Nokia N82 Review - Usability & Performance

I tested the N82 on T-Mobile in the San Francisco Bay Area.  Signal strength and call quality were generally excellent, on par with or better than any recent T-Mobile handset I’ve tried (save their latest UMA-equipped BlackBerrys).  The Quad-Band GSM radio picked up signals easily, and I had no trouble hopping onto T-Mo’s EDGE data network, either.  Calls came through loud and clear with minimal background hiss, and people I talked to generally said I sounded good on their end, as well.

The handset worked well with the included wired stereo headset, and sounded great when I plugged in my own earphones to listen to music.  One minor disappointment is that my “iPhone friendly” Etymotic hf2 headset didn’t work with the N82.  I’ve successfully used it with recent BlackBerry Curve and Pearl models, but when I plugged it into the Nokia a loud buzz took hold and wouldn’t give.  Other microphone-less stereo earphones were fine, though, and I had no trouble using the included A/V cable to route the N82 through my home stereo system and TV set for playback of videos, still images, and even Web content.

I was also able to easily pair the N82 with a variety of mono and stereo Bluetooth headsets.  Wireless range was good, as was audio quality.  The phone’s internal speaker is pretty loud and worked well as an on-the-go speakerphone, though music distorted when I pushed the speaker to full volume.

One thing that hampered usability on the N82 was its keypad layout.  For whatever reason, Nokia went with big softkeys and very small alphanumeric buttons on this handset.  In general I found the dialing keys a bit small and the overall button arrangement a bit cramped.  I’m guessing Nokia wanted to maximize the available display space given that the N82 is a candybar, while still leaving ample room for the D-Pad.  But they should have gone with a different dialing layout that afforded larger buttons.  Also, the D-Pad and right softkey also both creaked, were a little sticky, and leaked light (from the backlight), which added to my overall impression of, “Cheap build quality for a $550 phone.”

The thing about Symbian S60 devices is that they’re super powerful but not really novice-friendly.  S60 is an amazingly rich platform but it’s got a learning curve to it and also demands pretty robust hardware lest you wind up bogged down by serious lags when you press keys and switch applications.  Folks used to Windows Mobile devices will find using a phone like the N82 “similar but different,” kind of like the difference between a PC and a Mac.  Folks used to a carrier-branded feature phone will likely feel a bit lost when first trying out an S60 smartphone.  There’s a lot under the hood here, and if you’re not interested in customizing and tweaking beyond setting your wallpaper, S60 is not for you.

Again, you can refer to my N95 review or any number of Symbian-centric Websites for much more on S60.  For now I’ll just say that the N82 is amongst the more responsive S60 devices I’ve tried, but still exhibits minor lag when skipping tracks in the music player, loading up a video clip, or switching applications.

Speaking of music playback, while the actual music sounded great via wired ‘phones or over stereo Bluetooth, I had some issues with the integrated music player.  For some reason it sorted all of my tracks alphabetically, so instead of playing an album in the correct order (Track 1, Track 2, etc), it played them all alphabetically by song title.  I couldn’t figure out how to correct this, no matter how many “solutions” I found online and tried.  At least I wasn’t the only one to ever experience this on an N82, I guess.