Nokia N82

How do you follow up a success like the Nokia N95? Well, one way to do it is to follow the path of the Nokia N95 8GB and give it more memory and a larger screen. If you wanted to go further, then you'd probably dream up something even more superlative than the N95 and call it the Nokia N96. So, the Nokia N82 is a surprise, because it's not really what we would imagine a successor to the N95 to be like.

The very first thing that strikes you about the Nokia N82 is just how ordinary it looks. Where the N95 was frankly a bit mad with its two-way slider, the N82 is a straightforward monoblock design with an uncluttered keypad and large QVGA display.

Pretty much everything from the original N95 has been directly ported over to the N82. There's a five megapixel camera with Xenon flash, autofocus and a Carl Zeiss lens, 3G support with HSDPA, WiFi, microSD expandable memory (with 2GB in the sales package), A-GPS (Assisted GPS), a video calling camera, FM radio and stereo Bluetooth.

This is a Symbian S60 smartphone, so it comes with a web browser, email client, document viewer, advanced multimedia player and the N82 also has a set of personal information management (PIM) applications. Nokia Maps is preinstalled for basic GPS use, although expect to pay a fee for more advanced mapping functions. Video capture is an impressive 640x480 pixels at 30 frames per second.

Because this is based on the N95, you can expect everything to work well (yes, some of the early N95s were buggy, but owners can easily update their phone's firmware now). The camera quality should be excellent, and that's mostly down to good optics rather than raw megapixels.

One nice new feature is an iPhone-style sensor that changes the screen orientation when the phone is rotated.

There are a couple of drawbacks. The uncluttered look of the Nokia N82 means that there are no dedicated multimedia keys, and the display is smaller at 2.4" in size, compared to 2.6" on the N95 (and 2.8" on the N95 8GB). We anticipate that the newer Nokia N95 8GB will continue to be sold alongside the N82 as the N95 8GB is somewhat more highly specified.

The model name is a bit of a giveaway - Nokia are positioning the N82 in a slightly lower product range along with the new N81. This leaves the N95 8GB and Nokia E90 as the flagship devices in Nokia's lineup.

Perhaps the Nokia N82 is a little disappointing in some respects. If you already own a Nokia N95 then there's no real reason to change your handset. However, if you're in the market for a quality 3G phone with a first rate camera, then the Nokia N82 is going to be very hard to beat.

Nokia say that the N82 is available now from selected retailers at an unsubsidised cost of around €450 (or approximately £300).

Nokia N82 at a glance
Available: Q4 2007
Network:GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 UMTS 2100
Data:GPRS + EDGE + UMTS (3G) + HSDPA + WiFi
Screen:240x320 pixels, 16m colours
Camera:5 megapixels
Size:Medium monoblock112 x 50 x 17mm / 114 grams
Bluetooth:Yes
Memory card:microSD
Infra-red:No
Polyphonic:Yes
Java:Yes
Battery life:3 hours talk / 8 days standby (3G)4 hours talk / 9 days standby (2G)