DECEMBER 15, 2006
Product Review
By Cliff Edwards
Nokia's N80: Features Fever
This handset boasts superior photo capabilities, but its wealth of multimedia options slows performance and navigating them isn't a breeze
Like its N-series cousins, the Nokia N80 is billed as an all-around device for an increasingly media-centric world. With a 3-megapixel digital camera, it certainly delivers on that front, but I found the device to be a tad too feature-packed—with noticeable lags in the time it takes to switch between features and navigation keys too easy to get confused over—to deliver a truly enjoyable experience.
Still, the N80 will turn heads. The stainless-steel front bezel surrounds a bright 2.2-in. screen of 325- by 416-pixel resolution. On the right upper corner, there's a VGA camera for taking self-portraits and videoconferencing (though the latter has to be enabled through your wireless carrier). Below the screen are two keys for choosing on-screen functions, "talk" and "end" buttons below that, and a four-way navigation toggle in the center. Further down are keys that let the user edit, clear, choose multimedia, or take a shortcut.
The slider phone itself measures a relatively small 3.7 in. long by a bulkier 1.9 in. wide and 1 in. deep, and it weighs 4.7 oz. Having all those function keys in slightly more than a square inch of space presented a problem for my big fingers, and I was constantly tapping the wrong button. The tiny, cramped navigation keys also made it difficult to pull up my contacts quickly.
One gripe I've had with other N-series slider phones has been their cramped, tiny keypads, but the N80 uses a more standard keypad that presented no problems.
Swell Camera A quad-band, the N80 is compatible with major GSM networks around the world, and I found call quality quite clear, even in network-challenged San Francisco. Still, I occasionally disconnected myself because the slider lock is not as tensile as it should be. I also inadvertently dialed the first person on my contact list a couple of times while the phone was in my pocket after forgetting to lock the front keys.
The back of the device is a nice matte black, with the top portion sporting a digital camera that, in a pinch, lets you leave the Canon or Nikon at home. With 3 megapixels, a flash, and 20x digital zoom, you can toggle through eight shooting modes, from portrait to sports, take pictures in five resolutions, and even record video clips. A switch below the lens also lets you take close-ups.
Nokia's (NOK) N-series phones emphasize one feature—photos, music, or games—over another. The N80 shines with photos. They were some of the best I've seen from a phone, and even better than those I've seen from some entry-level cameras. You don't lack for the ability to adjust the image, either. You can fix contrast, color tone, white balance, and even the exposure settings for fast-moving images.
Music and Video, Too Should you need more than the memory that comes with the phone, there's a miniSD card expansion slot on the left side. Nokia provides a 128MB miniSD card, and you can purchase up to 2GB separately for about $50. You also can e-mail your images, or use Nokia's Xpress Solutions to print photos, upload them to the Web, or transfer them to other devices.
Nokia also includes the requisite music player, which lets you play MP3, AAC (though not Apple (AAPL) iTunes Store songs), and Microsoft's (MSFT) Windows Media files. Filling the player requires attaching the phone to a computer with an included USB cable and dragging and dropping songs onto the media card.
For connecting to other devices without cables and wires, the device also includes Bluetooth and 802.11g wireless fidelity, or Wi-Fi. For video aficionados, the N80 is equipped with RealPlayer software that lets you play back Real video, MPEG-4, and other video files, though no DIVX or Windows Media support.
Web: Browse Away Turning to the other noteworthy feature, the N80 includes a pretty decent Web browser—though, as with all phones, many sites don't show up well on the display. There's also support for IMAP4, POP3, and STMP e-mail accounts, as well as reading Microsoft Office applications, though the N890's processor could stand an upgrade to help you switch between them faster.
Finally, the N80 also had pretty decent battery life. Talk time was nearly double the three hours promised. Even with the phone in standby mode, with no use for a couple of days, the charge held.
The big downside to the N80 is the $600 price tag. Because no U.S. carrier offers it, there's no subsidy to jump-start the N80's sales. If you've got money burning a hole in your pocket, though, the N80 is a worthy choice.
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