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.
