| Review of the Nokia N80 |
 |
The N80 is one of a series of slider phones from Nokia that incorporates
the Symbian operating system and provides a host of PDA-style functions in
a device with a phone-like form factor. The N80 is not presently offered
by any of the Canada providers, but it can, like any GSM phone that
supports the frequencies using in North America (850 and 1900 MHz), be
bought through a retailer and used on any of the GSM providers in North
America. Last Updated: 04-Oct-2006 |
Before reading this review, please read
Some Thoughts on Phone Reviewing.
RF Performance
RF Sensitivity: The N80 was extensively tested
against numerous GSM phones, and as expected it came through with flying colors.
RF sensitivity is just one of those aspects of phone design that Nokia got right
ages and ago, and now sticks with in virtually all of their designs.
Over-the-road Performance: Sadly, Nokia never quite
got handoff handling down pat and the N80 continues to sound, well, like a Nokia
when handoffs occur. While the N80 does seem to make those handoffs sound
somewhat tamer than certain other Nokia models, the bottom line is that it could
do so much better. So in this regard, the N80 is only about average.
Click on this link for a full description of
RF Performance, and how to interpret it.
Audio Performance
Tonal Balance: The overall tonal quality of the N80
is very good, though it lacks a little of the rich low-end oomph that many of
the other Nokia models have exhibited. The lack of deep low-end notwithstanding,
the overall smoothness and consistency of the audio on the N80 is
second-to-none. Throughout countless calls I found the sound to be crisp and
clear with no detectable harshness or peakiness.
Sound Reproduction: Like most Nokia phones these
days, the N80 provides excellent reproduction of all nuances of speech (within
the limits of the GSM CODEC). I never had a problem with muddy or
indistinct-sounding voices and everything I listened to was clean and unadorned.
There was a bit of hiss at higher volume settings, but overall the hiss wasn’t
objectionable and it was only audible when the phone was used in a very quiet
environment.
Outgoing Audio: The sound quality of the outgoing
audio is very good, and the phone copes exceptionally well with background
noise. I recorded samples in noisy places, such as out on a busy roadway
overlooking Highway 403, in busy shopping malls, and in cars with their windows
down on the highway. In all of these situations my voice remained clear and
distinct and the background noise never seemed overly objectionable. This is
probably the best outgoing audio performance I’ve seen in any Nokia phone to
date.
Earpiece Volume: When the phone is used in a quiet
environment it sounds like it wouldn’t have enough horsepower to be heard in a
noisy environment. However, the N80 includes Nokia’s terrific volume booth
feature that ups the earpiece volume when background noise is detected. When I
tested the N80 outdoors on a busy street I had no trouble hearing the audio and
it was only slightly lower than volume of my
Motorola i580, which has very good overall earpiece output.
Speakerphone: The N80 uses one of the little
sounders that can generate a surprising amount of audio with surprisingly good
tonal balance and quality. While the speakerphone was a bit too quiet to use out
on a busy street, it works exceptionally well indoors and can be used in the
presence of moderate levels of background noise. The sound reproduction isn’t
super-great, but the overall quality is more than acceptable and free of
sympathetic vibrations.
Click on this link for a full description of
Audio Performance, and how to interpret it.
Support Features
Ringer Volume: Like all Nokia phones that use the
really loud sounded for their speakerphones, the N80 processes very loud
ringtones. By selecting the right ringtone you can generate enough audio to make
the phone audible over all by the most severe background noises.
Keypad Design: I’m not a huge fan of the slider
design, as it tends to result in rather cramped numeric keypads. The N80 is no
exception, though I never found the numeric pad really annoying. As usual, my
biggest complaint is the 4-way cursor key, which is far too small for those of
us with big thumbs (and there are plenty of people with much bigger thumbs than
mine). It is difficult to press the center of the 4-way key to select an option
without accidentally actuating the left, right, up, or down functions.
Display: The display is physically large and
provides an incredible 416 x 352 pixel resolution. While the backlight is a little dim for
comfortable use in bright sunlight, the screen quality is otherwise excellent.
Icing on the Cake
Camera: The N80 includes a 3 megapixel camera with
a physical adjustment for close-up or far-away focus. The camera is far from
perfect, but it’s by far the best camera I’ve yet tested on a cellular phone.
The results can’t hold a candle to a 3 megapixel image taken with a digital
camera, but compared to any other phone I’ve tested to date, the overall image
quality is so good that unless you look closely at it (or compare it
side-by-side with a similar shot taken with a digital camera) you’d be hard
pressed to guess it had been taken with a phone.
Sadly the N80’s camera suffers from the same problem as every other Nokia camera
phone, which is to say it produces high levels of digital noise when the
lighting isn’t bright. This means that the only way to get noise-free
photographs is to take them outdoors in FULL DAYLIGHT. Indoor photographs,
unless exceptionally well lit, are grainy and lack detail.
I’ve include a few samples at the bottom of this review that should give you
some idea of what I’m talking about.
Expansion Memory: The N80 includes a MiniSD card
slot, which unlike other Nokia models is actually accessible WITHOUT having to
remove the battery door. Currently MiniSD cards are available in sizes up to 2
GB, which gives you plenty of storage space for the relatively large photographs
the camera takes (up to 1 MB per image) and for lots of MP3 files.
WiFi: The N80 also includes 802.11g WiFi, which
allows you to hook up to standard WiFi networks and hotspots to avoid using
GSM-based data connections. For some reason however, the N80 seems incapable of
authenticating on a the WPA/WPA2 encrypted connection (with or without TKIP), which
covers most of the standard
security setting for home wireless routers. Both Howard Chu & I went
through the various settings in a vain attempt to get it to work, but each time
we tried we were told that the phone had been unable to authenticate. It does
however work well with an open (unencrypted) WiFi network.
The Symbian Operating System: I’ve never had a
problem with Symbian operating system, but its implementation in the N80 is very
slow. You’d be surprised how long it takes to do just about anything, and to
make matter worse there appears to be no key buffering. If you press a key too
quickly, you’ll have to press it again once the operation you started with the
previous key has completed.
There were all sorts of annoyances that one wouldn’t expect to find on a cell
phone. For example, when a new voicemail message, MMS message, or text message
arrives, you can’t actually make a call until you get rid of the warnings from
the screen.
Perhaps the biggest annoyance isn’t the fault of the Symbian operating system,
but the physical lack of separate volume keys. As on a number of other Nokia
models, volume is adjusted using the left and right cursor keys, which is fine
under most circumstances. However, if you press any numeric keys during your
call (such as when access your voicemail) you cannot adjust the volume until you
have cleared all of they keystrokes from the display. If you’ve already pressed
left or right before realizing you need to clear the display first, you must
ALSO move the cursor back to the beginning of the line before it is even
possible to clear ALL of the characters. What idiot thought up this idea? Why
doesn’t the phone have separate volume keys?
Conclusions
I really ended up with mixed feelings about this phone. It has excellent RF
performance and audio, as well as some exceptional features, including a
terrific camera. However, it is a slug when it comes to normal phone operation
and it has annoyances galore that make the day-to-day use of the phone a royal
pain-in-the-ass. I also found the earpiece to be uncomfortable after prolonged
use, and getting the best volume from it requires finding a rather small sweet
spot.
Camera Samples
Below are two photographs I took using the N80 and my Nikon Coolpix 990 digital
camera. I’ve cropped, rotated, and adjusted the photos so that they are
virtually identical, thus making it much easier to see what’s good and what’s
bad about them. I’ve reduced the shots down to 800 x 600 to fit on this web
page, but if you click on each of the images you can download the full 3
megapixel files for each picture.
Coolpix 990:
Nokia N80:
Below are two blown-up areas of a tree in the upper-left corner of the
photograph. These clearly show what’s not so great about the pictures taken with
the N80. Note that in the Coolpix photograph the pixels in the tree are various
shades of green (as they should be). However, in the N80 photograph there are
many randomly-colored pixels that take away from the quality of the image. This
indicates that each pixel in the sensor array doesn’t properly register the
color it sees. This may be the result of noise or the type of processing used to
gather the information from the sensor.
Coolpix 990:
Nokia N80:
