Nokia N73 Review - Conclusion
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Alfredo Padilla Published on May 04, 2007 Comment on this |
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Who's It For Business User
The Nokia N73 may be a good choice for a business user who wants solid functionality and battery life from a smart phone coupled with a good camera and multimedia features. However business users that need to carry a phone without a camera will need to look elsewhere, perhaps at Nokia's E-Series of phones.
Budget Callers
Budget callers should definitely not consider the Nokia N73 due to its high price tag. If you are looking for a smart phone on a budget The Cingular 3125 may be a good choice. If you are just looking for a basic handset several can be had for under $50 with a two-year contract from most carriers.
Chatty Teenager
The Nokia N73 may be a good choice for a chatty teenager that wants good multimedia functionality to go with an excellent camera and talk time. However the N73 is not exactly a sexy handset, and this may be a turn off for those looking for a fashion phone. The price tag may also be a turn off for the parent(s).
Media Maven
The Nokia N73 is a very good choice for media mavens that are looking for an all in one solution. The N73 couples a very good camera with an excellent music interface and expandable storage. The one place where it falls down is in the area of video, where Real Player is sub par compared to other offerings. Still, there are third party programs available like SmartMovie, that improve on Realplayer's functionality, and other than this glitch you will be hard pressed to find a more complete media centric phone.
Conclusion
The Nokia N73 is an excellent example of the modern converged device. Although it falls short in a few places, we found that it did enough things well enough to meet most users needs. Symbian Series 60 is a mature smart phone operating system. We like the ability to add native third party software, especially as this allows users to address some of the N73's drawbacks like Real Player. We did find some stability issues however, especially when running RAM intensive programs like the web browser or camera. This is likely related to the 48MB of RAM built into the N73. At a time when Windows Mobile devices come with 64MB standard we wish that Nokia would stop penny pinching with their smart phone lineup.
On the multimedia side the N73 does a very good job with camer and music, but falls short in video. The 3.2 megapixel camera on board is one of the best we have seen on a cell phone, however it does still fall short of what you will see from an entry level point and shoot. The N73 sports a very good music player that combined with a large capacity Mini SD card makes for a very good music device. We were less impressed with the N73's video playback functionality, with Real Player falling short of competitors like Windows Media Player Mobile.
Personal infomration management on the Nokia N73 is solid, however power users will find that advanced functionality found on Windows Mobile devices like category support is missing from the N73. The N73's hardware feels a little plasticky, however we liked the large 2.4" QVGA screen and found the small keypad and control keys more usable than we had expected. The N73 is not as well connected as some of its other N-Series brethren, missing out on Wi-Fi. We were also dissapointed with the lack of stereo bluetooth support and must castigate Nokia for again failing to include support for North America 3G bands into their advanced N-Series lineup. Battery life on the Nokia N73 was generally solid, especially for talk time and music playback. Web browsing fell a little short of our expectations.
Overall we found a lot to like with the Nokia N73, and those willing to overlook its high price tag in North America could do a lot worse when looking for a converged multimedia phone.
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