So it’s that time of year again..
After close to 1.5 years on my trusty Nokia N73 , Its time for n82
Here’s the rap sheet - *developer.nokia.com/devices/N82
For the full flash demo with all the bling, go here
*www.nseries.com/index.html#l=products,n82
So here we go all about n82 !~!
First looks: To describe it in very concise terms, N82 = N95 - slider +
candybar + Xenon flash + light meter + auto tilt + user data protection. Let me
elaborate further.
The N82 has the same candybar form factor as the N73, but with the added
powerful features of the N95. Speakers are located along the right side,
instead of the top and bottom, and the data cable/charger socket have moved to
the left side. The phone uses microUSB and 3.5" audio jacks, instead of
the old proprietary PopPort interface, so this means you can connect any
headphones to it.
Headphone jack is moved to the top, so it can be easily slipped into your shirt
pocket while listening to music. The handsfree supplied unfortunately
is the typical basic one with no music controls. Why couldn’t they supply
the same kind as is given with the music edition phones??
Aesthetics/ergonomics: What’s not to like! Beautiful polished steel look
(not actual steel, like the N91 was). It attracts fingerprints, sure, but I
love the silver gleam. the thin keys are actually fine to type on. The last time such keys were seen were on the N91-and they were hard to press. These ones have the right balance of not being too spongy (like the N73 original) or too hard. They ‘click’ just right, and are easy to type on. However, the pencil key ( a staple on s60 devices) has been removed. The + key now has the options for dictionary etc, and this may take some getting used to. What’s worse- you can’t do multiple select the way you could on earlier phones by using pencil key + arrow keys.
There’s also a dedicated ‘multimedia’ key that works
differently than the older ones. It displays a rolling set of tiles; each tile
showing in order-recent music, videos, quick access to contacts, last photo
taken and so on.
Firmware: As the complexity of Nseries starts to rival computers, bugs
do come out and Nokia has started offering firmware updates that can be
performed at home without having to take the phone to a shop. My base firmware was 10.0.0.46. After reading up on the net, I found that a newer version of the firmware fixes several bugs and makes performance improvements, so I upgraded and now I have 11.0.117. Chances are if you buy this phone later, it may already be updated; you can use Nokia Software Updater (google it) to check the latest version. One nice feature is ‘user data protection’-this means that firmware updates will not wipe the phone memory as they did with earlier phones; your applications, contacts, messages etc remain intact after flashing the firmware.
Responsiveness:
This has to be the Core 2 Duo of
mobile phones. It uses a dual core ARM processor and a dedicated OpenGL
graphics chip. The result? Stunningly fast performance and responsiveness.
Despite all the features, it boots up in less than 15 seconds, and the camera
instantly starts when you open the shutter. The last word- you can play a Symbian port of the old 3D game Quake 1 on this with full graphics and effects !!!
Operating system/look and feel:
The phone, like the N95, uses S60 3rd edition Feature Pack 1. As before-I’ll just highlight the new features here over the base S60 3rd edition OS.
eorganized menus-
Earlier one had to go to separate places to change the theme, ringtone, wallpaper etc. Now they’re all grouped together under a ‘personalization’ menu in settings (though you can use the old way also). A few other menus have also been grouped together/reorganized.
Animated icons- Icons in the menu animate (if you can call sliding towards you, that)
Running app indicator-
The N82 has 120 MB of RAM, which is huge for a mobile device. You can have several apps running, and now a small blue swirl is shown in the menu to indicate that an app is already running in the background.
Timed Bluetooth visibility-
You can specify for how long your phone should appear visible via Bluetooth, after which it reverts to ‘hidden’ mode.
Gallery-
You can save images directly to contacts as their thumbnails from the gallery now.
Unified browser:
In the previous OS, there were 2 browsers ‘Web’ and ‘Services’ for full web and wap, respectively. These have been merged into a single one that recognizes both types of content. It now can store form passwords for websites as well, saving you the hassle of typing it out. Also, since it has wifi support, you can surf the net using wifi instead of your GPRS connection.
Keypad autolock, and repeating alarms!!-
Finally, finally they ported over these features from lower end S40 phones! Why Nokia chose not to have this ability before, I wonder! Caveat: The autolock only works when the phone is in the standby screen, not otherwise. The alarm clock lets you specify working days, and can be set to ring only on those days if needed. Also you can set multiple alarms.
Search:
Imagine having the equivalent of Google Desktop Search on your phone. This is the most awesome application on the phone that I’ve found. It can be invoked from the Active Standby screen, and you can search anything on your phone-be it contacts, messages, emails, calendar entries, by just typing it. No more hunting through menus. You can also search the web, MSN and yahoo are the default search providers (wonder why no Google).
Autotilt:
Like the N95 and the iPhone, this phone also has an accelerometer that detects its orientation. Unlike the N95, it does support auto tilt. Tilting the phone to the left in any mode other than the standby screen causes the display to switch to horizontal/landscape mode. However you need to hold it exactly perpendicular to the ground to work correctly, and it only works if you flip it to the left. You can turn off this behavior too, if you like.
Camera:
According to a web review, the N82 wins hands
down over other 5mp class camera phones in terms of image quality. I totally
agree. The phone also has a lightmeter that vastly improves photo quality under low light conditions. As I mentioned before, the camera starts up immediately on opening the shutter (there’s a small switch for the lens cover on the back). The camera now has a viewfinder grid and extra setting for sharpness, in addition to everything else. Image quality lives upto the hype; pity I don’t have examples. A future firmware update promises to add geotagging support via GPS for photos; this means you can embed position information into the photo, so that the location can be indicated on google maps.
SE phones....you cant compare symbian phones to SE !!