Here are my impressions on the Nokia N82. I thank WOM World for providing this device for me to trial.

Advantages

5 Mega pixel Camera

Xenon Flash

Very Good Performance

Good Screen

Disadvantages

Average Battery Lie

Bad Speakers

Unusual Keypad

Design and Materials Used

The N82 is a candy bar. The phones thickness varies. It is thicker towards the top where the camera is placed. The camera is located on the back of the device. The speakers are located on the right side of the device. The charger connector, micro-USB port and Memory Card slot are on the left side of the device. The phone is mostly made of plastic which has a glossy effect. On the front the plastic has been painted in silver and on the back it is in a Titanium color and has some patterns on it too..The phone feels good in hand thanks to the glossy back area. There are no creaks and hence it very well built. The front part catches fingerprints easily due to the silver surface.

Keys

The keys on the device aren’t something which I liked much. The keypad is of an unusual design. The keys of the keypad are very small and have spaces in between them. This makes it difficult to type and often results in typing errors. These keys feel plastic too. The soft keys and D-Pad too are average. The soft keys are at the same height as the rest of the surface and there is no separation between them. This again causes mistakes. The D-Pad is also very clumsy. You might accidently click the centre of the D-Pad instead of any direction. The keys on the right side of the device are quite god. These include the volume rocker key, the gallery button and the camera key. The power button is located on the top of the device. People with large fingers might find it difficult to use the keys. But you might get used to it. However the defects of the keys seem to have been fixed in the new N82 black version released by Nokia which has better keys, improved D-Pad etc.

Call Quality

The call quality is decent. There is however some hissing when making calls. Although this does not spoil the speech, it makes create a disturbance. The loudspeaker is quite good too. But there is a slight disturbance. While the call quality on the N82 isn’t anything like the ones found on the E-Series, its good enough for the average mobile phone user.

Connectivity

The N82 covers every range of connectivity features available in the market right now. From Wi-Fi to HSDPA. All the options makes web browsing and sending of files very easy. Transfer through Blue tooth is fast as it has Bluetooth 2.0. Surfing the net is as easy as a walk in the park due to GPRS, EDGE, HSDPA, Wi-Fi. It also supports A2DP for listening to songs over Blue tooth.

Messaging

Messaging isn’t quite easy due to the small keys of the keypad. You might make some mistakes during the typing of the message. But you might get used t it in a while.

Camera

The N82 is equipped with a 5 Mega pixel camera that has auto focus, Xenon flash and Carl Zeiss optics. There is also red-eye reduction. The camera lens produces images of very great quality and high detail. The presence of the Xenon flash makes taking photos in the dark very easy. The flash is powerful enough to fill a room without lights full with light. The camera interface is very user friendly at the same time being highly detailed. The camera starts up very quickly once the lens cover is opened. Its faster than that on the N95 oo.The camera lens is protected by a lens cover. Sliding the lens cover automatically starts the camera application too and closing it closes the applications. You can also start it by going through the menu but then you have to open the lens cover again. So I prefer the former method. The lens cover protects the lens from dust and scratches. The phone records videos at a maximum resolution of VGA at 30 fps. There is also a secondary CIF camera on the front for video calls.

Music

The sound quality on the device is pretty bad due to the crappy speakers which distort at high volumes. However the sound quality is brilliant using headphones and I expect it to be better with custom headphones. The Music Player is the same as in the N95, N95 8GB, N81 8GBand N81. It offers a wide range of settings including Stereo Widening, Loudness, speaker balance e and equalizer. There are visualizations too. The presence of the 3.5mm jack allows you to put your favourite headphones in.

Video

Video playback on the device is excellent. Thanks to the brilliant screen. The default media player is Real Player. Videos have to be encoded into the 3gp or mp4 formats to be played back on the device. But you can get 3^rd party software that allows you to play various other formats also. The videos can be played in landscape or portrait mode.The supported video formats are MPEG-4, H.264, H.263/3GPP, and RealVideo. The icons are hidden when the video is played in landscape mode so that you can see the full video. However its not as good as the video playback in the N95 8GB.

Screen

The screen used on the device is absolutely brilliant. The pictures and videos are crisp. However its only 2.4” size which is quite small considering the standards of today but it still is an excellent display. The N82 provides Automatic Screen Rotation (ASR) thanks to the built in accelerometer. This enables you to change the display orientation from Vertical to Horizontal and vice versa. The screen is protected by the plastic casing and also prevents dust from collecting on the screen.

Memory and Performance

The device has a built in memory of 100MB which can be expanded using micro-SD cards of up to 8GB.Although even 16GB might work. A 2GB memory card is included in the package. The memory cards are inserted and taken out using a hot-swap memory card slot. The device has 128MB of RAM of which about 90MB is available to the user. The presence of much RAM makes the performance too good. Multi-Tasking is possible without any delays and the phone responds to your actions very quickly.

User Interface

The user interface is one of the best available in the markets as it runs on S60 which is known to provide a lot of options to its users. Everything about the interface is customizable.

Battery Life

The battery life isn’t sufficient as in the case of the recent N-Series phones. Even though the phone has a 1050mAH battery,it doesnt last too much.Maybe because I was using it heavily.But it lasted a day or two for me.

Conclusion

The device is absolutely brilliant in multimedia features and camera. Even though there are some small defects such as bad battery life, crappy speakers and unusual keypad, the phone is excellent and provides everything what a Tech-geek could want. Well Done Nokia!

I nickname the device Eye-Machine