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Nokia N82 Cell Phone Review

Alfredo Padilla Published on February 05, 2008 Comment on this

Intro Making/Receiving Calls Software Other Features

Tour & Design Messaging Battery Life Value & Comparisons

Audio Quality Organizer Connectivity Conclusion

Imaging Multimedia Hardware Ratings & Specs

The Nokia N82 is the latest do everything handset from the Finnish cell phone giant. Like many of its other high end handsets the N82 isn't available from any U.S. carrier, instead you'll have to purchase the phone from an importer or directly from Nokia when they make it available. The N82 packs a lot of technology into a reasonably small candybar form factor. You'll be getting a five megapixel camera with Xenon flash, a smart phone running Symbian Series 60, Wi-Fi and GPS functionality. Most of these features are well integrated and easy to use. That's not to say that the Nokia N82 doesn't have its bad points as well.

On the negative side you'll find that the N82 has some problems with buttons and controls. In particular we found both the D-Pad and the 1960's calculator style keypad to be fiddly to use and prone to errors. In addition the handset's multimedia key is poorly placed and caused even more errors. If you can get past these issues you'll be getting one of the most powerful phones on the market, but expect to pay for it. As of the writing of this review the N82 was selling for around $550 from various importers.

Tour & Design - The N82 is a medium sized phone with plastic construction that makes it light, but also feels a little less durable than we would have liked.

Audio Quality - The N82 didn't do as well in our Audio tests as we would have liked, with average to below average scores across the board.

Imaging - The N82's five megapixel camera didn't score as well as the N95's, but is still amongst the best we've seen while video recording was excellent.

Making/Receiving Calls - The Nokia N82's call features were solid, but we found the keypad to be a little fiddly and prone to errors.

Messaging - The Nokia N82's messaging application does a solid job, but it isn't as good as a BlackBerry or Windows Mobile device.

Organizer - the Organizer features are solid but a few omissions like the lack of predictive search for contacts and no category support for appointments make it fall short of other smart phone platforms.

Multimedia - As always Nokia does a solid job in the music playback department but Realplayer is still sub par video playback software.

Software - Sybmian Series 60 is a powerful and mature platform, but we find the overly complex menus to be annoying.

Battery Life - The Nokia N82 performed solidly in our battery tests, especially in music playback.

Connectivity - There's Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.0 with a good selection of profiles but we are missing support for U.S. 3G networks.

Hardware - The N82 has several hardware flaws including a fiddly keypad, error prone D-Pad and a poorly placed multimedia key.

Other Features - The Nokia N82 sports GPS functionality with solid software backing it up and can be used as an FM radio and modem for your PC as well.

Value & Comparisons - At around $550 for an unlocked device the Nokia N82 matches its high end feature set with a high end price.

[page title="Tour & Design"]

Front Closed
From the front the Nokia N82 is dominated by its 2.4 inch QVGA display. Above this is the slit for the phone speaker with a VGA camera for video calls and an ambient light sensor set to the left of the speaker. Below the display are the controls, with a square D-Pad and fairly flat buttons surrounding it. The keypad is made up of very small rectangular buttons that rise above the surrounding plastic.

Left
On the left you will find a Micro USB port for data transfers towards the top, a MicroSD slot with attached plastic cover around the middle and Nokia's standard slim line charging port near the bottom.

Top
On the top of the phone you'll see the lanyard eyelet on the right, a 3.5mm headphone jack next to it, which can also be used for video out, and the typical Nokia power button near the center.

Bottom
The bottom of the Nokia N82 houses a small pinhole for the microphone and hot much else.

Right
On the Nokia N82's right side you will find stereo speakers located near the top and the bottom. Between these are volume rocker keys that double as zoom controls in the camera, a dedicated shutter button and another button to launch the gallery.

Back
The back of the Nokia N82 houses the battery cover, with a small button to release it near the bottom. Above the battery cover is the housing for the 5 megapixel camera, with a sliding switch that opens the shutter. Above the lens is the Xeon flash.

Battery Out
When you remove the battery cover you reveal the Nokia BP-6MT battery with a capacity of 1050 mAh. Removing the battery will reveal the SIM card slot. We are thankful that the N82 does not use the same slide out tray design for the SIM card slot that the Nokia N81 used.

In the Box (7.5)
The Nokia N82 ships with a good selection of accessories, as is typical of Nokia's high end N-Series devices. You get the typical software, charger and USB cable, but the N82 also ships with a video cable, stereo headset and 2GB MicroSD card. This means it's pretty much ready to go right out of the box. We especially appreciate the memory card, 2GB isn't the biggest out there any more, but it's more than large enough to get you started with a reasonable amount of multimedia content.

Handling (4.5)
The N82 is a little on the bulky size, unsurprising given how much Nokia has packed into it, but it's not a heavy device due to the plastic construction. The back of the device is nicely rounded so it sits well in your hand, but we would have liked to see a soft touch finish like the T-Mobile Dash has, for a better grip. As it is we feel like it could easily slip out of your hand. You won't get tired holding it up to your head for long periods though. The controls on the N82 are also a little fiddly, we found the keypad buttons to be too small and hard, and the controls could be better differentiated. Overall not great, but not terrible either. It felt slightly better than the Nokia N81, which was even more bulky and also had issues with the controls.

Portability (5.5)
As we mentioned above the Nokia N82 is a little on the bulky side at 4.41 x 1.98 x 0.68 inches, but its weight is less of an issue at 4.02 ounces. This is due to the plastic construction of the device. In practice we found the N82 to be a little too tall and wide, but the thickness isn't too bad. It will fit into most pants pockets, but you'll notice it's there even if it doesn't weigh you down too much. Those who like to wear tight pants probably won't find it very comfortable at all. It should fit easily into most bags or jacket pockets.

Aesthetics (5.0)
The Nokia N82 is not a fashion phone, but it's not unattractive. Some may find the silver finish on the front and the interesting pattern on the back to be pleasing, but it won't stand out of the crowd. Those we showed the phone to were unimpressed.

Durability (4.0)
Although the Nokia N82 lacks any moving parts that would normally cause us concern we did find the phone to be very plasticky and fear it will be scratched up something awful. We do appreciate the cover on the camera lens as this is probably the most valuable bit on the handset. In the end, though, the N82 just doesn't feel like it will stand up to long term wear very well, despite it's lack of major moving parts.

[page title="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	Nokia N82	Nokia N81 8GB (on CARRIER)	BlackBerry Pearl 8130 (on CARRIER)
Score	7.60	8.73	9.28
Received Sound Frequency Response Graph (click to view)

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)

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	Nokia N82	Nokia N81 8GB (on CARRIER)	BlackBerry Pearl 8130 (on CARRIER)
Score	6.50	7.65	8.66
Received Sound Frequency Response Graph (click to view)

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)

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.

Cell Phone	Sidetone Measurement	Score
Nokia N82	20.42	7.58
Nokia N81 8GB	21.15	6.85
BlackBerry Pearl 8130	20.55	7.45
Palm Centro	17.86	9.86
Razr2 V8	15.42	7.42
Apple iPhone	8.8	0.80

[page title="Imaging"]

Resolution (7.59)
To test the resolution of photos taken by the Nokia N82's five megapixel camera we took photos of an industry standard resolution chart and used Imatest software to analyze them. Imatest produces a score called line widths per pixel height (lw/ph), which indicates how many alternating black and white lines can be discerned before they blur together. The Nokia N82 scored 1307 lw/ph horizontal and 1288 lw/ph vertical. This is an excellent score, you can see below that none of our comparison phones performed nearly as well in this test.

Of course none of these phones have an auto-focus camera and the highest megapixel count of any is two. A more appropriate comparison is the Nokia N95. The U.S. 3G version of the N95 scored 1355 lw/ph horizontal and 1388 lw/ph vertical in this test, a slightly better but very comparable score to the Nokia N82. Not surprising given that both sport similar camera specs and probably very similar hardware. Regardless of what you're comparing it to we were very pleased with the Nokia N82's performance in this test, it's one of the best scores we've seen from a camera phone.

Cell Phone	Nokia N82	Nokia N81 8GB	BlackBerry Pearl 8130
Score	7.59	1.16	4.27
lw/ph horizontal/vertical	1307/1288	511/534	980/450
Image of Resolution Chart (click to view)

Cell Phone	Palm Centro	Razr2 V8	Apple iPhone
Score	1.41	4.29	4.18
lw/ph horizontal/vertical	581/596	982/982	970/879
Image of Resolution Chart (click to view)

Color (5.45)
To test the ability of the Nokia N82's camera to reproduce colors we take photos of the industry standard GretagMacbeth color chart and once again use Imatest to analyze the photos. Imatest takes the photo of the chart produced by the Nokia N82 and compares it to the original chart to find variance between the two.
Above you see the chart produced by Imatest after it has completed this comparison. A slightly easier to read iteration of this data is produced in the chart below, which Imatest also creates. In this chart the squares indicate the ideal color while circles show the colors captured by the Nokia N82.
As you can see the Nokia N82 performed reasonably well in this test. There was some drift in the blues and reds, and the whites are a little off, but nothing major enough to cause us pause. The Nokia N82's high megapixel count doesn't help it as much in this test, however, as its overall performance was not head and shoulders above our comparison phones. In fact you can see that the Palm Centro's 1.3 megapixel camera performed much better in this test than the N82 with the iPhone and Pearl putting up similar scores. This just goes to show that megapixels aren't everything, optics and software processing count as well. That's not to say that the Nokia N82's performance in this test was bad, rather it was just slightly above average.

Cell Phone	Nokia N82	Nokia N81 8GB	BlackBerry Pearl 8130
Score	5.45	3.21	5.13
Color Checker Chart (click to view)

Cell Phone	Palm Centro	Razr2 V8	Apple iPhone
Score	8.08	4.41	5.22
Color Checker Chart (click to view)

Noise (0.85)
To test the amount of noise produced by the Nokia N82's camera we take photos of the GretagMacbeth color chart at varying lighting levels and use Imatest to analyze how much noise is produced at each. We consider both the total amount of noise at each lighting level and consistency across lighting levels in our final score. The Nokia N82's performance in this test was not particularly impressive. It displayed higher than average amounts of noise at brighter lighting levels and noise jumped more than 100% between our brightest and lowest lighting level.

We expect to see more noise on phones that have higher megapixel sensors simply because more data is picked up so there's more room for noise to appear. On the other hand the Nokia N95 with US 3G performed better on this test, not displaying the jump in noise at our lowest lighting level that we saw on the N82. That being said no camera phone does very well in this test, as you can see below none of our comparison phones performed much better than the N82.

Cell Phone	Score
Nokia N82	0.85
Nokia N81 8GB	0.47
BlackBerry Pearl 8130	1.08
Palm Centro	0.91
Razr2 V8	0.91
Apple iPhone	1.20

Live Preview (7.0)
The Nokia N82's live preview generally does a very good job. The refresh rate is excellent, so even when you're panning around you get a sharp reproduction of what you're looking at. We didn't detect any major pixelation or artifacts. The one issue we did see was that colors in the final image looked a bit more saturated that what we saw in the live preview, but this is a minor issue. Overall we were very happy with the N82's live preview.

Unlocked Standby to First Shot (4.26)
This test measure how quickly it takes to go from the home screen until you have captured a photo. This is a good test for those who like to pull their phone out and take a quick photo. The Nokia N82 didn't perform very well in this test, taking 4.7 seconds to start up the camera application and capture a photo. You can see below that this is the slowest time amongst our comparison phones, although we should also note that fixed focus cameras like the N81 and Razr2 V8 didn't do too much worse. This is important because the N82's auto-focus camera takes more time to make sure that the scene is in focus before taking a shot, which takes more time. Compared to other auto-focus cameras like the N95 or AT&T Tilt the Nokia N82 is middling, much faster than the N95's 6.5 second time but still slower than the AT&T Tilt's 3.7 second time.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Nokia N82	4.7	4.26
Nokia N81 8GB	4.5	4.44
BlackBerry Pearl 8130	3.16	6.33
Palm Centro	3.8	5.26
Razr2 V8	4.56	4.39
Apple iPhone	2.43	8.23

Shot to Shot Time (2.07)
Shot to shot time is a measure of how quickly you can take a series of photos. When possible we do this test using a camera's burst mode, which the Nokia N82 does have. Using this burst mode we were able to take six photos in 8.7 seconds, which works out to 0.69 frames per second (fps). As you can see below this isn't terrible, we've seen a lot worse, but on the other hand it's nowhere near the best we've seen from phones, which can get as high as 2 fps. As with our other timed tests for the camera the Nokia N82 is slowed down by the fact it's camera is auto-focus, so it takes some extra time before it starts capturing photos. We should also note, however, that the poor scores put up by our comparison phones is mostly due to the fact that they don't have burst modes, so we had to take the series of photos manually.

Cell Phone	FPS	Score
Nokia N82	0.69	2.07
Nokia N81 8GB	0.9	2.70
BlackBerry Pearl 8130	0.34	1.02
Palm Centro	0.28	0.84
Razr2 V8	0.58	1.74
Apple iPhone	0.4	1.20

Shutter to Shot Time (1.11)
Shutter to shot time is the amount of time it takes to take a photo once you've pressed the capture button. On an auto-focus camera like the Nokia N82 this measure can vary depending on whether you count the time it takes to focus or just the time it takes to capture once you are already in focus. Because we want to give users an impression of the total time it takes to capture a photo we use the former time. The Nokia N82 took 1.8 seconds to take a shot, including the time it took to put it into focus. For those who want the time without focusing it's closer to 0.8 seconds. The Nokia N82's 1.8 second time is pretty slow, as we expect from an auto-focus camera. You can see below that our comparison phones, all of which have fixed focus cameras, did much better on this test. You'll also note, however, that even if you take the auto-focus out of the equation the Nokia N82 is still pretty slow. The point here is that you better hope your subject sits still for a second or two because you won't be able to take super quick shots with the N82.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Nokia N82	1.8	1.11
Nokia N81 8GB	0.17	11.76
BlackBerry Pearl 8130	0.48	4.17
Palm Centro	0.88	2.27
Razr2 V8	0.39	5.13
Apple iPhone	0.4	5.00

Interface (9.0)
The camera interface on the Nokia N82 is the same we've seen from Nokia's N-Series phones for awhile now. The entire screen is used as a viewfinder with some icons in the top and bottom left corners showing you what mode the camera is in, your resolution settings and how many photos you can capture. On the right side of the screen are the two labels for the soft keys, exit on top and options at the bottom, with a strip of icons in between that you navigate using the D-Pad. These icons are the great bit about the Nokia N82's camera interface as they give you quick access to most camera functions like scene modes, flash, timers and color, amongst others. One new icon that we have not seen before is a toggle to show a gird on screen, useful for lining up shots. We've been fans of the Nokia N-Series camera interface for awhile and there's nothing in the N82 to make us change our mind, it's a very easy to use and elegant camera interface.

Photo Album Software Internal (7.0)
The Nokia N82's photo album software is the gallery that is used on other N-Series devices. This software is very pretty, it presents your photos in a rotating carousel of images that you can navigate through using the D-Pad. Unfortunately it's got some practical issues that we don't like. First of all it's rather slow, now this issue has been addressed somewhat in newer handsets like the N82, but it still takes longer than we would like to launch and create all of your thumbnails. The other problem is that file management isn't gallery's strong suit. You can create albums and move items into them, but this is a rather clunky process that involves using the overly large soft key menu. We would have preferred a more elegant interface. Aside from these issues Gallery does as good a job as any other album software we've seen on other devices.

Manual Control (2.0)
The Nokia N82 offers you with various scene modes like such as landscape, portrait, sports and night, but that's about it. There's no manual white balance, shutter priority or aperture priority available.

Zoom (1.0)
The Nokia N82 has a 20x digital zoom available. Given that it takes fairly large five megapixel photos this is actually more useful than most cell phones. That's because all digital zoom does is crop and enlarge a portion of the scene, just as you could do on your desktop software. With a larger image you can enlarge more without losing too much detail. That being said it's still not as nice as having an optical zoom.

Focus (5.0)
The Nokia N82 has an auto-focus camera, which means that when you're taking photos the camera will attempt to put the scene in focus for you. Like a real camera you can press the shutter button down part way to put the scene into focus and then press it down completely when you're satisfied with what you see. This produces much better photos than most camera phones that use fixed focus lenses, which means what you see is what you get. That being said the extra time it takes to focus also slows the camera down a bit, as you saw in our speed tests.

Flash (8.0)
One of the Nokia N82's upgrades over other N-Series devices like the N95 is the improved flash. Unlike the rather weak LED flashes that we see on most cell phones the N82 has a proper Xenon flash. Using the flash we were able to take photos that came out reasonably well, for a cell phone, from as much as six feet away in a completely darkened environment. In a dimly lit room we were able to maintain decent quality up to ten feet away. This is without a doubt the best flash we've seen on a mobile phone to date, although we should note that Sony's Cybershot lineup of camera phones has been using Xenon flashes for awhile now. For comparisons sake the LED flashes found on most cell phones are really only useful up to two or three feet away, and even then you're getting pretty poor quality. In contrast to those phones we were very pleased with the Nokia N82's Xenon flash, although it's still not as good as a dedicated camera with it's more powerful flash.

Metering (2.0)
One area where Nokia has lagged behind a little is in offering metering controls on their high end camera phones. HTC, by contrast, has been putting metering controls on their phones for several months now. Of course very few of HTC's camera phones can match the quality of the N82, with the AT&T Tilt coming the closest amongst those we've reviewed, but that doesn't mean that we don't want proper metering controls as well. For those who don't know metering controls allow you to control from which point or points in a scene light is judged. This allows you to adjust the brightness of a scene for a particular area. What the N82 does offer are Exposure Compensation controls, which are basically just a glorified form of brightness control.

White Balance (2.0)
Like most camera phones the Nokia N82 offers users a variety of white balance presets including sunny, cloudy, incandescent and flourescent. More advanced evaluative white balance options are not available.

Image Handling (8.0)
Nokia's N-Series lineup has been strong in terms of image handling options and the N82 is no different. When editing a photo you can crop, adjust sharpness, rotate, adjust brightness and contrast, fix red-eye or resize. These are far more options than most phones offer you. You're usually lucky if you can rotate a photo.

Video

Overall Video Score (8.5)
The quality of video taken by the Nokia N82 is amongst the best we've seen from a mobile phone. Like the Nokia N95 the N82 captures video at full VGA (640 x 480) resolution at 30 frames per second (fps). This is significantly better than the next step down we see in most mobile phones which is QVGA (320 x 240) at 15 fps. Video taken by the N82 is smooth and displays very little pixelation or artifacts. You would be fine putting it up on youtube and it would even look decent on a small monitor or television set, although the term decent correlates more with watchable than good. The quality of the video is about the same as what you would get on most consumer digital cameras, but is still nowhere near as good as you would get with even a low end HD camcorders.

Video Resolution (20.01)
To test video resolution we capture video of the same industry standard resolution chart we use for our still photo resolution test. We take frames from this video and run them through the Imatest software to produce a line widths per pixel height (lw/ph) score, which tells us how many alternating black and and white lines can be discerned before they start blurring together. The Nokia N82 put up the best video resolution score we've ever seen at 434 lw/ph horizontal and 461 lw/ph vertical. You can see from our table below that this is much better than any of our comparison phones. It's also significantly better than the Nokia N95, which scored 331.1 lw/ph horizontal and 428.1 lw/ph vertical. We were quite pleased with the N82's performance in this test, it's set a new standard for video capture on a cell phone.

Cell Phone	lw/ph horizontal/vertical	Score
Nokia N82	434/461	20.01
Nokia N81 8GB	247/272	6.72
BlackBerry Pearl 8130	171/190	3.25
Palm Centro	249/274	6.82
Razr2 V8	168/217	3.65
Apple iPhone	n/a - no video capture	0.00

Video Compression (4.0)
The Nokia N82 captures video in Mpeg-4 format for the most part, with four different quality settings available. There's also a setting available for MMS video which captures in the more compressed 3GP format, which is a mobile standard. Most users should find these options more than sufficient for their needs.

Interface (8.0)
The video capture interface on the Nokia N82 is pretty much the same as that found in the stills camera interface with the notable difference that there are far fewer icons available on the right side of the display to adjust settings. Here your only options are scene modes, white balance and color tone. It's not surprising to see fewer options available and, if anything, it makes the interface even easier to use.

Manual Control (0.0)
The Nokia N82 doesn't offer users any manual controls for video capture.

Zoom (1.0)
As with still photos the Nokia N82 offers users a digital zoom, which just crops and enlarges a portion of the scene. Given that video captures at a far lower resolution than stills on the N82 the digital zoom is of very little use.

Editing (6.0)
Editing options for video on the N82 are much better than what most phones offer, which is none. On the N82, though, you can cut sections of videos out and add audio tracks, special effects and intro screens. It's not as good as what you get in terms of editing options for stills photos, but on the other hand it's a freaking cell phone. Given that it's pretty decent.

Modes (4.0)
The Nokia N82 offers a shooting mode for night as well as a preset for capturing MMS video.

[page title="Making/Receiving Calls"]

Dialing Speed (6.90)
Despite the rather unorthodox keypad on the Nokia N82 we were able to dial a number in a fairly speed 2.9 seconds. This was the average time after we tested five standard phone numbers. As you can see below only the BlackBerry Pearl 8130 performed better in this test. We found that the learning curve for the keypad was less than we would have expected, we were able to achieve this time after only a few repetitions. The buttons are a little weird, however, and we found that we had trouble trying to dial by feel alone compared to more comfortable keypads like on the Razr2 V8, whose worst performance on this test is due to the fact that it's a flip phone so you have to open it up.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Nokia N82	2.9	6.90
Nokia N81 8GB	3.04	6.58
BlackBerry Pearl 8130	2.71	7.38
Palm Centro	3.62	5.52
Razr2 V8	3.45	5.80
Apple iPhone	3.96	5.05

Talk and End Buttons (3.0)
Like the Nokia N81 the send and end buttons on the N82 are trapezoidal affairs that sit on the right and left edge of the phone flanking the other control keys. Although they are large, they are not well differentiated from surrounding buttons and we found tactile feedback when pressed to be very slight. We also found that we had to reach a little to get to them when using the keypad, which is an annoyance when dialing phone numbers. Nokia could have done better on the N81 and the same holds true for the N82.

Call Management (8.0)
The call history on the Nokia N82 is typical Series 60 fare. You can view your calls by dialed, missed or received, but there's no option to view all of your calls in one place if you access the call history from the home screen using the send button. There's also a limited amount of data available for each call in this view. You see the time and date of each, but there's no timer for individual calls, or all calls for that matter. You can easily add numbers from your call history to either an existing contact or a new one. To see more detailed call information you'll have to jump into the application menu and open the log, which provides more advanced features like call timers and details about each call.

During a call the right soft key is assigned to the loud speaker function. Under the left soft key you will find all the other options, including hold, mute and switch to video call (where supported). We did find it a bit annoying that the first option in this menu was loudspeaker, which seems redundant. As a smart phone that supports multi-tasking the Nokia N82 will also allow you to access just about any other phone function you need while on a call. You can make a new call and then conference them by simply dialing the new number and hitting the call key. What you can't do is record a phone call.

Startup to Call (4.90)
We were quite impressed by how quickly the Nokia N82 started up and allowed us to make a call, only 20.4 seconds on average. This is significantly faster than the Nokia N81 and even faster than a regular phone like the Razr2 V8, which typically take less time to start up then smart phones like the N82. We believe what we're seeing here is the effect of Nokia's new on-demand paging technology, which only loads up the necessary parts of applications into memory, making the device faster overall. If this is the case you should start seeing performance like this from all Nokia smart phones as they roll updates out to their current lineup. We believe that the N95 (in all its incarnations) has already seen such an update. Having a smart phone that starts up as quickly as a regular phone is very impressive, previously we've only seen this from BlackBerry devices, while Windows Mobile devices continue to lag behind with startup times that often approach or exceed one minute.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Nokia N82	20.4	4.90
Nokia N81 8GB	33.8	2.96
BlackBerry Pearl 8130	6.21	16.10
Palm Centro	42.66	2.34
Razr2 V8	27.72	3.61
Apple iPhone	26.12	3.83

Ring Volume (9.37)
We measured the Nokia N82's ring volume at 93.7 decibels. This was with the volume turned up to maximum using a sound pressure meter from a couple of inches away to take the measurement. 93.7 decibels is pretty loud, but as you can see below we've seen significantly louder from other handsets. Of course we've also seen significantly worse, as you can see from the iPhone's score.

Cell Phone	Volume (decibels)	Score
Nokia N82	93.7	9.37
Nokia N81 8GB	96.1	9.61
BlackBerry Pearl 8130	97.9	9.79
Palm Centro	109.4	10.94
Razr2 V8	103.4	10.34
Apple iPhone	84.9	8.49

Ringtone Customizability (8.0)
Just like other Series 60 devices we've reviewed the Nokia N82 provides users with great flexibility in terms of ringtones. Basically any music and many video files that are loaded anywhere on the device are available to be used. This is significantly better than most phones that lock you into ringtones you buy from your carrier and is even better than Windows Mobile devices where you have to place the ringtones in a specific folder. You can also assign any of your voice notes as a ring tone, but there is no way to edit a music or sound file on the device.

Non Audio Alerts (4.0)
The vibrate alert on the Nokia N82 is one of the weakest we've seen. We could barely feel it when the phone sat in our hand, much less in a pants or jacket pocket. If you're expecting an important call you should not depend on the vibrate alert. On screen alerts are typical Series 60, with the screen lighting up and showing you the incoming number in a small banner at the bottom of the screen. If you happen to be glancing at your screen you'll notice it, although we would have preferred to see the whole screen used for the alert rather than a small portion of it.

[page title="Messaging"]

Supported Email Services (6.0)
Like all Series 60 devices from Nokia the N82 supports both POP3 and IMAP4 email accounts. Unfortunately the N82 won't automatically set up popular services like Gmail or Yahoo for you, instead you'll need to have all the server settings to set them up manually.

Push Email (0.0)
Out of the box the Nokia N82 doesn't support any push email services, which allow you to receive your email at the moment they arrive. You can find free clients from Nokia to install support for various push email services like Exchange Activesync or BlackBerry. Because we score phones on how they come out of the box the N82 won't receive any points in this section.

Multiple Email Accounts (10.0)
The Nokia N82 can support at least five different email accounts, and probably several more. This is an important factor for those who want to keep up to date with multiple email accounts.

HTML and Attachements (8.5)
As we've seen on other Series 60 phones the Nokia N82 doesn't handle HTML email in the email program. Instead HTML email will be turned into plain text. You will find an attachment that can be opened in the web browser and allows you to view an HTML email in the way it was meant to be viewed, but this is a clunky workaround compared to the native HTML email support we see from Windows Mobile 6 devices and the iPhone. We were pleased to see that the Nokia N82 has the view only version of Quickoffice on board so you can view Word, Excel and Powerpoint attachments. You can also view PDF attachments using the included Adobe PDF viewer and zip files also have a program on board so you can open them up. This is significantly better than the Nokia N81 that lacked these features, which we had found disappointing.

Email Customizations (2.0)
The Nokia N82 doesn't offer you many email customization options. You can add signatures to emails, but you can't change viewing/composing font or change the number of lines each email takes up in your inbox.

Time to a New Message (4.18)
The Nokia N82 took an average of 4.78 seconds to get a new email dialogue open when starting from the home screen. This is not a particularly good score, we were actually surprised that it was significantly worse than what we saw from the Nokia N81, which took only 2.5 seconds. It's also slower than all of our other comparison phones, as you can see below. We found that we encountered quite a bit of lag when launching the email program and then again when trying to open the new message dialogue. This should be tempered somewhat if you keep the email program running in the background, but if you are launching it for the first time as we do for our tests you'll have to wait a bit.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Nokia N82	4.78	4.18
Nokia N81 8GB	2.5	8.00
BlackBerry Pearl 8130	1.22	16.39
Palm Centro	1.86	10.75
Razr2 V8	n/a - no email client	0.00
Apple iPhone	1.9	10.53

Email Usability (6.0)
The Nokia N82's email program is the standard Series 60 email client. It's integrated into the general messaging application with each email account given its own inbox but shared sent items, drafts and other folders. You are initially shown a list of available mailboxes. When you open one you can then navigate between boxes by moving left/right on the D-Pad. This is a nice quick way to get between different accounts or mailboxes and is much better than what we saw on the Palm Centro where you have to go into the menu system to switch accounts.

Messages are in a list with an icon showing its status, and information about the sender and subject. Unfortunately the type is a little big so not much can be fit onto the screen. We prefer Windows Mobile's approach that shrinks the text down more so you can get more information at once. Up/down on the D-Pad will move you up and down the list and pressing in on the select key will open the currently selected message. The right soft key is alternately assigned to the Exit/Back/Cancel function while the left soft key opens menus where you can access functions like deletion, forward, etc. You can also delete a currently selected message by hitting the "C" button when it is open. All in all it's a decent setup but we've seen better from BlackBerry and Windows Mobile devices.

Supported IM Services (0.0)
The Nokia N82 supports a Jabber client out of the box, but doesn't support any of the more popular services like AIM, Yahoo, Windows Live or Google Talk. We don't award points for Jabber so the Nokia N82 will receive a zero in this section.

MMS Support (7.0)
MMS support on the Nokia N82 is strong, as we've come to expect from Series 60 devices. MMS is integrated well into both the camera and the album software, allowing you to easily send a picture or video message from either. The unified messaging application uses a single inbox for both MMS and regular text messages, but unfortunately you still have to decide what type of message to send before you begin composing. This is the one remaining serious drawback for MMS on Series 60, we much prefer platforms like the Palm Centro's messaging application where you can easily turn a text message into an MMS message by simply adding media. Aside from this issue, though, the N82's MMS performance is solid.

SMS Smiley Face Interpretation (0.0)
Alas none of the recent spate of updates to the Series 60 platform have brought support for smiley faces. Our quest continues.

SMS/MMS Ease of Use (6.0)
As we've mentioned above SMS and MMS messages on the Nokia N82 are part of the unified messaging application, with both message types sharing a single inbox. What they don't share is a composition interface, but we've expressed our annoyance with that in the MMS Support section above. Like the email interface you are given a simple list of messages when you enter the inbox. The left soft key is used to open a menu where you can access various functions, while up/down on the D-Pad moves between messages. The interface is fairly straightforward, but we are missing features like threaded conversations. Although it compares well to SMS/MMS support on most regular phones or Windows Mobile devices it's just not up to the level of the excellent Palm OS messaging feature as found on the Centro.

Time to a New SMS Message (8.47)
The Nokia N82 posted a pretty impressive time of 1.18 seconds to get a new text message dialogue up starting from the home screen. Like the Nokia N81, which put up a slightly better score, the N82 was helped by the fact that the second icon on it's Active Standby screen is assigned to create a new text message. We simply used the D-Pad to move over once and then hit the select key to launch it. This is a boon for those who love to text message, although those who don't will be happy to know that this can be changed. You can see below that the Palm Centro also beat out the N82, but the difference between those two handsets was significantly less than between them and poorer performers like the BlackBerry Pearl 8130.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Nokia N82	1.18	8.47
Nokia N81 8GB	0.9	11.11
BlackBerry Pearl 8130	4.78	2.09
Palm Centro	0.86	11.63
Razr2 V8	1.99	5.03
Apple iPhone	2.62	3.82

[page title="Organizer"]

Synchronization (6.67)
The Nokia N82 uses Nokia's PC Suite software to synchronize with a Windows PC. Setup is straightforward, simply install the software, connect via USB and follow the on screen instructions to get setup. The interface isn't exactly pretty, but it gets the job done.

Using PC Suite you can synchronize via USB or Bluetooth, including the cool option to have your phone recognized via Bluetooth whenever it's within range and automatically synchronized. You contacts (including photos), notes, tasks and calendar appointments are all synchronized. You can also synchronize files, although there have been some problems reported with this functionality so we wouldn't trust it with any critical documents yet.

On a PC you can synchronize with Outlook or Lotus Notes. On the Mac side you can synchronize with the Mac PIM apps using iSync via Bluetooth but you will first need to install Nokia's free iSync plugin found here.

Alerts (5.0)
You can set alerts on the Nokia N82 for both calendar appointments and tasks. We like the flexibility that allows you to set an alert for any time that you want rather than having to choose from hard presets, but on the other hand a nice list of presets would have been nice. As it is you'll have to enter the time and date manually for any alert and this slows you down a bit. You can't choose what sound/vibrate will sound for each alert individually, instead the appropriate sound from your currently active profile will sound. When it does sound you'll see the screen flash and get information about the particular item you're being alerted about. Alerts can be dismissed or snoozed, with a snooze lasting five minutes. You can't change this, unfortunately, we prefer the Windows Mobile approach where you can choose from various snooze periods. If you miss the alert it will automatically snooze after sounding for one minute.

Over the Air PIM Sync (0.0)
Out of the box the Nokia N82 doesn't support over the air synchronization of your PIM data. As we mentioned in the messaging section, however, you can download and install a client for Exchange Activesync or BlackBerry server that will allow you to synchronize your PIM data with those technologies. As we only award points for functionality out of the box we won't be awarding any points here.

Address Book

Adding Contacts (5.19)
It took us an average of 19.26 seconds to add a new contact name and phone number to the Nokia N82's address book. This is not a particularly impressive time, you can see below that only the iPhone performed worse on this test than the Nokia N82, with most of our other phones doing significantly better. We found that we were slowed down by the Nokia N82's curious keypad, which was more difficult to use than the traditional keypad or QWERTY keyboards found on other devices like the Nokia N81 and Palm Centro. Our test for this score starts at the home screen unlocked and ends when we have added a first name, last name and phone number for each of five different test contacts.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Nokia N82	19.26	5.19
Nokia N81 8GB	16.56	6.04
BlackBerry Pearl 8130	14.85	6.73
Palm Centro	12.22	8.18
Razr2 V8	13.33	7.50
Apple iPhone	20.86	4.79

Looking/Sorting/Search (3.5)
Contacts on the Nokia N82 can be sorted by first name or last name in the standard view. You can also move left on the D-pad to switch the tab and view your contacts by group. Unfortunately the only search option is to use multi-tap to spell out a name, starting with whichever name you are sorting by. This is in sharp contrast to Windows Mobile devices that support predictive searching so you don't have to tap each key multiple times to spell out a name. It seems ridiculous to us that what is supposed to be an advanced smart phone operating system still doesn't support something as simple as predictive search through your contacts.

Fields (13.6)
As with other Series 60 devices the Nokia N82 provides you with a plethora of fields to choose from. You have eleven basic fields when you first create a contact, with forty-three additional fields available to be inserted and the ability to create your own custom fields as well. This makes the Nokia N82 one of the most flexible smart phones out there.

Speed Dial/Voice tags/Voice command (5.67)
The Nokia N82 supports speed dials but does not support voice tags that can be trained to recognize specific names. Instead there's a voice independent voice dialing system. We were happy to see that this system worked rather well, it was able to recognize all five of our diverse test names. You do have to say both first and last names, however. The performance on the Nokia N82 was significantly better than what we saw from the Nokia N81, which was only able to recognize one of our test names.

Calendar

Adding Calendar Items (6.61)
It took us an average of 15.14 seconds to add a new calendar appointment to the Nokia N82. This is several seconds faster than the Nokia N81, but much slower than the performance of phones that have QWERTY keyboards like the BlackBerry Pearl 8130 and Palm Centro. You can see from our comparison chart below that it sits right about the middle of our comparison phones. To get this score we time how long it takes to go from the home screen unlocked until we have added a test appointment for lunch the following day with a reminder fifteen minutes before hand.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Nokia N82	15.14	6.61
Nokia N81 8GB	19.2	5.21
BlackBerry Pearl 8130	6.61	15.13
Palm Centro	4.8	20.83
Razr2 V8	15.28	6.54
Apple iPhone	18.92	5.29

Calendar Views (4.22)
Like other Series 60 devices the Nokia N82 offers users with three calendar views: daily, weekly and monthly. The daily view is a simple list of the appointments for that day with time, title and indicators for things like reminders or recurrence. The weekly view shows you a grid with days along the top and hours along the left. Appointments are blocked out on this grid based on when they occur, when you highlight a blog with an appointment you get a nice little floating indicator at the top of the screen giving you the title and start time for that appointment.
The monthly view shows you the current month with the current date underlined and days that have appointments indicated with a small triangle in the lower right hand corner. When you highlight a day that has appointments you get the same floating indicator you see on the weekly view listing all the appointment from that day. This is a nice feature that makes the monthly view much more useful than most phones where that information isn't available. Overall we found the calendar views on the Nokia N82 to reflect the usual Series 60 goodness. If only their support for fields were as good. The lack of fields like category mean you can't filter the calendar views on the Nokia N82 by category.

Fields (6.0)
As we insinuated above the Nokia N82's support for calendar fields isn't the best we've ever seen. That's not to say that it's bad, but we've seen better from other smart phone platforms. We've already mentioned the missing support for categories, but other advanced fields like inviting contacts to appointments and setting up complex recurrence patterns. The basics are all there, title, date and location. We also like the flexibility of alerts as you can choose the exact time and date that they will go off, but you can't choose unique alert sounds for each alert. Your recurrence options are limited to a list of presets like daily, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly and yearly. There's no option for weekends and, as we mentioned, no way to set up your own complex recurrence pattern. It's worth noting that both BlackBerry and Windows Mobile Professional devices offer many of the advanced features the Nokia N82 lacks.

ToDo/Tasks

Adding ToDo/Task (7.63)
It took us an average of 13.1 seconds to add a test task to the Nokia N82. This is just about what we saw from the Nokia N81, and is about the same as our other comparison phones, as you can see below. Tasks on Series 60 devices like the Nokia N82 are included in the calendar application. We used the calendar plugin on the home screen to launch the calendar and then entered our test task reminding us to get groceries and set a due date for the following day. We do this five times and take the average for our score.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Nokia N82	13.10	7.63
Nokia N81 8GB	13.20	7.58
BlackBerry Pearl 8130	14.19	7.05
Palm Centro	11.52	8.68
Razr2 V8	14.74	6.78
Apple iPhone	n/a - no tasks	0.00

ToDo/Task Sorting and Prioritizing (3.5)
The Nokia N82 allows you to prioritize your tasks, but not categorize them. You also can't sort your tasks by priority and, of course, you can't filter by category. We weren't impressed by your options for organizing your tasks. As they are included in the calendar application there is a separate To-Do view that simply lists your active tasks by due date. This isn't an excuse for the paucity of options, however.

Fields (5.0)
When you create a task on the Nokia N82 your selection of fields is very basic. You can enter a title, due date, alarm and set priority. You can also set synchronization status to private or public, but this is a minor feature. More importantly is the fact that advanced fields like recurrence, categories and note are missing. This makes the tasks program on the Nokia N82 much less useful than those found on BlackBerry and Windows Mobile devices.

Notes

Adding Notes (3.03)
Adding a note to the Nokia N82 isn't a very speedy process, taking an average of 16.52 seconds in our tests. This is the slowest time amongst our comparison phones, as you can see below. We were slowed down by the fact that the notes application is buried in the menus, with no quick shortcut. If you use notes a lot you can address this by adding the application to your home screen shortcuts. We also found that typing on the Nokia N82's fiddly keypad also slowed us down some. We get our average time by seeing how long it takes to go from the home screen unlocked until we have added a standard test note and saved it.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Nokia N82	16.52	3.03
Nokia N81 8GB	14.9	3.36
BlackBerry Pearl 8130	9.25	5.41
Palm Centro	8.46	5.91
Razr2 V8	13.66	3.66
Apple iPhone	12.66	3.95

Note Interface (2.0)
The notes interface on the Nokia N82 is the same as we've seen on other Series 60 devices. When you first open the notes application you see a simple list of your notes, each of which shows the first dozen or so characters of the note. The notes are listed in reverse chronological order, so the newest is at the top. The left soft key opens a menu where you can do things like delete, send or open the note. The right soft key is assigned to exit the application. There is no search functionality, support for categories or any other advanced functions available.

Note Formatting (0.0)
The notes application on the Nokia N82 doesn't offer users any formatting options like changing font type/size, adding italics, bold or underlined text or adding hand drawn items of media.

Voice Memo (3.0)
Voice memos on the Nokia N82 are also typical of Series 60 devices, which isn't particularly good. Your voice notes are limited to one miute in length. You can use a voice note as a ring tone or send it via MMS or Bluetooth, but most of these management options are handled by the gallery software rather than the voice notes application. The Palm OS voice notes application is much better than that found on the Nokia N82.

[page title="Multimedia"]

Accessing Music Software (2.65)
We found getting music playing on the Nokia N82 was rather slow, taking an average of 7.54 seconds. This is the slowest time amongst our comparison phones, but a pretty decent margin. You can see that the Nokia N81, with its dedicated music buttons, was able to get music playing in less than one third the time. To get music playing on the Nokia N82 you have a couple of choices, you can go in through the multimedia menu or enter the standard menu to launch the application. We found in our tests that it was faster to do the latter, despite the fact that it required more clicks to get a song playing. This is because the multimedia menu was pretty slow to load and music launched from it was also very slow to load. Using the multimedia menu it took us about nine seconds to get a song playing, which makes us wonder what the point of the multimedia menu is, but we'll get to that in software section. If you intend to use the Nokia N82 as your principal music device we recommend that you add a shortcut to the music application to your home menu for easier access and keep the music software playing in the background so it launches more quickly.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Nokia N82	7.54	2.65
Nokia N81 8GB	2.8	7.14
BlackBerry Pearl 8130	6.13	3.26
Palm Centro	3.22	6.21
Razr2 V8