Nokia N82
Discontinued 14th November 2007
How do you follow up a success like
the Nokia
N95? Well, one way to do it is to follow the path
of the Nokia
N95 8GB and give it more memory and a larger screen.
If you wanted to go further, then you'd probably dream
up something even more superlative than the N95 and
call it the Nokia N96. So, the Nokia N82 is a
surprise, because it's not really what we would imagine
a successor to the N95 to be like.
The very first thing that strikes you
about the Nokia N82 is just how ordinary it looks.
Where the N95 was frankly a bit mad with its two-way
slider, the N82 is a straightforward monoblock design
with an uncluttered keypad and large QVGA display.
Pretty much everything from the original
N95 has been directly ported over to the N82. There's
a five megapixel camera with Xenon flash, autofocus and
a Carl Zeiss lens, 3G support with HSDPA, WiFi, microSD
expandable memory (with 2GB in the sales package), A-GPS
(Assisted GPS), a video calling camera, FM radio and
stereo Bluetooth.
This is a Symbian S60 smartphone, so
it comes with a web browser, email client, document
viewer, advanced multimedia player and the N82 also
has a set of personal information management (PIM) applications.
Nokia Maps is preinstalled for basic GPS use, although
expect to pay a fee for more advanced mapping functions.
Video capture is an impressive 640x480 pixels at 30
frames per second.
Because
this is based on the N95, you can expect everything
to work well (yes, some of the early N95s were buggy,
but owners can easily update their phone's firmware
now). The camera quality should be excellent, and that's
mostly down to good optics rather than raw megapixels.
One nice new feature is an iPhone-style
sensor that changes the screen orientation when the
phone is rotated.
There are a couple of drawbacks. The
uncluttered look of the Nokia N82 means that there are
no dedicated multimedia keys, and the display is smaller
at 2.4" in size, compared to 2.6" on the N95
(and 2.8" on the N95 8GB). We anticipate that the
newer Nokia N95 8GB will continue to be sold alongside
the N82 as the N95 8GB is somewhat more highly specified.
The model name is a bit of a giveaway
- Nokia are positioning the N82 in a slightly lower
product range along with the new N81.
This leaves the N95 8GB and Nokia
E90 as the flagship devices in Nokia's lineup.
Perhaps the Nokia N82 is a little disappointing
in some respects. If you already own a Nokia N95 then
there's no real reason to change your handset. However,
if you're in the market for a quality 3G phone with
a first rate camera, then the Nokia N82 is going to
be very hard to beat.
Nokia say that the N82 is available
now from selected retailers at an unsubsidised cost
of around €450 (or approximately £300).
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Nokia
N82 at a glance
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Available:
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Q4
2007
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Network:
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GSM 850
/ 900 / 1800 / 1900 UMTS
2100
|
Data:
|
GPRS
+ EDGE + UMTS (3G) + HSDPA
+ WiFi
|
Screen:
|
240x320
pixels, 16m colours
|
Camera:
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5
megapixels
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Size:
|
Medium
monoblock 112 x 50 x
17mm / 114 grams
|
Bluetooth:
|
Yes
|
Memory
card:
|
microSD
|
Infra-red:
|
No
|
Polyphonic:
|
Yes
|
Java:
|
Yes
|
Battery
life:
|
3
hours talk / 8 days standby
(3G) 4 hours talk / 9
days standby (2G)
|
|
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