Nokia N80

Available now
2nd November 2005

The Nokia N80 is a 3G sliding phone with WiFi and a 3 megapixel digital camera. It combines features found in several other handsets, notably the E-series range of business phones, the 6280 and 6281 sliders and the N70 and N90 handsets.

The display on the N80 is the same high-resolution 352x416 pixel panel found on the N90, E70 and E60 devices, which is well regarded by people who have used it. The 3 megapixel camera is one of the highest resolution cameras available outside of Japan and Korea (second only to the 3.2 megapixel Sharp 903), which comes with a 20x digital zoom and LED flash. The N80 has 40Mb of internal memory which can be expanded up to a maximum of 2Gb using miniSD cards. Unusually for a Nokia, this is a quad-band GSM phone with GPRS, EDGE and WCDMA 3G in addition to WiFi, which effectively means that the Nokia N80 can be used anywhere in the world.

There's an email client and web browser, although the N80 doesn't appear to support push email "out of the box". However, as it's a Symbian Series 60 smartphone (now rebranded as "S60"), it should be possible to add support for mail systems such as BlackBerry or Visto at a later date. The N80 also supports instant messaging and MMS. As you might expect, the N80 has a multimedia player, but it also comes with a FM radio. There's the usual array of games and PIM functions too.

Size and weight are about standard for a 3G device, at 133 grams and 95x50x23mm. Taktime is a shorter than some recent devices, with 2.5 hours talktime on 3G and 3 hours on GSM. The N80 has 8 days standby time.

Handily, the N80 addresses one of the key complaints about the N70 - the screen. The Nokia N80 has almost four times the pixel count of the N70, which allows it to display much finer text and squeeze more information onto the screen. Combine the screen with the camera, and the N80 is clearly a powerful imaging device.

It's a fairly slablike phone to look at, as is the 6280. It does share some of the styling details of the N70 which lifts the design somewhat. However, most other large slider phones are also quite slabby, so it seems to be a common problem.

To be honest, we would have preferred these features to be included in a clamshell, not a slider. Nokia lack a decent 3G slider - the N90 is massive, and the N71 is deeply ugly and not as highly specified as the N80. But really this is a personal prefence, and the Nokia N80 is certainly a more interesting handset than the N70 and well worth hanging around for it you have been put off by the N70's display.

Nokia say that the N80 will be available from Q1 2006 for a price of around 500 euro before subsidy and taxes.

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