Mobile Phone News:

Overview

Anticipation has been high for the Nokia N82, ever since it was announced. Here, finally, would be the phone to end all phones, the phone that does everything. It would be packed with features, look beautiful and essentially, it would do anything.

All along, this was to be Nokia’s big shot at utter genius; the phone that does everything right, that everyone loves and adores. Nothing but perfection is acceptable. It’s curious, as well, that during the run up to Christmas, and into this new year, the news of the Nokia N82 has been more or less overshadowed by the news of its elder brother, the N95 8Gb. Why is it curious? Because this is easily the more capable phone of the two.

As the evolution of Nokia’s famous Nseries of mobile phones, the N82 was always destined to follow a certain design ethos, specifically that of the Nseries as a whole: “discover, capture, share”. As a design ethos, it reflects the goals of the N-phones, but it focuses specifically on the later models, such as the N95, N95 8Gb and N82.

It’s a very enticing slogan, as well. being deliberately evocative, but without really telling you anything about what the phone actually does. Clearly, it will take some examination to dig into the wonders this phone can perform. We’ll come back to this notion of discover, capture, share later in this review, but first of all, let’s take a look at the Nokia N82 as a whole.

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Overview

As one of the first handset-makers to toy with the idea of cameras combined with phones (back in the days before Sony came along, and Ericsson built a clip-on camera for the T39), Sony Ericsson have a reputation as one of the guiding lights of the camera phone world. That reputation was cemented even further with the release of their first phone to carry the Cyber-shot branding, the K800i. That was the first phone that combined a phone with the high-end features of a Cyber-shot digital camera.

But now there’s a new kid on the block, a new Cyber-shot phone taking the brand to a whole new level. It’s the first 5 megapixel Cyber-shot camera phone to be released, and it goes by the name of “Sony Ericsson K850i”.

Expectations were very high for this phone, upon release, and as Sony Ericsson’s first 5 megapixel phone, it was always going to be very much in the spotlight. But the big question is: can the K850i live up to the hype, and actually be as good as everyone hoped it would be?

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