Nokia N82 Review

The N95 was happily sitting at its high perch as Nokia’s most premium and best selling phone when one fine day the stork delivered the N82 to the unsuspecting masses. This put the N95 into a spot of bother. Everyone thought it was promising and the ads on the idiot box looked good, the phone looked even better (in th ads, i.e.) but does the phone live up to the expectations? Lets find out.

Looks, design and build quality

The N82 bears a striking resemblance to the N73, except that it looks as if the N73 put on some weight. But surprisingly, this doesn’t translate into more mass and the weight seems well distributed all across. (It could do with some size shedding though). This gives the handset a sturdy solid and chunky feel. But nevertheless, it does feel as though it might just slip away the palm.

Sadly Nokia doesn’t have any more colors than the one shown in the picture. It looks nice alright, but the bright metallic shade might not be to everybody’s liking.

Keypad

The keypad has a rather odd design and you can operate it best when you have a slight overgrowth of fingernails. It looks like some old pocket calculator and I don’t think it was such a smart option. Giving something new(and stupid) is not always necessary, Nokia; a normal keypad would have done just fine.

Display

When I wrote about the iPhone back in August, I was sure of its tech trickling down in the other phones. Sure enough, we have the accelerometer making an appearance in the N82. What this essentially does is, when you tilt the phone horizontally, it changes the orientation of the screen to landscape. And back to portrait, when you hold it straight.

That apart, the display is a neat little 2.4 inch unit displaying 16.7 million colors. I had no problems reading the display even in bright sunlight.

Entertainment and Multimedia

Full marks to the N82 here. There’s hardly anything out of the blue that the N82 cant execute. The photo gallery, albeit a bit slow to load, looks delicious. The phone also has a 3.5mm jack to insert your own headphones and have fun.

Camera

Coming to the piece de resistance of the N82, its brilliant Carl Zeiss 5MP camera with a Xenon flash. Thank goodness for the small mercies I say. The camera on this phone is as good as I have ever seen. Color reproduction is fairly accurate. Here are some pictures (I ran out of battery juice when I wanted to take a macro shot)

PerformanceNokia phones are never really performers. They are more like elephants; loaded but slow. There’s no escaping the same sluggishness exhibited in other phones. But call quality and battery life are a lot better in that context.Thanks to that big size, I presume Nokia must have had enough space to plonk a big ass battery into the phone. And sure enough, we see a 1050mAH battery doing duty in the N82. You can easily go 2 full days without a run to the power socket. 2 days of listening to music 3 hrs a day, some camera usage, 1 hour of talking and some bluetooth usage.

Multimedia and Entertainment

N series phones have never had a problem being entertaining Geisha’s of a phone and this one just follows the rule. It can take on everything you throw at it and them some. It also has a 3.5mm jack so that you can fit in any god damned headphone you want. It also doesn’t miss out on a FM radio player.

The on board games too are worthy of a mention. You have FIFA 07, Asphalt 3 and Snake, which is a delight to play.

Conclusion A lot cheaper than the N95 and like me, if you hate moving parts, this is the one for you. If you don’t mind the size and the chunky looks of the Nokia N82 is a sweet deal considering the price which is a lot lower than the N95.

Tags: n series, n82, nokia