Nokia N82 Cell Phone Review - Organizer

Alfredo Padilla
Published on February 05, 2008 Comment on this

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.

Previous Next

Reviews | About WI | Staff | Advertising |