Nokia N82 Review Part 2: Music Playback
The Nokia N82 isn’t labelled as a music device, but with a microSD card slot and 3.5mm audio jack, I decided that it should still be able to hold its own among the Nseries devices. With a 2GB microSD card shipping in the box, I didn’t have to do much to have the N82 ready to rock and roll. I’ve ditched Windows Media Player for music since discovering that the playlist support wasn’t up to snuff for me, and tags didn’t auto-update. So I’m temporarily back to drag-and-drop, with no playlist support. Anyways, I quickly loaded up all my Christmas music and have been giving it a go.
The 3.5mm audio jack is conveniently located at the top of the device, though offset to the side a bit. I’m extremely glad that Nokia has done away with that pesky pop-port it seems for good. Syncing is done via the microUSB port on the side of the N82, and felt ALOT faster than either the N95 or N81, though that could just be personal perception.
Once I got all my music over, a simple press to the multimedia key on the N82, located between the right softkey and the “C” button, takes me straight to the new multimedia menu. By default, this menu opens to the Imaging tab (which is appropriate) but that’s easily changed in the options. The N82 has the new multimedia menu which consists of panes that you can easily scroll through, focused on tasks instead of applications. The music tab displays the tracks you have, as well as new podcasts, and uses the new Podcasting application, which I’m a fan of.
Music playback quality is good. I think that the N81 8GB produced better sound, but the N82 is nothing to be ashamed of. I would say that the sound quality through the 3.5mm jack into my truck stereo is equal to the N95-1. On the phone’s speakers, however, the N95-1 is superior in the quality of the sound produced, as I find the N82 gets distorted at the higher volumes, whereas my N95 can handle the full blown experience.
Playback is smooth, with 90MB of free RAM there’s no issues with music playing in the background and other things going on. As expected, the currently playing information shows up on the Active Standby screen and you can use that as a shortcut directly to your music. In the player, everything is the same as is on newer handsets such as the N95 8GB and the N81. The new “Globes” visualization that I found on the N81 is on the N82, as well, though I’m more taken with the Spectrum visualization myself.
The N82 surprisingly has a slight delay between pressing the ‘next’ button and the new track actually playing. This same delay was present on the N81 that I tested, though it doesn’t seem as long on the N82, so perhaps they quickened it up a bit between the 2 handsets.
Honestly, the music experience on the N82 is almost identical to that of the N95-1 or N95-3. There are 2 major things that bother me ALOT, though I can understand that the N82 is not designed to be a music device. The first major complaint is the lack of dedicated music playback buttons. It really is extremely inconvenient if I wanted to use a pair of bluetooth headphones or even wired headphones to have to pull the phone out of my pocket or bag in order to skip tracks.
That brings me to my second complaint. Nearly every Nseries device I’ve used thus far (N80, N73, N75, N95, N81, N76, N82) has come with an inline remote in the box. This little accessory, if you’re not familar, plugs into the 3.5mm audio jack (or pop-port) and offers a foot or so of extension, with a box at the end. This box at the end usually has dedicated music playback buttons, volume buttons, and a softkey used to activate voice dialling. There is also a 3.5mm audio jack on this little box, so that you can use the supplied headphones, or your own, whichever you choose.
The Nokia N82 does NOT ship with one of these handy inline remotes, and to make things worse, my existing one from the N95 DOESN’T WORK! That’s right, for some odd reason, no matter what I do, the buttons are unresponsive when I plug it into the N82. I’m VERY unimpressed with this, as it makes the entire music experience fall apart, in my opinion.
So for music, I’d rate the Nokia N82 at a 6 out of 10. If you’re wanting a music device, you’d be MUCH better off with the N95 in whatever form for the music keys and the inline remote support. It’s just such an inconvenience to have to pull the phone out of your pocket or bag every time you want to change the tracks. However, with the 3.5mm audio jack, microSD card slot and nice speakers, the Nokia N82 is definitely usable as a music player.
dam im jealous!!!!
The most important question when talking about a comparison between the N95 and the N82’s music capabilities should be:
…does the N82 have a slight “hiss” when listening to music through the 3.5mm jack?
My N95-3 has this, as well as many others. While there are a few work-arounds, it would be nice to just plug in headphones and not have to worry about background hiss.
Also, would you say that the sound quality is a lot worse than the N81?
Thanks for the in depth reviews. Just to nitpick, “A LOT” is one word. It bothers me “a lot.”
next review plz include comment about the screen resistant to any scratch like iphone..plz guru
Hmmm it may not be lead in music feature, but over all I think it’s smarter than N95, i mean not bulky!
Do the portable nokia plug in speakers you got for free from nokia sound better than the n95 8gb built in speakers? I ask because i just got the n82 and the external speakers are not even close to the 8gb sound and i do listen to music every morning and would like decent sound
some observations on n82 music…
the inline remote from my n95-2 works fine, no hissing sound at all (the hissing went away on my n95-1 by reflashing the rom then turning keypad tones off), when i skip to the next track it is esactly the same speed as n95-2, outside speakers sound like something is stuck inside the case blocking the sound!
I get my nokia N82 to day. I can use my old N95 headset and also all controlls…!!!! GREAT!!!!!!
Try Nokia Bluetooth headset BH-903, you can have music control..
is the N82’s sound quality as good as N91’s
n82 or n95 8gb…i want to keep this phone for 1-2 years and i m not sure that n95 8gb can resist so much
do apps for n95 work on n82 also???
I THINK music qlty should be good from speaker and ear phone..
must not be annoying and natural at low volume.n 82 is good…
for best music experience one should always depend on full speaker set from altek,creative etc at home and ANY MOBILE DEVISE BE IT FROM NOKIA OR SONY WILL NEVER MATCH A FULL STEREO..
2.1,3.1,5.1,7.1 system…
May 23rd, 2008 at 5:27 pm
[...] it down into in five parts, covering the overall experience, build quality, imaging features, music playback, and a little Q&A with you guys. I also already gave you some first reactions, and at first, [...]