Nokia N82 Review - Design & Features

Design & Features

My N82 is finished in a shiny silver front with a patterned beige back panel. Nokia calls it “Warm Titanium,” and also offers the device in white and black (sadly, I got mine before the black was widely available - for my money the black’s nicer).  The first thing I noticed about the phone is that it’s quite big but has rather small, crowded buttons.  The second thing I noticed is that it felt kind of cheap.  I don’t think the device is actually cheaply made, but it’s all plastic and a couple of the buttons stick or creak when I press them.  There’s none of that “luxury heft” you get with the glass and metal of an iPhone, or even with some other Nokia’s like the N73 or N95. 

Instead, the N82 is bulky and a little heavy, but feels like it might break if you squeeze it a too hard during a particularly emotional phone call.  It’s also, quite frankly, an ugly phone.  At first blush the design looks clean and modern in a “function over form” sort of way.  But after spending a few weeks with it and comparing it to the various new models that came into the office (and my old iPhone), I grew less and less fond of the N82’s looks.  17.3mm is thick for a modern handset, and while that’s actually a significant thinner profile than the 21+ mm N95, it’s chunky for a handset that doesn’t have a hardware QWERTY board.

The display is covered in a scratch-resistant resistant plastic that actually held up quite well during testing.  I kept the handset in my pocket a lot and didn’t employ any sort of screen protector, and it’s still scratch-free.  Unfortunately, the lower portion of the front panel suffered a noticeable nick almost immediately and a few other smaller scratches have shown up since.  Also, there’s what looks to be a piece of dust trapped inside of the front camera lens assembly just below the plastic panel.  Not particularly impressive for such a spendy device.

I won’t delve into all of the features of a Symbian Series 60 (Feature Pack 1) device here, as my N95 review covers them in great detail.  Suffice it to say that the N82 does just about everything you could ask of a modern smartphone, has a very capable Web browser, and can be extended by way of thousands downloadable applications.  In fact, the N82 is in many ways akin to a candybar version of the N95, with integrated GPS and Nokia Maps pre-installed, WiFi, A/V out, and so on.  The 2.4” display found here is smaller than those on the N95 and N95 8GB models, but the N82 as a whole is also smaller than those phones, as well.  This device is basically a candybar alternative to the N95 range, but with a slightly better camera (it’s not only the flash - overall image quality was better here) and no U.S.-band 3G option available.

 

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