10 reasons why the N82 isn’t perfect

The N82 is in my opinion currently one of the best multimedia-oriented smartphones on the market, doing everything a N95 or N95 8GB can (sans the slider of course)in a more compact, go-anywhere-do everything package that’s also sturdier due to the candybar design. Its design doesn’t scream “smartphone” like the N95, which should allow it to appeal more to the general market. Not bad neither that it has one of the best cameras on any smartphone, including that wonderful Xenon flash and the impressive low-light performance. Despite of all these notable attributes, it’s far from perfect and here are 10 reasons why.

1. No Optical Zoom: The N82 has the aspiration of being and even replacing your digital camera, but lacking Optical zoom means that you’re pretty much stuck with the digital variant,which by now we all know is pretty much useless. Lacking Optical zoom still means that the N82’s plans for digital camera domination will be cut short.

2. No Media keys:  Having a smartphone means doing many things at once. A lot of times, playing music is going to be “one of those things” and the lack of media keys mean constantly having to open the Media Player to control your music, instead of just pressing a single button.

3. Lack of micro-USB charging. Having the ability to charge via USB not only means one cable to take along, but also charging while transferring data, especially during those firmware upgrades or those long first-time music-sync sessions.

4. micro-USB and charger connector Placement. The micro-USB and charger connector should be placed at bottom phone. Both of them get in the way when I’m talking on the phone and charging the device at the same time.

5. Small screen. Ask any N95 user and they tell you that one of the things they miss is the large screen, which does come in handy when viewing videos or pictures. While sliders have the advantage of being able to house larger screen, on the N82 there seems to be a lot of empty space to facilitate this. Making the phone bigger to achieve this would also seem like an understandable compromise.

6. Speaker placement. The N82’s speakers work great when held horizontally, but try playing your tunes while holding the device vertically and you’ll quickly realize how your hands actually cover the speakers. The placement of the speakers on the N95  works a lot better, but a combination of both should work best.

7. Slow USB transfer. Based on these simple test here, it shows that the transfer speed on the N82 is painfully slow. You could always take out the memory card and use a card reader, but that would defeat the all-in-one purpose, wouldn’t it?

8.Lack of optical Image Stabilizer (IS): Adding Optical zoom means more chances of getting blurry shaky images, adding IS should help a lot.

9. No QWERTY. Not only business devices should equal QWERTY. A N82 with a side-mounted slide-out QWERTY keyboard would be killer.

10. No Flashlight: One thing I liked about the N93 was the fact that you could use the flash as a flashlight and just like the upcoming N96 you could use it during the video recording.