N80 Review

Starting off with an impressively razor-sharp and bright high-resolution display with 262K colour depth as its viewfinder, the N80 unfortunately starts falling short of expectations quickly. The camera interface is nearly void of indicators and fails to indicate how to access shooting options, while the combination of lacking autofocus and a lazy shutter requires a rock-steady hand to avoid blurry shots indoors even during daytime. Colour reproduction and white balance are admittedly excellent, but we could care less for the marring eight-second shot-to-shot lag, marginally functional macro mode and the limited range of the built-in flash with red eye reduction. The actual process of shooting stills and recording video is straightforward, yielding decent results for which a very solid array of post-processing and sharing options are available. Services from Kodak and PrintOnline offer upload-to-print solutions, while direct printing is possible through Infrared, Bluetooth or PictBridge. Alternatively, users can blog on the go courtesy of Nokia Lifeblog or transfer pictures over USB 2.0 to a PC and the bundled Adobe Photoshop Album Starter Edition, which is a more than adequate solution for basic image management. Most surprisingly, perhaps, is the praise-worthy ability of the N80 to share photos, videos and also music over its Wi-Fi 802.11g connection with UPnP compatible devices such as media extenders for the living room. Naturally, streaming content in this manner severely impacts the otherwise impressive battery life of the N80, which stretched to the range of 500 stills with flash - or 370 more than the bundled 128 MB miniSD card holds.
A multi-talented performer, the N80 also lays claim to several other categories including music. Its audio player, which supports MP3, AAC and WMA formats is identical to that of the Nokia 3250, which translates to a decent offering in need of a minor polish. With sub-par out-of-box audio quality and only 128 MB of memory, however, the N80 cannot be said to be much of a music phone even though it includes a fully adequate stereo FM radio for when the onboard library has been depleted. So, how about business use? The N80 sets itself up nicely enough with stellar connectivity including 3G, Wi-Fi 802.11g, Bluetooth and excellent voice performance, its superb high-resolution display and the quality QuickOffice suite for viewing of common business file formats. Sadly, its numerical keypad - although a quality affair - is a miss with regard to data entry, and the N80 also succeeds in upholding Nokia's venerable tradition of providing poor local and groupware synchronization support out-of-box. As a 3G phone, however, the N80 scores a slam dunk courtesy of its all-round appeal and rich set of features. In addition to its aforementioned accomplishments in the display, connectivity and camera departments, it also boasts one of the best browsers in a mobile device yet - although it lacks small-screen adaptation capabilities. Battery life is mediocre, hovering in the two day range with average use, but performance is impeccable.