Smartphone comes of age (Nokia N80)

Member Name: de_construct

Product:	Nokia N80
Date:	06/08/06 (598 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Features. Easier to list things it doesn't have... DVB-T, touchscreen, HSDPA and GPS.

Disadvantages: It's a bit thick, which is a normal problem for a smartphone.

Mainly got this as I couldn't put up with SonyEricsson's delays to the P990i.

Several things to note... the screen is an absurdly high resolution, 352x416 pixels, whilst being physically small, 2.1 inches. Not a really a problem, but I think it's a bit wasteful. Also, Nokia's inexperience with slider phones really shows.

As for the keys...

a) The keypad is too short, making it hard to hold;

b) Said keypad is also too smooth, and hard, making texting more difficult than it might have been. (What it it with Nokia and strange keypads? This one looks normal but FEELS weird!)

c) the other controls are, to my mind, badly designed as well... I keep hitting the bif red one, exiting any application I might have been using by mistake frequently, usually the web browser, which is a chore to get back to where you were before.... they managed to make the successful N70 d-pad with its separate select button... and put what they learned with the 6230 to 6230i lesson in reverse, removing the central selector.

d) Nokia had yet to discover the joys of placing side buttons on this one, which they did when they designed the N91, probably in another room round the corner or something. This is a startling ommission in this day and age, on sonyericssons, it makes volume control/skipping tracks/chaging stations something you can do with the phone in your pocket. The overloading of the main d-pad, causing the select action-and then hit the centre button to work it method, rendering this handset cumbersome as an iPod replacement.

e) There's no way to highlight a specific word, or groups of words, with Series60. This isn't having a go at the keys themselves, but at the edit key being too limited, and that there's no real alternative to a proper touchscreen.

Apart from those issues.... this is the best phone on the market today.
It's the same size as the Samsung D800, except it's almost twice as thick... has the best mobile browser out there, which has a mini-map and animated history pages. It also manages to be more W3C compliant than IE 7! If you get a 2GB card like me, you can load it full of movies and applications. The built in speaker is pretty loud too.

3G means you can do data about 5 times faster than GPRS, and lets you do video calls as well, if you're into that. The other reviewer also gushed about bluetooth... which I do find is pretty vital for my personal use of this phone, transferring files from my Mac. I think it's also a much faster flavour of Bluetooth than my old SE S700i's.

The camera is maybe a little disappointing, the colours are washed out generally, and it's poor in low light, compared to the S700i's 1.3MP CCD. Otherwise, it totally blows the K800i out of the water feature-wise. The excellent video mode, CIF resolution (352x288) at 15fps is pretty impressive compared to SE's QCIF.

It uses MiniSD, which I hope ends Nokia's obsession with RS-MMC. It also came with Word/Excel/PowerPoint viewers, with the editors available in September/On the Nokia E61.

Watching films on it is also a pleasure, owing to the high-res screen. Radio is good as well. You can use your own earphones with it, as it's supplied with an adaptor.

I might have ranted about its design, but I think that Symbian is far more phone-centric than Windows Mobile, which is more focussed on the "other stuff"... getting in the way of the basic telephony features.

And yes, I do admit to being a bit of a SonyEricsson fanboy. But I love my Nokia N80.

Summary: Hefty black brick Nokia induces love and affection from SonyEricsson fanboy.