Nokia N82 Cell Phone Review - Audio Quality
The quality of the audio you get on your phone is probably the most important factor for most people. To test this we use the same professional equipment and software that is used by many of the handset manufacturers and carriers. To simulate the human head and ear we use a Head and Torso Simulator (HATS). To analyze the sound we use Listen Inc's
SoundCheck software. For more information on how we test take a look at
this article.
Sound Receive Frequency Response (7.60)
In this test we look at the quality of sound received by the cell phone, this is how others will sound to you. The graph above indicates the Nokia N82's performance with a blue line while the two red lines are the limits against which we test. You can see that the Nokia N82 is all over the place within our limits, but doesn't fall too far outside them at any point. In particular at the upper end of the frequencies there is a sharp dip followed by a high peak before it falls off again as we would expect. This might make voices in the upper range seem to bounce back and forth between too low and too high, but not so much that you will have trouble understanding them. Still, this inconsistency does have its impact on the Nokia N82's score, as you can see below most of our comparison phones did significantly better than the N82 in this test.
| Cell Phone |
Palm Centro (on CARRIER) |
Razr2 V8 (on CARRIER) |
Apple iPhone (on CARRIER) |
| Score |
6.24 |
9.16 |
9.17 |
| Received Sound Frequency Response Graph (click to view) |
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Sound Send Frequency Response (6.50)
This test takes a look at the quality of sound sent by the Nokia N82 to other phones, so this is how you will sound to those on the other end of the line. As with our previous test the Nokia N82's performance is indicated by the blue line with the red lines showing you the limits we test against. You can see from the graph above that the Nokia N82 was pretty consistently above our upper limit across almost all frequencies. Then at the high end of the frequency range it fell off a little too quick. This means that your voice will likely sound exaggerated to those on the other end of the line until it gets up into the high range when it will likely be clipped. Although the deviation isn't huge in any one place, it's consistently off and this hurts the Nokia N82's score, which is the worse amongst our comparison phones.
| Cell Phone |
Palm Centro (on CARRIER) |
Razr2 V8 (on CARRIER) |
Apple iPhone (on CARRIER) |
| Score |
7.82 |
7.46 |
7.58 |
| Received Sound Frequency Response Graph (click to view) |
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Handset Side Tone (7.58)
Side tone is the small amount of your own voice that is piped back into your ear so you can judge how loudly you are speaking. Our ideal level for side tone is -18 decibels, while the Nokia N82 scored -20.42 decibels. This isn't too bad, but you may find yourself talking a little louder than you might like because the side tone is a tad low. In this area the Nokia N82's performance was not as poor as in our send and receive tests, you can see below that it put up a fairly average score, with only the Palm Centro performance significantly better.
