Nokia N82
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Desinement, n (di-'fīn-mənt): the principle by which products steadily improve aesthetically and ergonomically over iterations. Contraction of 'design' and 'refinement.'

I've just made that word up. It doesn't really exist, but it should, because the phenomenon it refers to is real – products tend to get slicker – and without it I'm unable to make the following point: although Nokia's N82 ably succeeds the superb N81, it shows absolutely no evidence of desinement. None whatsoever.

It's ugly. The silver finish looks tacky, it's massive, the band across the middle in which the D-pad and softkeys sit looks like a belt, and the buttons look like bony little hyphens.

Once you get over the shock of seeing it face to face for the first time, however, you learn to look past its outer defects and towards the proud phone that lies within. And so it's only right that, having let you know about the N82's disappointing looks, I now drop the matter entirely.

Because what lies within is truly impressive. An update to the excellent N81, which is a sort of budget alternative to the N95, the N82 redresses one of its immediate predecessor's major failings, sacrifices one of its more dispensable features, and drafts in a couple of pieces of cutting-edge technology to ensure that it competes with high-powered rivals like the Sony Ericsson K850i.

First off, then, the camera. The N82 contains a five-megapixel behemoth, equivalent in resolution to that of phones like the the Samsung G600, the Nokia N95, the LG KU990 and the Sony Ericsson K850i. However, it outdoes them all by combining the better elements of each.

The trademark Nokia Carl Zeiss lens is there, as is Sony Ericsson's trademark Xenon flash, meaning fairly solid performance in low-light and great pictures outside on a sunny day. At 30 frames-per-second the video recording is also extremely smooth.

Music playback is excellent, and the phone takes a standard 3.5mm headphone jack so you can easily swap in your iPod headphones, or use your phone to listen to tracks in your car with one of those ingenious devices that plug into the tape player, both of which I frequently do with my N81.

Unlike the N81, the N82 lacks Play/Pause, Stop, and Next/Previous Track on the front of the handset. Those of you who've spent any time with the former will know, however, that this omission is no bad thing, since it's far too easy on the N81 to set a track going while you're trying to do something else – at the risk of more or less mortification depending on your taste in music and the number of people around you.

Also gone is the massive 8GB storage capacity shared by the N81 and the N95. The N82 contains a mere 100MB, although a 2GB data card comes in the box. This means less room for music and photographs, but unless you're looking to replace your iPod and digital camera entirely this is unlikely to inconvenience you; 2GB is enough for almost anybody.

Like the K850i, the N82 boasts an accelerometer, which means you can turn the phone on its side and have the interface automatically rotate. It's a neat facility, albeit deployed with far less sheen than Apple managed in the iPhone.

Of course, we're far more concerned with the gaming implications: with an accelerometer, you'll be able to play cutting-edge titles like the forthcoming I-play Bowling, which we recently previewed. Oddly, though, there were no games pre-loaded onto our test version that take advantage of this technology, so we can only vouch for the N82's potential as a tilt-gaming device.

What it definitely is, however, is an N-Gage compatible device. For those of you new to these pages, that N-Gage is a high-spec mobile gaming platform created by Nokia and available to a select group of handsets, if you happen to own one of which you can visit the online application to download games, post high-scores, make friends, and so on.

As such, and given that it also uses the powerful Symbian OS, the N82 sits in principle at the vanguard of mobile gaming. In principle. In practice, however, it's a few paces back.

Most N-Gage games support landscape mode, which means you can turn your handset around and play it almost like you would a PSP. For this to work, though, the handset needs to have buttons at the top of the screen, such as those sported by the game-centric N81. The N82 has none, so landscape gaming is more or less out of the question, which is a big waste.

Otherwise, it's not the worst gaming handset in the world. The keypad is spongy and the keys beneath it are fiddly, but performance and support are good and you won't come up against any major impediments to your gaming pleasure with the N82. You just won't have as much fun as you could have been having, and so – as truly great as this phone is in almost every respect – as a gaming device it's a bit of a missed opportunity.

And it's ugly.

Nokia N82

While the N82 is an excellent phone with a peerless raft of features, including GPS, wi-fi, and a five-megapixel camera, it's just not as well suited to gaming as an N-Gage handset should be
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Rob Hearn
Rob Hearn
Having obtained a distinguished education, Rob became Steel Media's managing editor, now he's no longer here though.