In a nutshell: A good alternative to the N95, the N81 offers very nearly the same features, but at a significantly lower price. Its a classic-style smartphone with GPS navigation, an outstanding 5 megapixel camera, media player, wireless LAN, a 2 Gbyte memory card and HSDPA for accelerated 3G connectivity.
The Nokia N95 has been Nokias best-selling smartphone of 2007, and with sales remaining strong and with no clear competitor from the other manufacturers, the N95 will probably continue to sell well into 2008. The role of the N82 then, is not to push the boundaries of technology any further, rather its to offer essentially the same features as the N95, but in a different package that will broaden its appeal.
Although they look quite different, the specifications of the N82 and N95 are so nearly identical, that well refer you to our in-depth review of the Nokia N95 to learn more. The detailed specification is listed below. Suffice to say that you cant really get more from a phone than you can from the N82: possibly the best camera in a mobile phone (5 megapixels with autofocus and xenon flash), GPS navigation, a superb screen, high-speed 3G, WLAN, a huge memory, etc, etc.
Instead of repeating all of the things that we talked about in our N95 review, lets focus on the differences between the N82 and N95. Probably the most significant difference is the price: the N82 should retail for around £150 less than the N95. Thats a big difference and presumably reflects the fact that this is repackaged technology. For this reason, we are hoping that the N82 will be less buggy than initial versions of the N95, although weve yet to see a Series 60 phone that didnt have some bugs. The screen on the N82 is slightly smaller, but the phone itself is slightly narrower and slimmer too. The weight is slightly less, but not enough to make any real difference. We prefer the keypad of the N95 – the N82 has fiddly little buttons – but with fewer “extra” buttons, the N82 arguably has a simpler user interface. One further difference is that the N82 ships with a 2 Gbyte memory card, whereas the N95 comes with a 4 or 8 Gbyte card.
The N82 may not have the looks of the N95, but is has 95% of the features for a lot less money, and we think that it deserves to be a hit!
Features of the Nokia N82 include:
- Operating system: S60 software on Symbian OS
- User interface: S60 3rd edition, Feature Pack 1
- 5 megapixel camera (2592 x 1944 pixels), autofocus, 6x digital zoom, Carl Zeiss Optics, Tessar lens, xenon flash, macro mode
- Video capture: VGA, 30 fps, 4x digital zoom, MPEG4/3GP, Digital video stabilisation
- Front camera for video calling (352 x 288 pixels)
- Photo & video editors
- Display: TFT, 16.7 million colours, 240 x 320 pixels, 2.4″, automatic screen rotation
- Assisted Global Positioning System (A-GPS)
- RealPlayer media player
- Digital music player: supports MP3/AAC/eAAC/eAAC+/WMA/M4A with playlists, OMA DRM 2.0/1.0 & WMDRM support for music
- Stereo FM radio (87.5-108MHz) with Visual Radio support
- Integrated stereo hands-free speaker
- Speaker independent name dialing and voice commands
- Nokia Push to talk (PoC)
- Messaging: SMS, MMS, E-mail (SMTP, IMAP4, POP3) with attachment support
- Advanced S60 PIM features including calendar, contacts, to-do list and PIM printing
- Internet: GPRS, EDGE, HSDPA (3.6Mbps download), HTML web browser
- Connectivity: Bluetooth, USB 2.0, WLAN (802.11 b/g), TV-Out, 3.5 mm stereo headphone port
- Nokia XpressPrint: direct printing via USB(PictBridge), Bluetooth connectivity (BPP), and WLAN (UPnP) or via online printing
- Memory: 100 Mbytes plus hot-swappable microSD memory card slot (2 Gbyte card supplied)
- Quadband (850/900/1800/1900 MHz) plus 3.5G (WCDMA 2100 HSDPA)
- Size: 112 x 50 x 17 mm
- Weight: 114g
- Talktime: 190 minutes (3G) – 260 minutes (2G)
- Battery standby: 210 – 225 hours
- Video call: up to 120 minutes
- Music playback time: up to 10 hours (offline mode)
