Nokia N82 in Black

Expected Q2 2008
18th March 2008

As a matter of principle, we very rarely carry stories about handsets being launched in a different colour from the original. A new coat of paint does not make a new phone, but in the case of the Nokia N82 in Black (or "Nokia N82 in black" as Nokia like to call it in lowercase) there's a little more to this variant than just a different colour.

Most features are identical to the original Nokia N82, but the Black version now supports geotagging, a feature that was all the rage at last month's big Mobile World Congress event. Put simply, this version of the N82 will record the GPS position of your photograph, so its exact location is recorded. This is useful for sorting photos, but certain filesharing sites can also read the GPS location data for easy identification.

Although it's a fairly normal looking phone, the Nokia N82 comes with A-GPS (assisted GPS), a 5 megapixel camera with autofocus and flash, WiFi, HSDPA high-speed data, 3G UMTS / WCDMA, a stereo FM radio and microSD expandable memory. This is basically the same package as on the original N82 - so it's a pretty formidable handset underneath.

In addition, the black N82 comes with a free trial of Nokia's navigation package, support for N-Gage gaming and on top of that, this is a Symbian S60 smartphone - so users can add more applications later.

This is really just a software upgrade of the original platform, so presumably owners of the original silver N82 will be able to upgrade their handsets to support geotagging. It would be nice if this was enable for N95, N95 8GB and E90 customers too.

Nokia say that the N82 in Black should be available during Q2 2008, at an estimated price of around €400 / £300 / $600 or so before tax and subsidy.