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Friday, December 08, 2006
Nokia N80 Hands On Review
Nokia N80 Hands On Review

Here is my Nokia N80 review, but lets start with reading what other people have said about this device.



Our opinion is that Nokia N80 is a brilliant business phone with powerful equipment and many great features. Probably many would not share our enthusiasm and will say that it’s too big or uncomfortable to use but we consider these drawbacks as minor. Now the heavy price of the phone will be the main disadvantage that will dishearten many potential customers. gsmarena

As a first S60 smartphone, most users will embrace the N80 with open arms and use it for what it is, a very powerful smartphone (though do make sure you get it upgraded to the latest firmware, the review model with older firmware was not without the odd glitch).

But, from a personal viewpoint and with an emphasis towards photography and application compatibility, Nokia will have to excuse me if I still consider the S60 2nd Edition-powered N70 and N90 to be, on balance, the current devices for me... Allaboutsymbian

If Nokia could have doubled the size of the N80's battery, even at the cost of an additional 18g, I would have had no qualms about giving the device a highly recommended rating. But as things stand, the N80 earns only a "Recommended" rating because of the tarnish that the poor battery life puts on an otherwise shining example of mobile technology. mobileburn


Nokia N80 Hands On Review
Nokia's N80 was introduced with the second wave of Nseries devices in November last year along with the Nokia N71 and the Nokia N92. The N80 is a slider that packs quad-band GSM (850, 900, 1800 and 1900MHz), 1900 or 2100 MHz WCDMA support and 3G, it has 802.11g WiFi (WLAN) support, a 3 megapixel camera and a very high resolution screen. The phone runs Symbian OS 9.1 and is a Series 60 3rd edition phone. More technical specs can be found here: Nokia N80 tech specs.

Not familiar with the technical jargon above? Okey, one could also say the N80 is a phone that can do almost everything a phone can do these days. The phone has an operating system (Symbian) and you can install software on it. You can surf the web and read mail, and you can do that for free if you are near a free Wifi hotspot (the phone has WLAN, Wireless LAN). The N80 camera takes good pictures too and If you travel a lot you can publish those pictures on the web from almost everywere - the N80 is a real "world phone" (quad-band and WCDMA support).

N80 Size
Nokia N80 vs Nokia N70

At 9.5 x 5 x 2.6 cm closed, the Nokia N80 isn´t the smallest slider available, but I was suprised it´s smaller than the Nokia N70 (maybe somewhat thicker though and weighing 4 grams more).

Nokia N80 Hands on Review


Display
In comparison to N70 and the first Nseries devices, one of the biggest modification applied to the N80 seem to be the display. The N80 TFT display has 352 × 416 pixels (like in the N90 model) and 256K colors. You can clearly see the difference and the N80 display is excellent - crisp and colorful. The N80 has been critisized for its short battery life and that is why one asks how much bigger is the power consumption for this better display?

The N80 user interface uses the active display and has shortcuts to favorite applications and contains information about the network coverage, operator, battery status, date, time, radio channel etc.

Operating System
Nokia N80 runs on Series 60 user interface of third generation. I´m not 100 % shure, but I have a feeling the operating system works faster or at least as fast as the one I have on my N70 (Series 60 v2 Feature Pack 3). The people at gsmarena say that the N80 UI is generally faster and there is a performance increase in comparison to the previous 2nd generation S60 user interface.

Memory
The phone has 40 MB internal memory and a miniSD memory card slot (128 MB card comes along the sales package).

Music
Among the N80 applications you will find a new music player (same as Nokia 3250). The Music Player has an equalizer and supports playlists. The supported file formats are MP3, AAC, m4a, eAAC+ and WMA. The N80 also has a Real Player and a Flash player preinstalled. FM radio is also available.

The headphones that come with the sales package aren´t anything special and have a quite bad audio quality. I highly recommend using some third party headphones (N80 bundles a 3.5mm audio jack adaptor).

N80 Camera
I was a little disappointed with the picture quality of the phone. At 3 megapixel I expected the N80 camera's picture quality to be a lot better. I have been shooting with the Nokia N70 (2 megapixel) a lot and the photos taken with the N80 weren´t better, sharper or more colorful. Note here that the N80 camera hasn´t autofocus like the N90, N73 and N93 models.

Nokia N80 Camera Phone

No lens cover on this phone!

When reading Steve Litchfield´s N80 review I found out that the N70's sensor has its images processed 'onboard', i.e. by dedicated electronics inside the camera, whereas the N80's sensor passes its data to a chip on the N80's motherboard. The N80 has 3 megapixles, but the N70 sensor is better than the N80 one. Steve´s review also revealed that the sensor elements in the N80 camera are physically smaller and that the lens used is part of a moveable array ( i.e. swappable with the macro one). The N70 camera has a fixed lens.

At this point it´s good to remind you that image quality isn´t about megapixels. It about the lens quality (and if it´s plastics or glass) and lens size and sensor type etc. Megapixels is nowadays used for marketing and will not always say that much about the picture quality.

The camera settings including self-timer, sequence of pictures, different shooting modes, night mode, white balance (settings; AWB, Sunny, Cloudy, Incandescent, Fluorescent), exposure value -2 to +2, different color effects (sepia, black & white, etc.), three grades are available for image sharpness - Hard, Normal, Soft and you can adjust the contrast and color saturation too.

You can manually switch to macromode and then it´s possible to take pictures in a distance of 15-25 cm. N80 records video in MP4 video (352x288) and 3GP video (176x144).

I will write more about the N80 camera and ad pictures in the nearby future...

Connections
The are a lot of connections types available; Wi-Fi, UPnP, Bluetooth and IrDa. Nokia N80 works with Bluetooth Specification 1.2 (you cannot use stereo Bluetooth headset with the phone). USB 2.0 is also supported.

The UPnP technology allows seamless connection between different devices. With UPnP and using WiFi connection, you can transmit pictures to the television and music to your home stereo system etc. The other devices of course must support UPnP!

Battery
The weak point of the N80 is its BL-5B battery. If you use the phone a lot you should be ready to recharge it once a day.

I say: If you can afford the N80 and need a powerful multimedia phone packed with advanced features the N80 might be the phone you are looking for. This is a phone for early adopters, power users and gadget lovers. Personally, the look and feel didn´t impress me, but then again I´m not a fan of slider phones. To me and compared to my N70 the N80 didn´t impress me. If you are looking for a Nokia smartphone with Wifi then the N80 is propably a serious alternative, but if you don´t need it and want to save money I recommend the N70.

The good: Wifi, radio, MP3 Player and ok camera.
The bad: Battery life, price and size.

Nokia N80 Video Review




N80 Slider

 

posted by Labanon @ 12:13 AM  
2 Comments:
  • At 5:05 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    nice hp..nice review dude..

     
  • At 8:22 PM, Anonymous dsi r4 said…

    the camera covers keeps sliding down when i am picking up my phone from my pocket to answer a call or putting it in my pocket it turns on the camera as well..

     
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