Hi-Mobile.net sent us over one of the highest-end phones ever released, the Nokia N82. A rich smartphone, running the latest version of Symbian OS and S60 3.1 is sure to raise some eyebrowses as the model resembles in feature-set (of its time) and overall looks of the very successful 6680 that was first released in early 2005. In fact, the more I look at this model, the more I get the feeling that a product manager walked in at an engineering meeting one Monday morning and proclaimed: “Gentlemen, we need to resurrect the 6680“.The N82 is a quad-band EDGE smartphone with non-US HSDPA/WCDMA 2100 3G support. Its 16mil TFT 2.4″ screen is able to deliver a resolution of 240×320, while its microSD hot-swap card slot can support up to 4GBs according to the Nokia spec page (my guess is that it’s artificially limited in order to not compete with the 8GB storage version of the N81). The N82 comes with Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g with UPnP technology and VoIP support, Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP/AVRCP support, a built-in GPS receiver, a motion sensor (which auto-rotates the UI depending how you are holding the phone), stereo FM radio, TV-out, a QVGA video call camera, and a 5MP Carl Zeiss camera with a Xenon flash. The phone uses an ARM11 at 332Mhz, 128 MB RAM, 256 MB of storage out of which 100 MBs are available for the user, and finally, a 3D graphics hardware accelerator.
In the box we found the phone, a 1050 mAh battery, a standard Nokia charger, a USB data cable (not used for re-charging), a TV-out composite cable, a 2GB microSD, and a 3.5mm headphones/handsfree. The N82 comes in a silver color and despite all its features, it weighs just 114 grams. In fact, I dare to say that overall, it’s the same size as the iPhone, even if in comparison the N82 will look thicker. If you take into account the extra features it’s got, technologically speaking Nokia is delivering a “same overall volume” phone as the iPhone. Regarding its functionality, the N82 had great battery life and excellent reception. Audio voice quality was very good too, one of the best we’ve seen lately. Bluetooth worked very steadily and was very fast, and WiFi too. One interesting thing was though that it would refuse to connect to our wifi router without that router being connected itself to the internet. Sure, if your wifi router is not connected to the net via a DSL/Cable modem you can’t get access to the net, however, if you just want local usage of WiFi the “WLAN Scanning” application should not refuse to connect. I don’t know if the error happens because it tries to send data to nokia’s servers or anything like that, this is something that our hacker readers should look up, it’s just something that I found peculiar.
On the right side of the phone you will find stereo speakers, a volume up/down set of buttons, a camera button and a “gallery” button that loads an application with your media. On the left side you will find the microSD slot, the charger port, and the microUSB port. It is a shame that Nokia did not continue the tradition of using the much more standard miniUSB port they used in some of their other models, as the N82’s thickness is plenty enough for the miniUSB port. On the top, you will find the 3.5mm jack and the on/off button. At the back, there’s a Xenon flash and the 5MP camera which comes with a protective sleeve. On the front, you will find all the usual S60 buttons, plus the videocall camera on the upper left of the device.
The N82 is much focused on multimedia. It’s got at least 2-3 apps that the only thing they do is to find media and load other playback applications, and for me this is a bit too much as themselves are not playback apps. Nevertheless, you will also find a pretty good audio application, a stereo FM app, Real Player for streaming and video playback, podcasting, the infamous music store that Nokia recently announced, the LifeBlog application and more. Playing back h.264 and MPEG4-SP files on the N82 was an easy job and the speed and quality delivered was very good. Other formats supported at 3GPP formats (H.263) and RealVideo 7,8,9/10. Other features include audio equalizer, audio recorder in AMR format, audio streaming and support for 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. It also supports Flash Lite 2.0, but hopefully in a future firmware upgrade version Flash Lite 3.0 will be included, as it has full youtube support.
Other applications in the phone are the standard messaging app, VoIP (works great with GizmoProject), the Nokia Search application that can search both the internet and the phone, PTT, UPnP as both a server and a client, the WebKit-based browser and of course the GPS support. The N82 seems to have fewer problems locating a satellite than my N95 has and so this was extra nice. The N82 also supports PDF reading and comes with QuickOffice for document reading. Other applications include Notes, Clock, Converter, File manager, calendar and more. Java support is as speedier as ever. I won’t get into more detail on the application side because S60 phones use pretty much the same applications and so I will be repeating myself to no end with all the Nokia phones I’ve reviewed so far.
Nevertheless, a particular new application requires some mentioning. That’s the N-Gage platform support. While it’s not ready yet for download, the N82 is NGage-ready. It has a 3D accelerator in it, and it came pre-installed with two 3D games to showcase the platform. I would normally get very exciting about fast, and good-looking 3D games on a phone, but something is holding me back. And that’s the keypad usability of the N82. It’s terrible. I can’t type fast and precise with that keypad on normal operations, let alone play a game that requires extra speed! The biggest problem is the 4-way joystick. It’s mushy, and not rigid. It keeps doing things I don’t want to do just because it’s so imprecise. One thing I don’t understand is that after over 100 models of phones that Nokia has released, why they haven’t found the best average way that the average costumer likes his keypad to be and then stick with that design. Honestly, I don’t get it. If I had such a high profile company I would take the average user experience on the various keypad designs I had offered in the past and create one that’s overall as good as it can be. It can’t be perfect as there’s always room for improvements, but it can come close because you will use prior knowledge to design something. Instead, all we see manufacturers do is play with random industrial designs and pick different ones on different phone models just so the models look visually refreshed. How non-pragmatic.
On a better note about the N82 you will find the 5MP CMOS camera and its VGA video recording. It’s as good as it gets. Both the application that let’s you control the camera and the camera quality itself is top notch. It has autofocus support, Carl Zeiss Optics, a very powerful flash, red-eye reduction support, a self timer, image stabilization and exposure/night mode support. You can also use the secondary camera for pictures/video. The secondary camera grabs video at QCIF at 15fps. Overall, the N82 takes better pictures than the LG Vewty we reviewed two weeks ago, but worse video. Main camera video sample here and secondary camera video sample here (please right click to “save as” the videos and view them offline).
Without a doubt, users who want to buy a high-end Nokia smartphone these days might get confused between the N82 and the N81-8GB as the two models come in very similar prices and feature-sets. The major differences between the two models are easily found if you put the two main specifications side by side (e.g. camera, 3D and GPS differences), so I will provide now some differences that are not immediately visible from most spec pages on the internet: the N81 can only capture QVGA video at 15fps instead of 30fps even if its capable of doing so, the N82 has a cap on its microSD capacity at 4GBs, the N81 only has WCDMA and not HSDPA, the N81 has less storage and 96 MB of RAM instead of 128 but it has a faster CPU at 369 Mhz, the N82 has OMA Device Management v1.2 support while the N81 has 1.1.2, the N81 has HID and GAP additional Bluetooth profiles, the N81 has “presence” support and higher standby battery life. So pick wisely.
This is a very nice phone, highly recommended, losing points only on its non-standard USB port and bad keypad. But other than that, it’s one of the best new phones in the market right now so take notice!
Rating: 8/10
This phone may have lots of features but it has failed to address the iPhone’s main selling points.
1. No touchscreen. Keypads are on their way out, especially on high-end phones. iPhone has multitouch. This doesn’t even have an ordinary screen.
2. Size and appearance. This may be small in volume but people judge gadgets by thickness. This phone is also decent looking but nothing revolutionary.
3. SImplicity & Doing Things Properly: As usual, nokia has thrown in tons of features (many are useless) but has implemented in a slow, limited and impractical manner. And its media features are still junk in comparison to the iPhone.
4. Screen Size – People dont enjoy watching videos on tiny screens!
This may be the dream phone for some but it still doesn’t adequately address the iPhone.
It has also failed to address Nintendo Wii’s main selling points.[/sarcasm]
What’s wrong with comparing a high end phone with another high end phone? The article compared it to the iPhone.
iPhone seems more like media player with some phone functionality added as an afterthought. Nokia devices are built as phones first IMHO.
Edited 2008-01-13 18:52 UTC
Umm, not everyone likes the design approach of the iPhone?
“Keypads are on their way out.”
Only for you and the Jobs fanclub. Some people prefer keyboards. Just because Apple makes a certain design decision does not mean everyone else has to blindly follow it.
“Size and appearance. This may be small in volume but people judge gadgets by thickness. This phone is also decent looking but nothing revolutionary.”
Other people judge gadgets not only by their thickness. Have you considered why Nokia released the N81 and N82? Do you understand the concept of market segments?
“SImplicity & Doing Things Properly: As usual, nokia has thrown in tons of features (many are useless) but has implemented in a slow, limited and impractical manner. And its media features are still junk in comparison to the iPhone.”
Again, junk for you and Jobs fanboy club. Let see you getting FLAC and ogg support on your iPhone. I personally think that iTunes (on any platform) is one of the most obnoxious pieces of software in existence. A media player that intentionally has limited codec support, how crazy is that?
Don’t apply your Applesque “one size fits all” attitude to the N82. Rather than acting like brainless fanboy, why don’t you discuss relevant issues like how easy it is to use the keyboard design of the N82, or th build quality.
Man, I hate fanboys. Take shit from no one! In the end they are ll corporations that aim to brainwash us and get our money.
I am thinking of buying a new DAP. My budget is around $500. I am debating between buying a HD based DAP or just getting a phone with a 3.5 mm jack and at least 8gb of space.
I debating between buying a N81 and N82. I don’t really care about the camera (although the picture quality of the N82 looks like its approaching levels that could start making dedicated cameras redundant), but I do care about internet connectivity.
Any N81 or N82 users out there? How is the multimedia experience on these phones? Anyone have any luck with installing FLAC/ogg codecs and using the native media player?
I am also kind of concerned about the build quality of the N81. Is it solid? Does it scratch easily?
Is it viable to go to the gym with a N81?
Any suggesting or comments are welcome. Feel free to suggest some other phone that can play mp3/flac/ogg, has a 3.5 mm jack and has all the standard smartphone features…
There is a third party ogg app for Symbian, it works on all S60 phones.
I am guessing you’re talking about oggplay?
Do you have any experience using it with the N81/N82? Are the dedicated music keys usable with oggplay?
Edited 2008-01-13 22:49 UTC
Special stuff, no. Only volume possibly.
I have an N95 8GB which basically runs the same base OS as these devices. I’d personally take an S60 v3 device any day over the flashy but useless iPhone. I don’t know what kind of crack this guy is smoking but from what I’ve been reading, a lot of people outside the Apple crack addict camp aren’t so crazy about touch screens UI’s – yes, there are people who like it but it’s not the majority of users by far. I personally HATE having to put my fingers all the time on the same surface that I’m trying to read from. Not the most pleasurable experience reading my mail after I’ve left all my fingerprints on top of it.
As far as a music player, I think it’s great. I don’t need any crazy features – it reads all my MP3’s just fine, the music library is similar to the first gen iPods – very basic which I like a lot. It has very good sound quality, it has equalizer and with the built-in media keys (or the media keys on the headphones remote), it is very easy to use. The only gripe I had was that the ear buds that came with it aren’t that great but the headphones remote has a normal jack so you can plug in your own earbuds (which I have done).
Oh, and the S60 platform has a very healthy software ecosystem available… on the iPhone you can’t even install your own software – and they call it a smart phone… give me a f***n break… The thing doesn’t even have 3G support, camera sucks balls (did I mention the N95 has a **5** MP camera w/ Carl Zeiss optics), no GPS… It’s a complete joke! Yes, I know they will be supposedly fixing a lot of the things I mentioned in the next gen iPhone but I’m sure Nokia and the Windows Mobile camp will have yet again better devices available by then…
Windows Mobile 7 looks like will be awesome and for the touchscreen freaks, S60 Touch UI is well on it’s way (hopefully this year). And for the keyboard fans like me, Nokia just patented a dual-slider phone design that has a full QWERTY as well as an old-school keypads.
“5 years ahead” of other phones. GIVE… ME… A… DAMN… BREAK!!!!
There are many alternative media players for S60v3. Many supporting both OGG and MP3, haven’t seen one with FLAC support though.
CorePlayer can play anything you throw at it but it’s more of a video player so it doesn’t have music library functionality. It also costs money. And if you’re hardcore enough (;)) there’s Scenetone, free player that can play SID and MOD files.
Regarding flac; I just found this post.
http://www.symbian-skin.com/post/Oggplay-v1.71-3rd.html
Thank you!
(I don’t care about 3D effects and switch it off if possible)
The iPhone’s not for me. No keypad for easy one handed entry when you’re on foot and in a hurry, and the lack of GPS or a decent camera too. However there’s no denying the iPhone is pretty impressive for a first attempt at a high end mobile phone. Nokia with it’s clunky ugly Symbian OS needs to be worried and hopefully the extra competition will give them the kick up the backside they need.
The Symbian OS is too full of inconsistencies, bugs, and features that randomly come and go between different phone versions. The email client is insultingly bad for example, and why can E series phones edit the widgets on active standby screen but the N series can’t?
The quality of third party Symbian applications isn’t that impressive either so it’s probably not a very nice platform to develop for.
Edited 2008-01-15 12:15 UTC
Is when are we going to see a Maemo based phone?