focus your attention on the addresses choosing. The device doesn’t remember the recently used numbers, though it is made up by quick search and the possibility to choose the contacts in the phone book. Pressing the central key of the navi bad you choose the necessary contacts, they are marked with the red cross. After the affirmation you are offered to choose the necessary number of each contact, if there are several of them.  Maps  Here you open the Nokia Maps application, which has been described in the GPS review before. Music  This item collects the tabs of all music applications of the smartphone – Music player, Radio, Podcasting, Music Store  Gallery  In the gallery you get access to the whole multimedia content – images & video, tracks, sound clips, streaming links and Lifeblog. The latter application allows to work with you internet-blog.  When viewing photos or videos, they, the same as a in multimedia menu, arranged in the semi-circle. In the centre of it you see the main information about the file – date and time of taking a picture, size, name.  Apart we’d like to mention the Timeline function, which shows the saved snaps in the form of grid, with the elements sorted by date. Each page of the grid is one day. You can look through the days in the top part of the screen. It is very handy, in case you make lots of pictures every day.  Video centre  This application is used to work with the Internet-channels providing the subscription to the video content. By default, there are four items in the whirling menu – My videos (the content of the smartphone), Internet videos (internet directory of channels), added channel Nokia Nseries and Add new service function.     In the sample channel Nseries you can download something from the Internet and view the ad clips. Everything is performed rather convenient; at first to each clip the smartphone downloads a picture-screenshot.  In the settings you are allowed, besides fixing a place to save clips and adjusting the GPRS/EDGE access point by default, to switch off the video service selection and switch on the parental control. The latter option comes in handy when you decide to give your handset to your children and they start examining the various Nokia N82 options. Though the children nowadays know much about mobile phones.   Search  Here you open rather handy Search application, which can be also opened in the stand-by mode. The application allows to search for a content by the key words both in the Internet and the smartphone. You are enabled to look through the search results sorted out by the type of content – video, photo, audio, contacts, messages and so on. This option is very useful, especially if you have several hundreds of sms-messages and you need to find, for example, a phone number in one of them, which was sent no one knows when. The program shows the results in the real time. In order to speed up the process you’d better choose the category, where the search should be carried out.  Web  When opening the browser, it is opened on the tabs page, where, besides the wide choice of bookmarks, you can start entering an address in the corresponding line. The browser, as it supposed, shows the result from the log, as far as you entering symbols.   The browser renders pages very well; the pages are quickly downloaded and don’t change beyond recognition. Though if you plan to browse pages regularly, you’d better install Opera Mini.  RSS-reader (Web feeds) is handy, as it used to be in the S60, because of the possibility to look through the notes with the horizontal pressings. Of course, the automatic renewal can be adjusted to each channel. The pages can be downloaded as well, but when they are cut off, if saves much of the traffic.       Games  Here you open new application N-Gage, the new version of Nokia game platform. Now you can buy games and play them on almost any new smartphone based on the S60 of the Finnish vendor. For the present there are two demo versions with the number of launches limited. They are FIFA07 and Asphalt 3. The former game is the popular football simulator borrowed from the desktops and consoles. The latter is a mediocre race. In any case, N-Gage has wide possibilities, in future this game list is likely to be enriched with good and interesting products. Of course, there is a support to the best nowadays 3D graphic for mobile devices, which just heightens the impressing from gaming.    Tools  This biggest menu item includes 9 submenus, each of them will be examined more closely. Bluetooth  Here you can switch on/off Bluetooth, enter the phone name and its visibility for others. On the special tab you control the paired devoices.   WLAN Wiz  In this submenu you are allowed to view and control all available WLAN-nets, as well as to adjust their filters.   Sync  In this menu you adjust the sync parameters either with PC (PC Suite), or Internet-services. Here you fix the synchronized elements and connection settings.    Profiles  Here you can either create new profiles of smartphone or adjust the available ones.  Settings  The settings menu is divided into 4 categories – General, Phone, Connection and Application.  Settings - General   This section has 6 submenus, let’s look at the main ones. Personalisation – here you adjust the display (wallpaper, themes, font size ), backlit brightness, light sensor, phone and writing language, shortcuts in the stand-by and some other parameters and functions.                  Date and time – this submenu includes all setting concerning date and time, their formats, time zone, alarm clock and workdays.    Enhancement sett – in this submenu you can adjust the wireless devices, car kit and, what is more interesting, the TV-Out parameters.    Security - here you find the security settings, which include PIN-code and lock code request.   Settings – Phone  This submenu collects the main working settings and those ones concerning the phone functions of the smartphone. Call settings – caller ID settings, summary after call, message text, which will be sent in case you have to reject a call, anykey answer and some othersettings.     Network – this is the settings of a net.  Settings – Connection This submenu collects the settings of all communication functions. Some of them copy the settings from other menu items. The adjusted parameters are Bluetooth, USB-connections (you choose the necessary mode), GPRS/EDGE access points, wireless WLAN (only one parameter) and others.           Settings – Applications This menu includes the settings of some applications, for example, Visual Radio, Real player, Voice recorder, Application manager and Log.          Log The main menu of the log consists of two tabs. On the first tab you can look through all saved logs sorted by categories (resent calls, call duration, packet data transfer). The second tab saves all events arranged in one list, in which they are sorted only into incoming and outgoing.   We are more interested in the first tab. Log – Recent calls This part consists of three submenus – missed calls, received calls and dialed number.  Log – Call duration Here you can check the whole duration of all received calls, dialed numbers and the last call.  Log – Packet data Here you see the whole scope of the sent and received data.  File mgr  The file manager allows to control files saved either in the phone memory or in the memory card. The main available options are – copy to folder, delete, move to folder, rename, search, create new folder. Besides you can look at the all file types and the amount of memory they take.     Connectivity   This item collects several special utilities. The most interesting of them is Home media wizard. In case you have a Wi-Fi router at home, you can create a common home wireless net, view which you can set up audio and video streaming. Naturally, the N82 can be connected to it and receive the transferred content.  Conn. mgr - is a common manager of the set connections.  The GPS data item includes several standard utilities allowing to identify the current coordinates, to use GPS as a compass and tachometer. Here you can adjust the used measurement system.   There are also utilities to control Internet telephony, Push to talk function and landmarks on the map.    Utilities   In this section you find the system utilities, including speed dial keys, voice dial commander and voice call mailbox commander. There are also some informational utilities providing information about device, installed memory card, S60 manual, first time wizard.       The two utilities, which are worth paying attention, are Phone switch and 3-D tones. Phone switch arranges all personal data to be transfered to the another compatible device.  3-D tones allows to use installed in the smartphone stereo dynamics to create interesting effects when playing back ringtone. You can choose among the several preinstalled sound trajectories and their speed. The effects sounds interesting, though sometimes the difference isn’t so obvious.      Applications   This menu item collects all preinstalled smartphone applications. The half of them is standard, like alarm clock, calculator, calendar, app manager.      The Media folder hosts the icons for voice recorder, Real player, Flash-player (it allows to play back the downloaded clips), activation keys manager, IM client and Lifeblog client.     The office folder contains converter, Adobe PDF reader, the program for Zip-archives, curtailed Quickoffice (it supports only MS Office files) and Barcode application.   Download!  It is a standard Nokia application used to download programs and other content from the net right into the handset.   Multimedia menu The multimedia menu is an interesting application acknowledged to be the one of the most important features of the phone. It is called up by the pressing the button, which we have already mentioned above, located between right soft-key and reject button. It can be launched from any window; organized in the carousel-like form it shows the items expressing the main possibilities of the device. The items can change their order according to you wish. When you choose an item, it enlarges (you can see it on the screenshots), though because of the increasing pixels it look in an untidy manner. We’d like to note, that besides the visual navigation through the mu;ltimedia possibilities of the N82, the menu gives no new possibilities; when choosing that or those functions, you get to the standard OS tools. Let’s look at the menu items and try to understand, if there is any sense in it. Gallery – on this tab you see the last captured image; from here you can get to the album and slide show.   Music – besides the information of the played track; from here you can get to the playlists, list of the music files, podcasts and shuffle all songs.  Videos – everything is the same as in the Music; here you can have a look at the information about last clip.  Games – provides reference to the installed demos, as well as the internet-service to download new games.  Maps – provides the list of maps available to use when navigating.  Internet – is the common list of tabs.  Contacts – is one of the most useful tabs allowing to compound a list of the favorite contacts.   All in all, this menu can be convenient and useful only if you adjust all settings by yourself, otherwise there is no sense in it. The new tabs order established by your may allow you to get shorter cut to the all necessary function. The multimedia menu is likely to be complemented in future and substantially remade to improve the interface and broad the functionality. Only after all improvements this option becomes really demanded and interesting. Conclusion I am not afraid of naming Nokia N82 one of the best multimedia devices of this year and the outstanding device from the Nseries. Paying the adequate bill, you get the smartphone featuring almost the same specifications and possibilities as the flagship model Nokia N95 but in the common bar form-factor and with the interesting uncommon design. All possibilities of the N82 are perfectly implemented, they are convenient and pleasing in use. Efficient quality casing, handy navigation, perfect sound (don’t forget about the 3.5mm jack), stunning picture and video quality with Wi-Fi are rarely can be met in one device on the market, aren’t they? In order to put a fly in the ointment, I’d emphasize rather large dimensions (this fact may spurn women and those keen on slim solutions spoiled by Nokia E51) and controversial numerical keys, which don’t satisfy everyone. The device is likely to be the smash hit of this year and may appear in other colour schemes (though it’s too early to speak about it). Nokia N82 can be recommended to almost all users, who are ready to spend about $700-750 on this multifunctional device. Among the possible rivals we can mention Sony Ericsson K850i with the competitive camera, though it lacks Wi-Fi, GPS and 3.5 mm jack. This Sony Ericcson device is rather a photo solution, than an all-purpose unit. One more advantage of the N82 is the operating system, though some users might be afraid of spending some time and will on its adjusting and customizing. © Written by Evgeniy Evsikov, Mobiset.ru Translated by Arina Urban. Published — 16 April 2008. |
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