Nokia N82 – Candy Bar in Your Hands
Having had the N82 for almost a full week now, it would be good to give my opinions on the actual daily usage of the device before doing the camera comparisons. So starting things off; I’ll do a physical of the N82. Keeping in mind that there is a significant difference in seeing any device and actually physically using it and having it in your hands vary. Take my recent review of the N81 for instance, I wasn’t looking forward to it, but was impressed once I had it in my hand to play around with. The saying; don’t judge a book by it’s cover springs to mind.
On the features front the N82 has almost everything identical to the N95. The main differences being the Xenon flash and the form factor. Being a candy bar device gives it a few advantages over the N95; it’s smaller and more ergonomic and as it doesn’t have a slider, it is less likely to break down. Smaller moving parts = more reliability generally. The build quality of the N95 and N82 are fairly similar, both plastic and light (yes that shiny front is plastic), which is a shame as that would have given it a great advantage to purchase it even more. Now before moving onto the usage there are a few things to take note about the N82, mostly to do with the physical design.
Firstly the loud speakers are on one side of the device (right), although I can guess they are there for when having the device in landscape mode, I still think that it’s not a good choice, generally I use the phone in portrait orientation and the lower speaker is covered by my hand, thus distorting the sound when using the loudspeakers. On the adjacent side you’ll find the charger port and the micro USB port, which is another instance of strange positioning in my opinion. The charger port I can see can make sense when charging in an upright position (as there doesn’t seem to be any form of accessories available for the Nseries which allows to just stick the handsets on a desktop charger / synchronizing stand and make life easier) but that’s a another rant. But the micro USB port I do not understand, it is inconvenient in every way, perhaps I’m used to having the N95 and have gotten used to it, but I sat there and thought it out, and yet cannot see why it’s there, it doesn’t help to overcome anything, as there was no problem in the first place.
Luckily there are a few things which have been done right, the 3.5mm jack on the top of the device is a good touch, as is the camera lens cover at the back. Also the ergonomics of the device, just like the N81, it’s very smooth, the side buttons do not bulge out like on the N95, which makes it more rugged whilst the N82 is smooth all the way round, but do watch out, it is very smooth and susceptible to being dropped easily. Talking about smoothness, the screen cover is very smooth as is the back. One thing I did notice was the main screen is not easily viewable in sunlight, even with the brightness sensor set to maximum it was very difficult to see the screen. The front is also very shiny, it has chrome paint over it which makes it very shiny and reflective. How shiny and reflective isn’t captured properly, it’s almost mirror reflective, which makes it very difficult to take pictures of the device, the camera flashes reflect and make it look a dark carbon colour. Users with an obsessive compulsive disorder beware, you’ll spend most of your life keeping it clean of fingerprint and dust specks. Check out the pictures below.
The N82 may have all the features of the N95 and also run on the S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 1 OS, but I have noticed a few things which are improvements on the N95. On a clean restart the N95 running on V20 firmware has 28.8Mb of RAM available in comparison to the N82’s 93Mb. That is a significant amount to have freely available. The screen is slightly smaller in comparison to the N95 and even more so if compared to the giant screen on the N95 8GB edition, but it is also more saturated in comparison to the N95. The buttons are responsive and easily found in comparison to the N95, there are not issues with pressing any buttons by accident, although I do have some reservations with the navi buttons, which I found unnatural at times especially when using the handset in landscape mode, but overall the design of the keypad excellent.
Overall during the last several days in general use I found the N82 to be excellent in both design and functionality, even now I can say I will miss it once it goes back to the WOM World guys. But until then I’ll cherish it as this is the best Nseries device overall currently (only my opinion, but I’m probably right).
