Nokia N82 review

As one of the few candybar handsets in Nokia’s Nseries portfolio, the Nokia N82 may not be the hottest-looking smartphone in town, but it still packs in much of the S60 gadgetry of the more refined N95 8GB and N81 8GB sliderphones.

The N82’s distinctively quirky styling and glossy plastic casing may put off some users, but looks aren’t everything, and under the skin it’s more obviously attractive.

Running on Nokia’s S60 3rd edition platform, the N82 complements HSDPA high-speed 3G mobile connectivity with Wi-Fi, and has A-GPS satellite location finding technology built in.

The Nokia also sports a 5-megapixel camera, with a Carl Zeiss lens, autofocus system and good quality xenon flash, and offers respectable quality video recording. Good quality Nseries music and video player software is included too, plus it has support for Nokia’s Music Store and the N-Gage gaming platform.

Video calling is also built in, with a front facing secondary camera taking care of face-to-face communication.

Although it reprises much of the N95 8GB’s media functionality, the Nokia N82 is more lightweight on memory. It has just 100MB of internal storage – though it does come with a 2GB MicroSD card in-box, and can take cards up to 8GB.

Its unNokia-like front panel looks kind of retro-modernist, with tiny slivers for numberpad keys, and a functional control panel, dominated by a central navigation pad. The plasticky feel of the casing (available in silver or black) undermines any attempt at sophistication, though, as it looks and feels a bit cheap – a surprising design choice for an otherwise decently-specified device.

Unappealing design and ergonomics

The N82 is not a small handset – measuring 112(h) x 50.2(w) x 17.3(d)mm – but its plastic casing makes it a reasonable 114g pocket load. The 2.4-ich QVGA display isn’t as large as Nokia’s top-range sliderphones, but is acceptable for a candybar phone. A motion sensor accelerometer is built in too for auto switching screen orientation.

As well as being small and fiddly to use, labelling of the rice-grain style number keys is poor – too small and the colours don’t stand out. And it’s the same with the control keys surrounding the D-pad. These are on a single panel, and the D-pad is squashed up against them, making it potentially easy to press by mistake when choosing an option or navigating the menus.

A standard S60 layout provides a user-definable set of shortcut icons on top of the display, plus further onscreen information, status updates and function control options on the homescreen. It’s a flexible set up and easily customisable for how you use the phone. The broad range of standard out-of-the-box apps can be further enhanced via S60 software downloads (Nokia provides a selection of free options via its Downoad! tool).

Great for photographers

The shooting capabilities of the N82 are very appealing, with images from the 5-megapixel camera matching the best of this class of cameraphone. Its low-light shooting is significantly better than most, thanks to the powerful xenon flash, but the N82 can also produce superb results with regular shooting.

The camera has a decent set of controls that are fairly easy to get to grips with. While not particularly tricksy, you do get a selection of effects to play with too and post shooting editing options – though even the default auto performance is impressive. Image quality is generally very good; sharply detailed with excellent colour rendition, and the camera’s auto metering is responsive to changing light conditions.

Shooting video in VGA quality at up to 30 frames per second, the N82 produces decent image quality for a phone, and is better than most mobiles. A TV-Out cable is supplied too for playing content on a TV screen.

High-speed data connectivity allows speedy uploading of images to online sharing sites, with Wi-Fi providing particularly slick uploading for one of the video or image file sharing service options (Vox, Flickr) that come pre-loaded.

With a variety of online-based multimedia app supported, such as Nokia’s Video Centre (bringing together links for downloading and streaming of video services), the Nokia Music Store, Ovi, and N-Gage gaming, the N82’s Wi-Fi and HSDPA connectivity enhance more than simply browsing. Although fast, the browser is standard S60 Nokia software, which does a functional job rather than wowing like the iPhone.

The N82’s display may not offer the largest screen real estate for video playback, but the software onboard does a fine job of handling video content, which looks smooth and crisp played back in full screen landscape mode.

Music fans will enjoy the N82’s audio performance too. The music player software has familiar easy-to-use controls. The supplied earphones are decent enough, if a touch trebly – though they can be easily replaced by better ear-gear, thanks to a standard 3.5mm headphone socket on top of the phone. Audio quality through our own headphones was top-class, sounding rich and dynamic.

The onboard A-GPS satellite location technology works with Nokia Maps, with mapping info for the UK and Ireland pre-loaded on the in-box MicroSD card. It’s an effective set-up; you can locate your position in seconds from start-up, and find your way around with near-instant maps and route-finding software. You can search for points of interest, addresses, businesses and so on, and navigate to or from them onscreen.

In addition Nokia provides a three-month trial of its in-car Sat Nav-style turn-by-turn voice navigation upgrade. This sort of A-GPS system is great to have in a phone, you always carry around with you – although some will prefer a larger screen, and it does drain battery power with extended use.

Gamers may appreciate the N82’s N-Gage gaming functionality. However, they’ll be less impressed by the gaming usability – the cramped D-pad control buttonry isn’t quite agile enough for slick-fingered gameplay.

The Nokia N82 lines up a hefty roster of additional features. Instant messaging and push email are supported. There are Quickoffice and Adobe PDF document viewers, and a spread of organiser functions including calendar and to do lists – synchronisable with a PC or remotely – plus stereo Bluetooth and UPnP connectivity.

Fine call quality

Despite the plastic casing, voice call quality was perfectly clear and uncreaky. It has a lower capacity battery pack than the N95 8GB, though battery life is reasonable. Nokia quotes best-case figures of up to 210 hours on 3G networks (225 on GSM), or talktime of 190 minutes in 3G coverage (260 in GSM), though in reality what you get will depend on how you use the numerous features.

It’s a shame Nokia didn’t make pay more attention to the outward design of the N82, as inside this device is a very tidy candybar smartphone. As well as Wi-Fi and HSDPA, it has plenty of appealing features including fine quality music and video players, A-GPS and takes some of the best 5-megapixel cameraphone pctures we’ve seen.

The relatively small screen will put off some, but the numberpad key design is bafflingly small and fiddly on a large handset like this, and affects usability when using the keys. The aesthetics aren’t particularly great either, the plasticky casing giving it a downrange feel that’s at odds with the high-end capabilities of this device. A pity really, as beneath its quirky surface, the N82 an excellent performer.