N82 Black Is Pretty Darn Impressive
I received my N82 Black from the S60 team 4 weeks ago, and everyday through now, I have learned to like it and appreciate having it. It didn’t have a glorious out-of-the-box experience like Ricky experienced a while ago (I had the N-Gage trial and Share Online 2.5 installed), but it had the lasting glorious effect of sending my N95 back to the drawer until I ultimately decided to sell it. Currently, there’s very little I can fault the N82 at, and that’s coming from someone who has held an N95 8gb, N95, E66, E71 and E90, to name a few.
First things first, the N82 Black looks slicker, thinner and somehow different from the titanium version. It is also very well built, and if it wasn’t for the squeaking keypad, I would’ve given it a 10/10 rating. The best part though is that this is the first powerful Nseries S60 that I can take out of my pocket, and show to women, men, teenagers and children alike knowing they won’t be afraid of its bulkiness or poor looks. As a matter of fact, I think I made more Nseries and S60 converts with the N82 than with any other phone I’ve had.
It’s not only looks that matter though, and the N82 shines in categories I had almost given up on: RAM and battery life. When I had the N95 8GB, I found myself facing the “Memory Full” message especially when attempting to open Help files, even though I still had 60 or 70Mb of free RAM, something I never understood. So far the N82 never showed me any of those. As for battery life, this is hands down the most efficient Nseries yet. I know I can count on it to carry me through the day, though I throw everything at it, from music over A2DP to WiFi to Sports Tracker to taking geotagged pictures and videos to games…so far I’ve averaged 2 days on the battery with that pattern.
Another feature I’ve grown to love on the N82 is the camera. In bright sunlight, the N95 and the N82 have a comparable capability. But indoors or in dark conditions, the N82 shines and leaves the N95 sniffing like a small child who has just dropped his icecream scoop. Xenon flash does make a difference, and one you would never know until you use it.
But the most impressive feature on the N82 is the GPS. Honestly, I don’t know what Nokia did here that they didn’t on the N95 8GB or v20 of the N95, but whatever it is, KEEP IT. GPS surprised me on the N82, with locks coming in less than a minute from a cold start, even in a moving car, and in less than 10 seconds if the GPS was used a few hours before. As a comparison, my N95 takes a sweet 6-7 minutes from a cold start, around 10 minutes in a moving car, and a minute if the GPS was used a few hours before. Plus the N82 has built-in geotagging, a feature I had turned off, thinking that it would never have enough time to get a lock during a picture taking, and that it would eat battery life like a starving man would eat a sandwich. After seeing the N82’s GPS performance, I decided to turn geotagging on, and so far each time I’ve been out of a building, the image has been geotagged.
Note: I think the phones are only using the built-in GPS and cell triangulation to get a lock here, since A-GPS requires a connection to the internet to work, which I don’t have. That’s why the N95 is so slow, but why the N82 is still so fast, I don’t know.
Besides all of the above, the N82 has all the features that I have learned to love and exploit on other S60 and Nseries. This is why I know that not only have I found MY perfect handset, I have also found the one I will carry for a long long time before anything better hits the market.
I’ve found the same thing. I love my N82 black FAR more than even my N95-3 … the only downsides of the phone are the squeaky keys, no US 3G and the slightly dim screen (which doesn’t bother me at all). Everything else is perfect. Its how a phone (AND a camera) SHOULD be.
I agree, I have these phones (N95 8GB and N82 -from S60- ) N82 has everything in right position (GPS, Speakers, Atenna, WiFi Module,etc) and the N95 8GB not :(. Also, my N95 8GB has the “memory full” problem in the help application.
I installed a small java program called GPSd which is part of a software package to enable the internal GPS reciever for the TomTom Navigation application. I get a GPS lock-on in under 30sec on my Nokia N95 8GB, while using only GPS and cell tower triangulation. It even works close to a window indoors, although with less precision (~200-500meters approximated range indoors and < 10meters outdoors according to the GPS info from the phone itself and Google Maps)
I got a black N82 about two weeks ago, and I love it just as much as you, for all the same reasons. It truly is a great device, though it’s the sleekness and battery life that ultimately won me over.
“First things first, the N82 Black looks slicker, thinner and somehow different from the titanium version. It is also very well built, and if it wasn’t for the squeaking keypad, I would’ve given it a 10/10 rating. The best part though is that this is the first powerful Nseries S60 that I can take out of my pocket, and show to women, men, teenagers and children alike knowing they won’t be afraid of its bulkiness or poor looks. As a matter of fact, I think I made more Nseries and S60 converts with the N82 than with any other phone I’ve had.”
I had made this observation on my blog also! :) I’m happy to know I’m not the only one!
I love my N82, however, having had an iPhone for 12 hours I am thoroughly impressed with the quality and mostly the looks of the software. I wish my N82 had bigger screen and more beautiful apps. Hands down, the N82 has more features than the iPhone, but the package of the iPhone is just so…sexy and sleek. I wish S60 developers learn from Apple developers.
best phone ever… now if only we could get some 3g love… i have had this phone since the NAM release and don’t see a change until nokia can come up with another candy bar, 5+mp, shutter cover, xenon flash, 3g, phone with a bigger screen too please :)
this is my first s60 phone as well, I came from a SE w810i… im spoiled now!
[...] Symbian Guru – N82 black is pretty darn impressive [...]
I absolutely agree on all the observations, which is one of the reasons I gave away my N95 to my little brother.
The only “bad” thing is that I have the white N82 which prevents me from buying the black one. (As they both feature the same specs).
Currently waiting for N96 and Samsung i8510 now.
However taken photos with the Xenon flash it would be very hard to get back to LED flash.
So until something better comes up I hold tight to my N82.
What I’ve experienced though with the N82 is that the UDP can sometimes be a pain. I downloaded the beta version of Opera Mini and tried to install the official version after launch.
It wouldn’t let me install. What I later found out was that there were files left resident in my phone which prevented me to install.
Upon manually deleting those I finally got th install the official version of the Opera Mini.
UDP is without a doubt a nice function as you keep all the settings in your phone even after a fw update.
But for a normal user who installs a lot of applications it could prove to be troublesome (From my example above).
For most users things just works or don’t. They won’t try to find out why it does not work or how things can be fixed.
Truly things can be easily fixed from a soft or hard reset but at the same time very much valuable information is deleted also.
Now that N-gage has been quite successful rolled out.
There is still not any mechanism to save the progress, neither online nor locally on your own computer. Meaning most users with problems on their phones will simply loose very much data.
I have hacked my phone and know where to save the N-gage games progress but for the “ordinary” man this is too complicated.
Indeed security issues are good, but the way Symbian locks different folders on your phone is like Windows locking it’s registry. (And believe me, there is a lot of crap files left after an uninstall of an application).
Sorry for spinning quite off topic but I felt it was neccessary to point out the good and bad of the N82’s UDP as I do find it a welcomed function, which unfortunately can sometimes lead to problems.
That being said, all in all the N82 is definitely my favorite S(eries)60 phone up until now.
[...] at Symbian Guru, Dotsisx has had her hands on a N82 Black for a while now, and shares her thoughts with her [...]
This is the best phone i have ever owned.The camera takes better pics than my ricoh r2.the video on top setting is nigh on dvd. I have installed garmin xt sat nav on it and its awesome,gets a lock on very fast. Also google maps which has satellite imagery with gps location and mapping.This is truly an all round beast of a phone.
[...] test de Symbian-Guru [...]
I also had the N95 and now I own the N82 – It’s far better than the N95. I agree with almost everything you say. The only thing I’m disappointed about is the battery life.
For some reason my N82 doesn’t last more than a day; 2 hours of aac play, 15 minutes of wifi, 10 minutes of gps, 10 minutes of call and the phone starts begging for juice by 3pm.
It’s quite upsetting, thank god for enrgizer 2 go – otherwise I wouldn’t be able to go anywhere with it for longer than a day…
[...] software. The E71, for example, fixes all the glitches that I found in the E61i, whereas the N82 is simply impressive in terms of RAM and GPS fixes compared to the [...]