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Thanks to my über ability to always forget something, I managed to end up with no charger for my cell phone for the summer. Since it was an ancient Panasonic X700 it was long due to be replaced, so I decided that is was time to pick up a new phone.
Originally I was planning to wait for the first Google Android platform phones to enter the market, but since I needed a phone ASAP I had to compromise. So I started considering the iPhone, since it is the only thing currently in the market filling the same niche as Android.
Unfortunately the iPhone, even though it offers the best user interface money can buy at the moment, feature-wise it is way too disappointing with way too many limitations. Since I tend to keep my gadgets for many years without replacing them, I needed something better.
So after considering countless of different phones, I finally found the one. The Nokia N82 Black.
Even though the N82 doesn’t boast an impresive touch screen, even though it is a little ugly and with a pretty disappointing battery performance, if I am to drag around a device with me for the next few years, it better be able to do as much as the N82 can.
Being a Nokia smartphone, it uses a real, WebKit based, web rendering engine for it’s browser, not some mobile WAP-style crap. A cell phone will never be the ideal tool for web browsing, but with a real web browser with Flash Lite support, it gets the job done in case I need to check something on the go.
Built in Wi-Fi support makes sure you don’t have to pay a fortune in order to enjoy it’s online features, which also include online radio, SIP support, instant messaging, uploading tools for Flickr, Facebook, Youtube etc.
The included A-GPS module is pretty accurate but unfortunately I couldn’t find any detailed enough maps for outside Chania (only the center), but back in Heraklion it will be really usefull (yeah, I get lost a lot). Yes, it supports voice navigation.
However, what really sets the N82 appart from any phone I know of, are it’s truly impressive (for a phone) photographic abilities. While it’s true that no cell phone can be compared to a true photo camera, the N82 gets pretty close. With a 5 MP sensor behind a Carl Zeiss lens, and a proper xenon flash – not a led, the only thing missing is optical zoom.
What is really cool is that it can automatically geotag your photos as you take them, using the built in A-GPS receiver. Video recording quality is pretty good as well, at 30fps in VGA resolution. More test photos, including a failed night shot, are available on my flickr profile.
Of course it also includes some useless features that I will never actually use, like TV-out and barcode scanning. What where they thinking? Fortunately most of those features don’t get in my way so I don’t really care. It’s also really nice that Nokia uses standard connectors and slots for everything, from micro USB and micro SD, to a standard 3,5mm jack for audio and hands free.
Performance wise it’s doing pretty well, with plenty of muscle to handle my everyday multitasking without any slowdowns. The downsides I’ve found so far is lack of optical zoom, not detailed enough maps for suburban areas of Greece, and somewhat tricky management of WLAN access points. The last one can easily be overcome with a third party application called Psiloc Connect, and I can live with the other two.
All in all I think it is a great phone which will last me for some time. Even at 400 euros it offers more features than most 500-600 euro phones, and it does it at a convenient candybar form factor.