Nokia N80

...2001, ye olde company of Nokia announced its first smart phone, the 7650. Instead of separating these smart phones into their own, scary, techno-geek-type product class, Nokia simply positioned them as the most functional phones. They showed off the phone's most widely-appealing functions such as SMS, MMS and the (for its time) advanced camera function and hid away the scary, techno-geek abilities of its operating system. So it was, that Nokia cunningly ...
...capability and appeal of the Nokia N80.

Why the N80 will be such a massive hit is because Nokia have paid so much attention to every detail. The main reasons why this heavyweight handset beats others into submission is its array of advanced features, the combination of which differentiates it strongly from its closest rivals: the classic, but functional slider design; the first Nokia phone with a 3 megapixel camera; its reasonable ... more

Introduction

Once upon a time, in November 2001, ye olde company of Nokia announced its first smart phone, the 7650. Instead of separating these smart phones into their own, scary, techno-geek-type product class, Nokia simply positioned them as the most functional phones. They showed off the phone's most widely-appealing functions such as SMS, MMS and the (for its time) advanced camera function and hid away the scary, techno-geek abilities of its operating system. So it was, that Nokia cunningly planned the marketing for the 7650, and for the 26 other smart phones, of which the N80 is one, that were to follow in its wake.

Now, there are many many normal, un-techno-geek-like people that have been looking forward for many many months (or even years) to getting this phone - myself included. Finally, I received my new N80 a month ago...and it was well worth the wait.

Before I start, let's just get it clear that if you buy this handset, you will be buying the most advanced, most capable, feature-rich, versatile mobile phone on the market. When your friends ask you what it is, you'll have to tell without doubt that it is the best currently available walkie-talkie money can buy at the moment. Yes, there are handheld PDAs which you can do clever touchscreen stuff on. Yes, there are little pink camera phones that are cheap and you can talk and text on. Yes, there are more expensive stainless steel or shiny black pieces of mobile phone ergonomics that make designers wet their pants. But there is nothing else with the all-round capability and appeal of the Nokia N80.

Why the N80 will be such a massive hit is because Nokia have paid so much attention to every detail. The main reasons why this heavyweight handset beats others into submission is its array of advanced features, the combination of which differentiates it strongly from its closest rivals: the classic, but functional slider design; the first Nokia phone with a 3 megapixel camera; its reasonable size and weight; a fantastic display; S60 version 3 FP1 operating system; the inclusion of Wi-Fi; that it supports Universal PnP (plug'n'play).

Slippety Slide

Using the phone, you'll notice first off that it is not too big, a decent weight and size for normal-sized hands and slides open easily. We might as well get the only criticism out of the way first: there's no spring-load mechanism on the slider, so it doesn't snap open and shut like a Samsung D600. But that's no problem because if you are stronger than, say, a small rodent you will be able to prise it open with no trouble at all. The keypad is great for fat-thumbed people like me, and you won't press two buttons at the same time by pressing where they join, as the keys will not register a click if pressed in this area.

When in use, there is a cool blue backlight on the keypad and the screen backlight lights up too. It gradually fades after a few seconds of unuse and then fades again to dark after a few seconds more.The backlighting is also automatically adjusted by the light sensor, which is supposed to make the battery last a bit longer because it's not used all the time.

Basics

There's a 1.3mp camera for videocalls found above the screen, a memory card slot on the left hand side, the camera button on the right and a stereo speaker on the top of the right-hand side. On the back cover is the 3mp camera lens, with a flash, a little switch for close-ups and distance shots and underneath that, the battery compartment. On the top is the power button - bigger than the N70, so you won't have to prod it with the end of a fork or a ball-point pen to turn it on or off.

Don't take out the memory card while you have applications running as everything closes when you remove it. It warns you beforehand about this though. Card type is Mini SD and the one included in my box was a 128mb - enough to store a fair few songs/downloads/pictures, etc.

Easy PC

There is a PC connection cable also included in the box, and when you plug in (goes into the USB port in the back of the PC), you're given 3 options: PC suite (usual connection to Nokia OC suite), Data transfer (memory card is connected as a file storage point and data carrier; no drivers required) or PictBridge (direct access to printer). I lost the user guides and PC CD-Rom when I was out getting blitzed after work one Friday evening, so I haven't been able to take advantage of the PC access yet, although I can still print out direct to the printer which is handy.

Another reason the N80 is great is because it has the highest screen resolution of any handset on the market at the moment - 352 x 416 pixels. Everything else (except the Blackberrys and other business phones like the XDA) is about 240 x 320. It displays about 252k colours, which is more than enough for the average human eye to discern.

Snappety Snap

Make like a little crocodile with the camera on the N80: the pics look great when you look at them in the gallery or on the PC. The phone is just turned on its side with the shutter button on the top-right to take pics, but before you snap, you should adjust the lens according to whether you are taking pictures of mountains (and other far-away things) or flowers (or other close-up things). The phone can store squillions of pictures on the memory card, and if you want to view them the gallery is really good, with a rather slick, scrolling viewer.

There are loads of options for picture-taking (all of them too advanced for me - I just push the button and hope, but which I'm sure enthusiasts will use). They are things like different modes like night-mode, to make sure you capture that Barn Owl as it glides across the night sky, or 'Sport', to help you capture the blood flying out of that poor fella's mouth in his boxing match. There is also an effective flash, so no more time wasted in the club trying to take a pic of your fave DJ, only to wake up the next day to find you've captured a fantastic picture of a black and neon splodge, instead of your inane gurn as you and he shake hands.

Vive la Resolution

You can also adjust image sharpness (go easy on your gran), exposure (how many clothes the subjects have on) and colour effects (reduce the burn on that Spanish tan). You can take a series of photos with the speed from 3 frames per second to 1 frame per 15 minutes, so for instance, as one boring little nerd suggested to me, you could place the phone on its side and watch things happening in the office. Er, take my advice and set it up in the bedroom instead. Timer values are 2, 10 or 20 seconds, and finally you cannot switch off the shutter sound, which I think is good because people will know when they are having their pictures taken.

Four resolutions (picture sizes) are available:
3mp - Large (2048x1536 pixels)
2mp - Medium
1.3mp - Small
0.5mp - send via Email
0.3mp - send via MMS

Music makes me lose control

The N80 is just as much a music device as any of the so-called music phones on the market. The only difference is that it doesn't have the famous 'W' logo on it. All you have to do to transfer music files from your PC is drag and drop into your N80 digital library, which you'll find in the PC suite on the CD-Rom. You can use any old format, including WMA, ACC and Mpeg4 files. The AD-15 adaptor will let you plug your 3.5mm headphone jack into the phone so you don't have to use the included headphones, which are very basic. There are also 7 graphic equaliser settings, so you can pump the bass til your ears explode, or trash the treble til your teeth disintegrate.

The radio is good too. I use it often and think every handset should have a trusty wireless built in amongst the hi-tech features. Rather.

Web of intrigue

With my N80, on the Three network, you can browse a 'walled-garden' internet for free on your phone. This includes content like music, film reviews, etc, and you can pay extra to browse wap versions of sites like eBay and Amazon. The clever folk at nokia have done something a bit clever and added a feature called MiniMap to make full html browsing easier on its small screen. A semi-transparent, zoomed-out view of the web page area you're reading, shadowed by a complete view of the whole web page as it was originally designed, complement full-web surfing on the two-inch screen nicely

Along with internet access, the N80 allows email messaging, and you can read your various attachments like Word, PowerPoint, Excel and PDF files through the Office Document Viewer and Adobe Reader.

Battery of Features

Call quality is excellent but with such a wealth of multimedia features on board, the N80 is prone to battery drain and you'll find that you have to stock up on the jungle juice at the end of each day if you frequently consume these functions. this is especially noticeable when web browsing, whereby the 7 battery pips will disappear faster than a chav who has just broken into a car.

A list of the other top features are as follows: Wi-Fi (not available on many business smartphones, let alone a regular handset like this), Lifeblog (still to use this, although it can apparently automatically organise your photos, messages, etc into a digital diary), personalisation of the ringtomes/calling settings/wallpaper and a load of card games which I quite enjoy. Not as much as backgammon on my 6630, but still ok.

It's a wrap

I really like the N80. It doesn't take handsets as far forward as the N70 did when it came out, but that would be difficult. Instead, it updates the N70 worthily, and is nice and solid with big buttons and big features. There are one or two annoying things about the way it works, like the predictive text messaging has been made too clever for its own good, but apart from that it's pretty much a great smartphone which will be able to handle comfortably almost anything anyone wants to do with it. I like it and will be sticking with it until they invent a non-business handset which enables web browsing which is even better than the experience on the N80. Definitely recommended, along with its peer, the K800i.

See http://www.nokia.com/nseries/index.html#home for details, and try any retailer or network website to buy on contract (I got mine at www.three.co.uk on video Talk & Text 1100). Sim-free it is between £280 (eBay) and £450 (major retailers). 

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