Nokia N80

Forums › Legacy mobile platforms (Windows Mobile, Palm OS, Web OS, Symbian, Meego, Blackberry) › Nokia N80

Fraktul

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#7705 4-May-2006 12:04

N80's finally on sale, awesome. Pricing is astronomical, less awesome.

So question is has anyone got one yet and can give me some feedback before I go fluttering my meger telco salary on one? I finding it quite hard to find a decent review online yet of a retail unit apart from a camera comparison on gsmarena.

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#34777 4-May-2006 12:37

when you say it's finally on sale, where is it on sale? if you mean NZ, then it should receive quite a bit of advertising from Vodafone NZ. Otherwise, wait a further 3- to 6- months before seeing it officially released in NZ, however you can parallel import it if you want, but just be aware that you don't get full Vodafone 3G Live, and a lot of other Vodafone NZ customisation. and also, don't get caught out with very limited support from Vodafone, and perhaps warranty services too.

And with the recent case with Canon's digital SLR camera, there can be some real dodgey operation out there..

Just consider yourself been adviced.

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Fraktul

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#35609 12-May-2006 18:08

Got it the other day, wil post a bit of a review this weekend hopefully.

First impressions however:

- Build is excellent, some people said slider opened too easily, creaked etc. Mine is nice and firm, feels very soild.
- Width and lenght are just right, screen could be a tad bigger by reducing border size but I wouldnt want to make the phone bigger and look silly in my jeans :) Could be 1/2cm less in dept an I would be please too.
- Battery life I cant comment on yet as im hardly usingit like normal at the moment.
- Browser is awesome, especially on wifi!
- Call quality, again awesome.

Previous phone was a Motorolla MPX 220 for reff.

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#35610 12-May-2006 18:15

i am on the look out for a new phone,
I am assuming as per chiefie that it is PI because I haven't seen anything through VFNZ travels.
Tell me more though, where from? price? some test shots?

Cheers

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#35611 12-May-2006 18:20

chiefie:
And with the recent case with Canon's digital SLR camera, there can be some real dodgey operation out there..

Just consider yourself been adviced.

Slightly OT but there is a bit more to that story that has been mentioned. Canon NZ and Parallel Imported have been at each other a fair bit, particularly over Canon's "worldwide" warranties that they refuse to honour in NZ.

Fraktul

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#35641 13-May-2006 13:53

Sorry, busy weekend. Will try get some pics off today, upload and do review tomorrow.

Here are some screenshots in the mean time:

http://www.techfink.com/images/

[Moderator edit: Hyperlinked]

Aloha

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#35642 13-May-2006 13:54

It is not on sale in AUS/NZ yet, but you can buy in Delhi already and Europe and in some other APAC countries as well.

It's a shame that phones arrive last to this part of the world. Always.
For example compare the Nokia Mobile Phones web pages of Europe and AUS/NZ. We have a very poor choice here.
And why? Because Nokia is not selling directly the phones here, everything comes through Vodafone and I guess they are a bit slowly to introduce them...

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Fraktul

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#35643 13-May-2006 14:00

Couple of pics I just went off and took, one in the macro focus setting and the other in closeup focus setting. Macro is focus infinity and closeup is ~15-20cm I think...

chiefie

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#35655 13-May-2006 22:47

can you do a test and see how well it sync/play WMAs? as all my songs are in WMAs. And also, do you sync with Outlook? if so, what's the the version of PC Sync. What features does it have in this version of PC Sync? Do you know can all the contact fields from Outlook are transfer over to N80 fine? and from N80's all contact fields transferred and mapped appropriately to Outlook?

How's the screen as well? crisp and nice? and keypad ergonomical?

p/s: that macropic.jpg, it's not macro.... it's a photo of a car. Can you do another macro pic of say a flower close up?

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Fraktul

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#35679 14-May-2006 14:49

Done, uploaded a couple of close-up flower pics, another day shot and a night shot.

WMAs play fine.

Outlook sync I have not tried yet however from the field types available in contacts and product orientation towards the business segment I don’t see any reason why this would be an issue.

I will try sync at work on Monday in Outlook and let you know the results however.

Build: Build is excellent, some people said slider opened too easily, creaked etc. Mine is nice and firm, feels very solid. That said I have noticed if you move the slider sideways it creaks slightly...then again the slider isn’t meant to be moved sideways! This was done to see the amount of give from side to side which is very little ~1mm thankfully. Overall the phone feels nice and solid in the hand and fits ok in your jean pocket, but don’t try putting it in your back pocket. Pearl Black is the only way to go, looks so sexy, does not show smudges etc.

Screen: WOW, very easily the best screen I have seen in a mobile phone or any mobile device. It’s so nice not being able to actually see individual colour elements in the LCD. Very crisp, very clear, awesome colour. In direct sunlight it’s still quite readable however colour is washed out. Defiantly one of the best things about the phone IMHO.

Keys: Overall nice however the menu key is shared with the multimedia menu key (one at either end) so is strangely one of the smallest keys on the phone. I have found myself pressing the multimedia menu key by accident a couple of times which leads you into an animated menu (http://www.techfink.com/images/Screenshot0002.jpg) which can get annoying. I'm a bit of a butter fingers though so results may vary. Apart from that one gripe everything is to my liking with size and layout.

Ease of use: Really good help system, each menu item has help as well as an overall help guide with 80% of the content in the manual. Settings wizard is very cool, I pressed one button and it automatically setup MMS, PXT, Internet etc etc (this is not a Vodafone NZ phone). It has an option for email setup this way also but I have not yet tried this. Menu structure is easy to use and straight forward once you get used to it. One thing needed is somewhere like a taskbar which shows your open applications, sometimes these show in the main screen (http://www.techfink.com/images/Screenshot0001.jpg) sometimes not. If you move out of an application this sometimes leaves you having to go back through the menu structure to 'open' the application again for you to get back to what you were doing. I'm a Symbian n00b so maybe I'm missing something here? Then again I work in IT and have done several papers in human computer interface design; if it’s not intuitive to me I doubt it would be intuitive to the majority of the population.

Call quality: Clear and loud, best from any mobile I have had so far. Reception I would say is average to slightly above average

Sound quality: Speaker for music/ringtones is pretty decent by cell phone standards but you would hardly want to sit listening to it. With a couple of sennheiser 300cx's (black) it looks awesome and sounds great.

Camera: I had high expectations and I would say I'm maybe a tad disappointed. The big thing is lack of auto focus which holds back what is a decent unit from being good unit. If they had put autofocus in this would be the perfect phone pretty much. You can see in the links the camera quality for yourself and make your own judgements based on your expectations. Time to write photos is nice and fast, not too much delay between button press and shot taken

Video: I'm pretty happy with the video quality, fps is high and this gives nice smooth shots. I have not yet been able to get any music video I have converted to mp4 to play however in realplayer. What I would really like is somebody to make a sexy media player app for 9.1 v3. Default music player does not support fast forwarding in tracks etc which is a pain when listening to a 3 hour house set!

Browser: Very useable, can scale text and images easily to suit. This is where an extra 1/2 a cm in screen height and width would be invaluable however, I hate scrolling! Then again I use 23" wide screen lcds on my pcs so if you are used to 17" lcds this would probably bug you less. Lots of people have complained about the phone coming up with an out of memory message, in particular in the browser. I have not had this come up at all using extensive use on the phone in general and only once in the browser. This message came up when I was trying to load a video in youtube so I was really pushing things to see if I could break it :) SWF does not work but if anyone has any pages they want me to try let me know.

UPNP: Not tried yet, maybe later this week.

Connectivity: Wifi is easy to setup and makes web browsing a very nice experience. Data cable is only UBS1 I think!? Either that or some things wrong as my data cable transfers are very slow from USB 2.0 ports on a few PCs I have tried. I know it’s not the data card (2GB MiniSD Ultra, 10mbps min transfer speed) as transfers from phone memory to mem card are very fast. People have said bluetooth on this phone is very fast but I have not had any experience with bluetooth or any bluetooth dongle for this pc so can’t comment sorry.

chiefie

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#35688 14-May-2006 19:50

cool review, i am looking forward to this model too. or n93 or n72 (even n71 is pretty good too)...

What stuff come with n80 package? you mentioned data cable, it comes with that as standard is it? and also, for headphone plug in, what is the connector size? 3.5mm or 2.5mm?

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Fraktul

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#35690 14-May-2006 20:09

Comes with POP port usb datacable, POP port to 3.5mm headphone adaptor, POP port headphone + microphone and control combo and some other random thing which plugs into the power port (I think its a older Nokia power charger adaptor, charger port on this unit is tiny ~3mm across). There is a 128meg mini sd card and software cd but I have not used either yet as I have a 2gb miniSD ultra and already had downloaded Nokia PC Suite in anticipation.

Just saw this BTW: http://news.softpedia.com/news/Nokia-N80-The-Best-Mobile-Imaging-Device-in-2006-22994.shtml

Overall I'm happy with my purchase, however I think a reasonable price for this unit would be $900-$1100.

Now I just need to find some VPN software for 9.1 v3 so I can try connect into work for free VoIP calling :)

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Aloha

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#35755 15-May-2006 14:13

Hi Fraktul,

About the Taskbar you needed:
If I am right, if you keep pressing the menu button long enough it will bring up the pictures of the open applications like a task bar.

I is a kollege stoodent. Bee nice.

Aloha

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#35756 15-May-2006 14:17

Fraktul: Overall I'm happy with my purchase, however I think a reasonable price for this unit would be $900-$1100.

So finally what was the price you paid for this phone? And where did you buy it? Overseas or on the net?

I is a kollege stoodent. Bee nice.

chiefie

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#35757 15-May-2006 14:18

Aloha is right, press and hold Menu to switch task/application.

There are some other shortcuts and tips on the manual too. have a read at it, when i used to use Nokia 3650, i just went ahead and use it, it is not about 3 months later i read the manual and found few tips on how to use S60 properly.

This days, S60 is now on its 3rd and i haven't use S60 for long time... :S

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chiefie

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#35758 15-May-2006 14:19

Aloha:
Fraktul: Overall I'm happy with my purchase, however I think a reasonable price for this unit would be $900-$1100.

So finally what was the price you paid for this phone? And where did you buy it? Overseas or on the net?

Expansys NZ is showing $900-ish. Not too bad though. But i'd wait for Vodafone NZ's

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