Ye Giant Nokia N82 Review

Thanks to WomWorld , I got to play around with a Nokia N82 (Black edition) for a couple of weeks. I was already so impressed by it that I had gotten one of my own, earlier. Trading in my N95-1 to do so.

Why’d I do that ? Well you’ll have to read on, to know why I thought the N82 is the best, most feature rich N-Series phone to date.

The Nokia N95, when it came out, made heads turn all over the world. It had GPS, WiFi , A 5mp camera, TV-Out and a slew of other features that impressed me enough to make me pick up one.

Then came the Nokia N82. It had everything and every feature the N95 had but in a smaller package, only losing out on the bigger screen and IR-port, but gaining a Xenon Flash, way better battery life, and in my opinion, much better build quality.

At first I didnt think it was worth the upgrade. I was adamant that nothing and noone could tear me away from my N95. But then I used an N82 for a day, and the xenon flash powered 5 megapixel carl zeiss lens equipped camera, blew me away. I take a lot of pictures in low light situations situations, and the difference between the N95‘s single led flash and the N82‘s Xenon flash is literally like night and day (Read Comparison between Led Flash and Xenon) . As someone who takes a ton of pictures, I just had to have it !

And I’m proud to say, I do not regret my decison at all ! Even a week later, I still loved the N82. Yes, I was that impressed with it.

Well enough about me ! Lets head onto the review. Starting with a few of the N82 specs. I’d list them all out, but the phone has so many darn awesome features, that it’d be one long list.

A couple of the main features are :

- 5 megapixel camera with auto focus and Carl Zeiss optics
- Xenon flash and active snappy lens cover
- 2.4″ 16M color QVGA display
- 128 MB RAM
- Wi-Fi with UPnP support
- Built-in GPS receiver and A-GPS functionality
- Nokia maps application covering over 100 countries worldwide
- Standard 3.5 mm audio jack on the top
- 3G (with HSDPA), EDGE and GPRS support
- Symbian OS 9.2 Series 60 3rd edition Feature Pack 1
- TV-out
- Automatic UI rotation with built in Accelerometer
- Stereo speakers
- Large capacity battery

Phew. Thats a handful eh ?

On with the pictures ! You can view the high(er) resolution version of the image by clicking on it, and again when it takes you to the Share on Ovi site.

Front view :

The front of the device has the 2.4″ screen along with a front-facing VGA camera above it on the left side, with the earpiece grill and the ambient light sensor on either side of it. Below the screen we have the call button in green and the left selection key and menu button , on the left side of the D-pad. On the right side we have the right selection key, the multimedia key, and the “c” key to delete items. Next to that, is the call-end button in red. Below that is the keypad. It is all very well and evenly lit back the backlight, in low light situations.

The D-pad could have been a little bigger imho, to prevent accidental keypresses, but you get used to it eventually.

Apologies for the fingerprint smudges on the screen. Unfortch, the glossy surface of the N82, makes it hard to keep it squeeky clean. It attracts smudges very easily.

Back View :

The back of the N82 is very well designed. Proudly showing off “Nokia Nseries“.

The first thing you’d notice is the 5 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics and the Xenon flash. The Xenon flash is easily the most powerful flash I’ve come across. The camera also has a lens protector cover that opens by a small silver slider right above it. Its very snappy and is spring assisted, so it wont open accidentally, at the same time being easy enough to open yourself. I honestly loved it.

The battery compartment locks in tight and there are no unwanted creeks or squeaks to be heard from it. Doesnt attract fingerprints as well as the front, thankfully.

Top view and Bottom view :

The Top of the device (left) houses the 3.5mm jack plug, with the power button right next to it. On one side of it, is the lanyard attachment point, if you wish to use one.

The bottom of the device (right) is very plain, only having the microphone hole.

Left and Right Side views :

The left side of the device (left) houses a slot for your micro-SD card (a 2GB one comes in box), with a micro-usb port and the charging point on either side. My only gripe here is that the micro-usb port, doesnt have a rubber/plastic cover like the Micro-SD card slot does, which lets a lot of dust in.

The right side of the device (right) has the stereo speakers at either end. It also contains the dedicated camera button (which has half-shutter mode), gallery/last-picture review button and volume keys (used to zoom in and out in camera mode).

The fact that both stereo speakers are on one side means that while watching videos in landscape, the audio is loud enough, but in other situations when the phone is in portrait mode, this means that the audio gets a bit muffled, as chances are your hand is covering one of the speakers.

As you can see from the pictures, the N82 is pretty small for the features it boasts. Its about the same size (length-wise…a lot thinner width-wise) of the N95 in closed slider mode.

The Box :

APAC version of the left, EURO version on the right :

The back of the box :

Rediscover storytelling indeed.

The list of features you’re getting in the software. Intimidating :

Standard Nokia N-series box. When you open it, like most Nokia phones, you get a random picture of someone having fun, and the Model number, with the tagline under it :

Open that, and you get the N82 device, the battery and memory card, with the stereo headset.

Included in the Box :

In box you get the N82, battery, 2GB MicroSD card (varies from country) with adapter, a Travel Charger, TV-Out Cable and the Micro-Usb to Usb PC cable. It’s nice to have the microUSB cable as these are rare due to the fact that I havent actually seen any other device than a mobile phone make use of them. You also get a stereo headset, which is one piece, which means you cant use the hands-free remote with another set of earphones. No problem though, the N82 has a standard 3.5mm plug, so you can plug in almost any standard set of headphones !

The box also contains the manual and quick start guide which introduces you to the phone’s main features. Theres also a CD with Nokia PC Suite and a few S60 applications included.

I wish they’d have also included a leather pouch (included in limited number of white N82 sales packages) or a lanyard though.

The Battery :

The N82 has the standard Nokia phone method of removing the battery cover. Just push the button on the lower end and slide the cover upwards, and its off.

The N82 has the BP-6MT battery with a capacity of 1050 mAh. Standby is quoted at 225 hours, and Nokia claims a talk time of 4 and a half hours. Though not necessarily the best figures, this is a lot more than the N95. Atleast in my real-world tests. The N82 got me through the whole day on one charge, in situations where the N95 would be gasping at just one battery bar left.

Firmware :

The N82 that WomWorld sent me was on firmware version 20.0.062 . There has been a new firmware upgrade available since, that is version 30.0.019. The improvements and change log can be found here.

The Camera :

Ah. Now this was the part of the N82 that totally had me. The main camera is basically the same 5 Megapixel Auto-Focus Carl Zeiss lens as the N95, with a couple improvements here and there. The main deal though, is the Xenon flash this baby has. Its by far the best camera-phone I’ve used.

Like I said before, the camera lens cover snaps shut and open very slick. Its way better than the mechanism on the N95-1. The Auto-focus is light assisted and uses a very cool red LED which shoots out a red beam on an item to focus the camera on it. The Xenon flash is more powerful than the Sony Ericsson k850i that a friend of mine has. I was definitely loving it. To take a picture, you have to press the dedicated camera button. You have to half press it to focus and then fully depress the button to capture a picture.

Video recording is also present at a nice 30fps at VGA resolution. Nokia calls it “Dvd-like recording“.

The interface is the same as the N95 Variants, and camera startup is slightly faster than the N95-8GB camera.

There are several mode selections and other options to tinker with such as iso settings, self timer, red eye reduction, sharpness, macro, etc.

Also present for the first time on an N-series device (and now present on v30 firmware of the N95 variants) is GPS location tagging. With this feature, your photos are automatically geo-tagged with your location co-ordinates. Later you can upload it to a compatible service such as Flickr or Share on Ovi and you can see, on a map, where the picture was taken.

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For samples of the the camera capabilities, you can check out my Travels section. I’ve also taken the N82 with me, at a night in the club.

The front facing camera is a lowly VGA camera, but serves to make 3G Video Calls only, so it does its job pretty well.

You definitely wont be using it a lot otherwise.

The Symbian UI :

The N82 uses the Symbian OS 9.2 Feature Pack 1, like the N95 variants. Its UI is very similar to the N95-8GB, with no real “extras” to speak of. It also lacks the menu transition effects of the N81 UI (In its latest firmware). The screen is at QVGA resolution.

The active standby home-screen :

The N82‘s standby screen is pretty much the same as the N95. You have your six standby shortcut icons on the top, search plugin, the calender plugin and the Wifi scanning plugin (In v30 of the N82, there is a Share Online plugin in addition to these) :

As is usual in S60, you can also assign 2 applications to the left and right selection keys respectively.

Sadly, the N82 doesnt allow you to choose which standby plugins to show. Its either you have them all displayed or none at all. There is also no “switch” feature. Both of these can be found on the Nokia E71 I reviewed earlier, which is almost the same exact OS version.

The Menu :

The menu of the N82 is pretty much the basic N-series icons and menu style. You can also install themes to change the look of it. Its feature pack 1 so there arnt any “pretty” transitions when you go from folder to folder, but it does the job well enough. No complaints here. The N82 also has an accelerometer and supports screen-rotation in most places other than the homescreen.

Internet browsing :

The N82 has plenty of ram, and hence it is good at Internet browsing. You can load most websites with no problem at all. There’s also Flash Lite 3 onboard which means you can view youtube and other videos online with no hassle.

The screen does appear a little cramped though. This is because there isnt as much screen real estate to use as on the larger screen sized N95-8GB and E71.

The N82 supports 3G, Edge, GPRS and WiFi so you’ll rarely have a moment where you dont have to way to connect to the world wide web. Connected through Wifi is very simple and just requires a couple of keypresses thanks to the WiFi scanning plugin on the homescreen.

Like most N-series phones these days, the N82 does support Internet Telephony (but not out of the box like my N95-1 did). You’ll have to install Fring or Gizmo to “unlock” that feature. It works fine once that happens though.

Share Online :

A whole bunch of N-series phones now have this application called “Share Online“. Basically what it is, is an easier way to upload media such as images or video directly to an online hosting site such as Flickr or Share on Ovi.

It also supports Vox. In some count
ries, all the services might not be listed on your phone. Luckily, there is a way to get around that.

The Gallery and Video Center :

The N82 has a pretty good gallery application. The only thing I didnt like about it was that it shows both photos and videos and not either of the two.

There is also a Video Center, where you can view your videos, download new ones or subscribe to Video Podcasts (in the N82‘s V30 firmware).

Messaging :

Messaging on the N82 is a little iffy. I say this because, the keypad does take a lot of getting used to. Infact, the only gripe my friends had with this phone was the keypad. I’ve had people say “Dude , this is an awesome phone…..but that keypad sucks so bad”.

I’ll admit its true. Initially I was very much in doubt if I’d ever get used to it. But after a while, you really do, and now i’m pretty sure I’m typing as many words per minute on the N82 as I did on the N95. Its still not as comfortable though.

The only positive point about the keypad design though is each key is very easily distinguishable. Because each key is like a tiny knob that you press on.

But when it comes down to it, if you’re an active texter, you’ll probably not like the N82 until you give it a chance to get used to the keypad.

The Calender :

Basic N-series calender. Nowhere as good as the one on the E71 I reviewed though.

Search :

The Search application is pretty much the same as other devices :

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