Nokia N80 3G smart phone review
| Design |
| The Nokia N80 smart phone is one of the most complete slider 3G phones in the market at the moment. It comes with a very cool silver or black plastic and stainless steel front and the bottom part is made of black plastic. The phone itself feels very solid indeed and the slider mechanism works extremely well. The N80 is not too big in size compare to other smart phones (95.5x50x23.5 mm), but you will probably find it a bit too thick if you are already used to thinner alternatives. The problem is that the the body thickens to 26 mm around the camera module, making it a bit too big to fit on your shirt pocket. The weight is average for a smart phone and reaches 134g. On the front of the phone we find a 5D navigational button, surrounded by a collection of two soft-keys and call accept and cancel buttons. You can open the phone with one hand to reveal the very convenient keypad. At first, you will think that the keys are too close to each other, but soon you will discover that it is very difficult to press two keys at the same time, making texting a real pleasure. On the front we also find an Integrated VGA camera with 2 x digital zoom for video calling. On the back of the Nokia N80 is where we find one of the phone’s biggest selling points: a 3 megapixel camera with 20x digital zoom and with a resolution of 2048 x 1536 pixels. |
| Features |
| The list of features on this gorgeous phone is endless. This 3G, Quad Band slide Nokia smart phone runs on Symbian S60 3rd edition, like its brothers the N91 and N71. The guys at Nokia had the word COMMUNICATION on the top of their list when they developed this phone. It supports Wireless LAN (802.11g) and UPnP (Universal Plug and Play), Bluetooth wireless technology, Infrared, Pop-Port with USB 2.0. It also has an integrated digital music player with stereo audio, supporting MP3, AAC, m4a, eAAC+ and wma formats. And if you get bored of the music stored on the 40MB internal dynamic memory or on the miniSD card, you can always switch on the integrated FM radio and listen to your favourite radio stations. The integrated Multimedia player (RealPlayer) supports 3GPP, MP4 and RealMedia video streaming. The Nokia N80 smart phone can capture high-quality video in MP4 and 3GP formats with up to 5x digital zoom. Very Impressive! Other basic features include text and multimedia messaging, calendar, calculator and Quickoffice document viewers. |
| Performance |
| This phone has an excellent call quality, even through the speaker phone. The sound is clear and there is no need to raise your voice so the person on the other end of the call can hear you. With an impressive battery life (up to 8 days on standby mode and up to 3 hours of talk time) you won’t need to take a charger with you everywhere you go like some other smart phones on the market. The sound from the music player is clear and crisp and the picture quality of the 3megapixel camera is good, but not as good as the picture quality on the Nokia N70. Yes, we know that the N70 has only 2 megapixels, but when it comes to picture quality, there are other factors to consider apart from the number of megapixels: sensor size, how the sensor data is handled, lens size and quality. The N70’s sensor has its images processed by dedicated electronics inside the camera, and the N80's sensor simply passes its data to a Texas Instruments chip on the N80's motherboard. Unfortunately, this makes a big difference when it comes to picture quality. Wi-Fi works well and it’s very easy to use. It doesn’t take long to learn how it works and you can be connected to a wireless network in less than a minute. |
| Overall Opinion |
| This is a stunning piece of technology that is full of features, well designed and built to last. It was initially launched to target the business market, but with its affordable price and loads of features to play with, it has now become a very desirable phone for everyone wanting to have the latest technology in their pocket. |
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By Nacho Galvez |
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Wi-Fi 3 Megapixel camera Bluetooth 3G | Picture quality |
| Factor | Rating |
|---|---|
| Ease of Use | 4/5 |
| Durability | 4/5 |
| Style | 4/5 |
| Service & Support | 4/5 |
| Value for Money | 4/5 |
| Recommend | 1/5 |
| Overall | 4/5 |