Nokia N82 is considered the next N-series bestseller and, guess what, it has already hit the shelves. Following the sweeping success of Nokia N73, it was a pretty sure bet that a worthy successor wouldn't take long to appear. As we see it, Nokia N82 fits that description perfectly and our eagerness to test it for you should come as no surprise. So join us as we explore the world of Nokia N82.

5 megapixel camera with auto focus and Carl Zeiss optics

Xenon flash and active lens cover

2.4" 16M color QVGA display

128 MB RAM

Wi-Fi with UPnP

Built-in GPS receiver and A-GPS functionality

Nokia maps application covering over 100 countries worldwide

Convenient standard 3.5 mm audio jack on the top

3G (with HSDPA), EDGE and GPRS support

Symbian OS 9.2 Series 60 3rd edition Feature Pack 1 UI

TV-out functionality

Automatic UI rotation

Stereo speakers

Large capacity battery

Controversial design and questionable ergonomics

No RDS for the FM radio

Below average GPS performance

Extra charges apply for voice assisted navigation

No office documents editing application

Doesn't charge off USB

Nokia N73 is said to be the most successful Nseries handset to date, with monstrous sales figures compared to the rest of the N-series lot. N82 comes to succeed it and become the most affordable of feature-loaded Nokia cameraphones. The Finns quote its price at 450 Euro pretax, which sounds reasonable, given the included features and the 2GB of memory card supplied in the package.

The almighty Nokia N95 8GB should probably also feel threatened for the lack of the sweet Xenon flash and the auto UI rotation of its N82 sibling. We still believe though the extra 0.4-inch difference in the display size will also play a major role in choosing between these two devices.

Another potential rival is the Sony Ericsson K850 although being a non-OS device actually puts it in a different market niche. Still, it would be wise of cameraphone lovers to carefully consider both devices before purchasing their next handset. So, to them, and any other interested in the qualities of Nokia N82 for whatever reason, our review takes off after the jump.

The retail package of Nokia N82 is as packed as Santa's gift bag. The 2GB microSD card is a nice thingy to start with and it comes complete with a SD adapter. TV-out cable and a microUSB cable are next in line. It's nice to have the microUSB data cable as these are rare enough due to the fact that virtually no other device than a mobile phone makes use of them.

The handsfree is quite stylish but unluckily its remote and headphones cannot be separated so you cannot use the remote with another set of headphones. The box also contains a whole bunch of manuals and quick start guide introducing you to the phone's main features. A CD with the PC sync software is the final ingredient in this delicious retail package recipe.

Nokia N82 is a bar-shaped phone, measuring 112 x 50.2 x 17.3 mm. With a volume of 90 cc and 114 g of weight the N82 is somewhat on the wrong side of compact. But hey, we're talking 5 megapixel phones and only the LG KU990 Viewty and Samsung G600 are a tad lighter than N82. Plus, it's by all means pocketable, after all.

We are pleased with the build quality of Nokia N82 - no creaks or strange noises detected for the time of our review. Quality materials have been used and we think none of those are likely to appear in the long run.

The phone is finished in silver-tinted plastic with a glossy front and line-patterned back panel. The front panel is quite susceptible to fingerprints but they are not that visible on the silver surface.

Nokia N82 feels great in hand with great weight balance, so slipping off your fingers is quite unlikely.

By a longstanding tradition, we start our hardware inspection with the front panel. In the upper left corner of Nokia N82 is the ambient light sensor, while the video call camera is placed slightly to its right. The earpiece grill is dead center right above the 2.4" TFT display.

The D-pad is under the display with the two selection keys on each of its sides. The Menu and the Clear key are under the selection keys, while the Call and End keys are on the very edges of the phone. Finally, the newly adopted by Nokia multimedia key is accommodated between the right selection key and the Clear key.

All these keys are large and convenient enough to render no obstacles to usability. We wished the outer rim of the D-pad was just a bit wider so we won't accidentally press the confirming center now and then when scrolling, but the situation is good enough as it is.

On the left side of Nokia N82 are the microUSB slot, the memory card slot and the charger plug. The microSD slot has a neat plastic cap but the other two apertures aren't covered in any way, which somewhat spoils this particular side view.

The right side hosts a whole bunch of controls. The stereo speakers are placed at its ends, with the zoom/volume key, the review key and the camera key in-between. The speaker placement is the same as on Nokia N95 and is obviously meant for using the handset in landscape mode. With such an advanced camera, it goes without saying that the camera key has half-shutter mode. The review key is a convenient and quick way for jumping to your lastly saved photos.

Jumping to the Nokia N82's top we find the Power key which, like in all other Symbian phones, is also used for switching profiles and locking the phone. Next to it is the 3.5mm standard audio jack and the neck/wrist strap eyelet. It is quite convenient to have the audio jack at the top, so it is far easier to use with the phone inside a pocket.

The only thing to find at the bottom is the microphone pinhole.

The back side of the N82 is far more interesting and, you have our word, the strange pattern is by far not the only reason. There, we see the 5 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics and the Xenon flash. As it turns out, the flash is the most powerful one we've seen in a mobile phone but this will be discussed later on in the review. The camera also has a lens protecting cover that opens by a small silver slider right above it. It is easy enough to locate with a fingertip and still not prone to accidental sliding.

Removing the battery cover you will find the BP-6MT battery with a capacity of 1050 mAh. Standby is quoted at 225 hours, while Nokia claims talk time is 4 and a half hours. Though not necessarily the most impressive figures, the battery is good enough to power the handset for about three days of moderate usage. In our case moderate means about half an hour of talk time and trying different application for about an hour each, plus taking a few shots with the flash on. It is a bit more than what you can expect from Nokia N95-1 for example.

The alphanumeric keypad of Nokia N82 is surely its most controversial component. The tons of negative feedback the Nokia N91 received for its similar layout does make one wonder why Nokia decided to have another go at it in such a landmark product as the N82.

The ergonomics of the keypad are not as bad as in Nokia N91 mainly because this time it's level with the screen and each row is easy to reach. By no means would we call it good either. The keys are far too small and difficult to distinguish and, generally, typing without looking down is almost impossible. However, because of the ample spacing between keys we are giving it an average score. We still believe Nokia could have done a better job, especially with this particular phone.

The backlighting is even enough and, although not the strongest around, it does a decent job.

Nokia N82 is equipped with a 2.4" TFT LCD display of QVGA resolution. It is capable of showing up to 16 million colors but its quality did not particularly impress us. It does lack some brightness and the colors are a bit washed out compared to Nokia N95 8GB. Otherwise, in bright sunlight it is just as good as any other recent Nokia - the display remains perfectly visible and choosing the right angle to work with it is not in question at all.

With N82 signal reception is just what you would expect in a high-end Nokia phone - simply flawless. The vibration is also strong enough to make sure you never miss an incoming call or message. The phone offers brilliant speaker quality and the sound during calls is very clear and without any interferences.

Nokia N82 runs on Symbian 9.2 OS with the Series60 3rd Edition user interface. The added Feature Pack 1 is no news for Nokia smartphones any more but still deserves mentioning.

The 128MB of RAM is also an important factor to OS performance. In reality, 128MB is virtually impossible to deplete no matter how hard you try. Unless you do it intentionally, Memory Full warnings are not something you can expect on the Nokia N82 screen.

The phone's main menu has only two different view modes. They are both well known: a 4 x 3 grid of icons and a list. In addition, you can choose whether you prefer your icons animated or not. For some reason the V-shape and Horseshoe views are not available with the recent Nokia handsets we get to test. Font sizes are also configurable depending on your preferences.

Navigating the menus is fast with instant response to key presses and no delays. Most screens of the user interface can be displayed in both portrait and landscape mode depending on the user preference. The screen automatically rotates when the phone is turned to the left. However, it sometimes won't rotate straight away and needs a gentle shake before switching between view modes. The screen rotation is as fast as in Nokia N95 8GB - that is almost instant. Nokia hasn't included any animation for the screen rotation - as seen in Apple iPhone - the screen just goes black for a second and pops back up in the desired mode.

The blue circle next to the icon of a running application is a well known Symbian indication reminding users to quit unwanted applications that are still running in the background. Luckily, the days when there was only a single alarm slot and the voice recorder was limited to a miserly minute are now long gone.

The active stand-by display is naturally also present with Nokia N82. This is a nice and convenient way to bring shortcuts to all favorite applications to your home screen. You can even assign shortcuts to websites of your choice for quicker access. The two soft keys functions can also vary. As the standard keypad lock pattern is a quick successive pressing of the left selection key and the asterisk , when the left kay is pressed in a normal day-to-day usage it will wait for about a second before acting as assigned to see if a lock command is to follow.

Otherwise, the automatic key lock is activated after a pre-defined period. The options are from 5 seconds to an hour and you can switch this feature off if you see fit.

The built-in memory is 132MB, which is a respectable figure by all means. The included 2GB microSD memory card comes in very handy for extending it but you can go for an even higher capacity card as user reports suggest. Accessing applications or any other files from the memory card is quick and you probably won't notice any difference compared to accessing ones from the phone memory.

The multimedia menu is among Nokia N82's highlights as seems to be the case with all other recent Nseries models. It is launched by pressing the dedicated key and provides quick access to the multimedia features of the handset. It is identical to the ones found on Nokia N81 and Nokia N95 8GB, with icons sorted thematically. They appear as drop-down menus when the respective tab is selected. If you find the menu layout unsuitable, you can freely rearrange icons until you're pleased with the result.

As with any Symbian phone, there is a built-in voice recognition system. It is doing an amazing job, being fully speaker-independent and recognizing a remarkably high percentage of the user commands. Its performance can be matched only by Nokia N95 and N95 8GB.

There are five preinstalled themes on Nokia N82, all of which are named Nseries. The rest is left to the imagination of the user, as you can download as many other themes as you wish. Before doing that make sure that you check out the pre-bundled ones as we personally happened to find them quite nice.

The phonebook of Nokia N82 is a true Symbian goodie. It is simply great. There is storage place for a virtually unlimited number of contacts and fields, with all the available memory potentially usable for contacts. Good luck trying to fill that up. Contacts can be freely ordered by first or last name and can naturally be searched by gradual typing of any of their names.

Editing a contact offers an enormous variety of preset fields and you can replicate each of them as many times as you like. You can also create new fields if you happen to be able to think of one. We personally find it difficult to think of something Nokia has missed here. Personal ringtones and video are also available for assigning. If you prefer you may group your contacts and give a specific ringtone to each group.

The Call log application, although not exactly a part of the phonebook, is also one of Nokia N82's strengths. It can hold up to 20 call records in each of the tabs for outgoing, received and missed calls. These are all accessed with the Call key from the stand-by menu. If you enter the Log application from the main menu, you'll see a detailed list of all your network communications for the past 30 days. These include messages, calls and data transfers. The period can be shortened in order to save some space but you are quite unlikely to do that, as even with a huge number of calls the log only takes a few miserly kilobytes of memory space.

If you are all about texting, Nokia N82 might not be the perfect device for you. With a keypad like this typing doesn't come as nice and easy as we would have wished. However, in terms of software the phone is performing a whole lot better.

There are four different message editors - one for each type of supported messages: SMS, MMS, audio message and e-mail. The SMS editor is the well know intuitive application for all Symbian S60 smartphones. It has a counter of the characters left to the limit of 160. There is also an indicator in brackets showing the number of separate parts the message will be divided into for sending.

The MMS editor has virtually the same interface as the one we just described, with the added subject line being the only difference.

Now, the audio message is technically also an MMS but obviously it is more important for people at Nokia and they have created a separate editor for it. The editor can either record the message on the spot or use a previously recorded sound clip.

The email client won't surprise anyone who has ever used a Symbian powered phone. It can download headers only, as well as the whole messages. There is also support for attachments, so Nokia N82 can meet almost any requirement regarding the user emailing needs.

Generally, Nokia N82 is not the dream texting device but it's good enough for occasional usage and if you are not always on the rush when typing messages. And, after all, this is about what most users do.

The music player is another good Nokia N82 application. There are no dedicated music keys but controlling it with the D-pad is just as easy and you won't miss them much. A huge number of audio formats including MP3, AAC, eAAC+ and WMA, are supported. The M3U playlists are also managed flawlessly and files are added to the music library by simply choosing the refresh option.

Sorting your songs by artist, album, genre and composer is automatic and searching tracks by gradual typing is also available. Transferring tracks to Nokia N82 can be achieved via Bluetooth, USB or by simply downloading them from the internet. You can also use a card reader for that purpose and transfer them directly to your memory card.

Upon completing a USB transfer, the phone automatically prompts scanning for new music tracks and, if allowed to do so, adds the new ones to the music library.

The player comes with five equalizer presets, which is a good count by any means. If it still seems insufficient, you can edit them or create new ones in a matter of seconds.

In contrast to Nokia N81 for example, the music player of Nokia N82 can be switched off when it is not needed. This can save some RAM but with this amount of available operating memory this is not that important.

Being one of Nokia's best equipped phones Nokia N82 naturally also includes support for the A2DP Bluetooth profile, which allows listening to your music on a Bluetooth stereo headset. We had no problem connecting any of the tested headphones.

Nokia N82 features a Real player for playing your video clips. The video player can be displayed in both portrait and landscape mode and can be switched to fullscreen. As you might have guessed, watching a video clip on a screen this large is a really enjoyable experience.

When in full screen, the softkey functions are hidden so that they don't spoil the viewing experience and only pop up when a key is pressed. So, topped with the 2.4" display, it adds up to a decent performance though still behind Nokia N95 8GB standards.

The handset also has a Flash player preinstalled but there is nothing much we can say about it. It does a job, no bangs and whistles.

If you get bored with the content on your Nokia N82, you can always turn the radio on for a break. The FM radio can automatically scan and save the available stations in your area. If internet connection is available the Visual radio application can download all the local stations and save them to the handset with their names. We would have preferred RDS support, though not having it isn't really that much of a disappointment.

The gallery of all Nokia N-series devices is simply great, so Nokia N82 just comes to confirm that. The 3D rotating view looks really nice, but we have to admit that the Navi wheel functionality of Nokia N81 would have been a nice addition to the Nokia N82. Not that it has any superior functionality, but its real fun to use.

Otherwise, no changes are to be seen here in terms of features - pictures can be viewed in both portrait and landscape mode and zoomed in up to 8x. Overall, picture browsing and zooming is fast but, as we noticed, a tad slower than Nokia N95 8GB. Not an easily noticeable difference, that is, but still when both phones are put side by side the N95 8GB gains a narrow advantage.

The gallery also offers a nice slide show with customizable settings, including automatic browsing and playing a pre-defined track from your phone.

If the gallery file-management functionality (which even includes sending multiple files at a time) is insufficient you can use the file manager. It allows you to do almost anything you can think of with your files.

There is also an application manager to take care of the installed applications on Nokia N82. Not much to talk about here, as it is identical to the one in any other Symbian device. Its functionality boils down to providing details about installed applications, removing them and keeping a log of movements in both directions.

The useful "Search" application is also present in Nokia N82. Its reserved line in the active stand-by menu no longer comes as a surprise. After all, an application this useful really deserves to be conveniently placed. The application itself finds almost every item in your Nokia containing a given keyword. From messages to settings, every bit of data is checked and then all results are shown.

The camera is surely Nokia N82's element. Nokia have thrown in a lot of efforts on the matter and have come up with a truly wonderful camera. Not that it is any different in terms of lens, sensor or picture processing from Nokia N95 but the included Xenon flash really makes a difference.

The convenient cap keeps that precious camera lens safe from scratches.

The camera set up time is really short. It is about the same as in Nokia N95 8GB, totaling a bit less than three seconds. With Nokia N82 the shot-to-shot time can also be reduced to about 2.5-3 seconds, which, again, is about the same as Nokia N95 8GB. Of course these times are only achievable with the automatic preview turned off. A solid result by all means, loosing to Sony Ericsson K850 by only tenths of a second.

The camera user interface is the same as in N95 8GB and offers the same extensive settings - starting from manual white balance and ISO sensitivity and including exposure compensation, sharpness and contrast settings, as well as various effects, which are labeled color tones. Gridline can also be applied to the viewfinder to assist you in framing you photos, using the photographic rule-of-thirds. Using it to align your subjects and place points of interest on or near the lines and their intersecting points makes your photos more professional and aesthetic. The rule-of-thirds also applies to landscape shots. For example, the sky should take either one third or two thirds of the frame, instead of placing the horizon in the center. The sequence mode and self-timer are no news. The Xenon flash can be set in four ways: automatic, always on, red-eye reduction and always off.

Small font tooltips are displayed to help you understand what the phone is doing at each specific moment (processing image, for example).

The picture quality is great. It's the best you can find on the market, which is kind of surprising. After all Nokia N82 is supposed to be an all-in-one device and it's strange that it outperforms even dedicated cameraphones when it comes to camera quality.

Speaking of which, the guys at Nokia have even managed to go another step further. The only thing Nokia N95 and Nokia N95 8GB were to blame for was the inadequate LED flash. Now Xenon is implemented with Nokia N82 and this takes us to a completely different level.

Furthermore, it is the best flash to be found on the market dethroning Sony Ericsson K850. It's not even a close call; the difference hardly needs any further comment.

Have a look at the sample photos made with the camera of Nokia N82

You can also have a look at the camera review of the original N95 and the shootout with the Sony Ericsson ultimate cameraphone - the K850. The camera module of Nokia N82 is performing exactly the same way as the N95 one, but it's faster and it's backed up by a xenon flash. So if we were to put the N82 and the K850 head-to-head, Nokia would have scored way better than Sony Ericsson.

Also, be on the lookout for the second part of our 5 megapixel face-off, which includes some of the most exciting 5 megapixel cameraphones recently released.

The secondary camera can also be used for taking pictures. It is quickly accessed from the camera interface and can be used as a fast and convenient way to make self-portraits or contact images. It is also capable of recording video but it is hard to imagine that the clips it will produce will be usable in any way.

The quality of the videos recorded with Nokia N82 is exactly the same as of those recorded with any of the Nokia N95 versions. Read: great. The phone captures video at VGA resolution at 30 frames per second, which is way beyond the skills of any of the phones of the competition. The exception here is the 5-megapixel LG KU990 Viewty, which is the only worthy rival for Nokia's trio when it comes to video recording. Videos are captured in MPEG-4 format and have automatic or manual white balance, depending on the user preferences. The other available features are night mode and color effects. The only thing you have to be careful about is not to run out of storage because videos of this quality fill up your free space much faster than you might guess - a minute of video takes about 20MB of memory. This means that about 100 minutes of video can be stored on the 2GB memory card, provided that there's nothing else on it.

Transferring data is what Nokia N82 really loves to do. Every common data transfer medium is supported. USB 2.0 and Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP just start the count. All kinds of network connectivity are also on board - from HSCSD, through GPRS and EDGE to 3G with HSDPA support - Nokia N82 has it all. To complete the wireless communication tally, Wi-Fi with UPnP support is also on board. Even the memory card slot, is here and comes in handy if you have a card reader at your disposal. The missing thing with Nokia N82 is the Infrared port but we are not going to pretend that we are even slightly missing it. So there is basically no case, in which you won't be able to transfer the data you want from or to almost any device.

Browsing the internet with Nokia N82, like with all Nokia smartphones, is a pleasure. No matter how elaborate the web page, it fits perfectly on the screen and looks almost exactly like on a PC. The virtual mouse cursor takes browsing another level up. It is easy to control and generally works great. A mini-map can be activated to help navigating your way around large sites where lots of scrolling is required. The zoom level is also adjustable at the expense of only a few key presses.

The large amount of RAM is surely one of the best things that could happen to the browser, as it is one of the most RAM-demanding applications indeed. Now, even if you load very heavy web pages and have a few applications running in the background, you are extremely unlikely to run out of RAM. The 2.4" display is not as impressive as the 2.8" screen in Nokia N95 8GB but still makes even very small fonts readable.

The time-management skills of Nokia N82 are really top-notch. Just name the application and you can count on it that the handset has it. We start the exploration of the large application package with the calendar. It has three different types of view - monthly, weekly and daily, and four types of events available for setting up - Meeting, Memo, Anniversary and To-do. Every event has its own unique fields, some of which allow an alarm to be activated at a preset time to act as a reminder.

The Lifeblog application automatically collects your images, videos, texts and multimedia messages, sounds and blog posts in diary-like style. It then allows easy browsing, sharing, storing and searching of theses items.

The mobile office is also very well presented, with preinstalled applications able to open Word and Excel files seamlessly. Unluckily, editing documents is not supported by the included version of the Quickoffice. If you would like to be able to edit these files you will have to purchase the complete application at the Nokia Download center. PDF reader is also included and a ZIP manager allows extracting archived files straight from your phone.

The other included organizing and time-management applications are: a great unit converter, calculator and voice recorder, as well as the Notes application. We are not going to get into detail with them, as their functionality and performance are familiar enough.

Nokia N82 comes with three preinstalled games. Two of them are based on the new N-gage platform and even though they are demo versions, playing them is a nice experience. The included titles are the same as the ones found on Nokia N95 8GB - Fifa 2007 and Asphalt 3 Street rules. In all fairness, we faced some difficulties with the controls of FIFA 2007, which didn't seem properly chosen. In fact the only mobile phone where this game was easily handled was the Nokia N81, thanks to the two dedicated gaming keys which did a great job.

The third game to be found on Nokia N82 is Snake. First to feature on the original Nokia N95, this 3D game is surely one of the best achievements in this area. We did spend quite a number of hours playing it and we really enjoyed the experience.

Like the Nokia N95 versions, the N82 has a built-in GPS receiver. Having tested all of them we are safe to conclude that their performance is virtually the same. Unluckily, the problem with the slow initial satellite lock still exists with Nokia N82. The phone needs quite some time to find you initial position, especially if you start it when you are in a moving vehicle.

The built-in A-GPS somewhat reduces the time needed for that purpose but at the cost of (in most cases) pricy data transfer.

The built-in GPS receiver works with the Nokia Maps application, which is one of the software applications to offer the most detailed maps. Furthermore, it is free and relatively easy to use. Well, at least the basic information is free, because charges apply to the voice guidance and turn-by-turn navigation. You only get a three-day trial that goes with the new version of the Nokia Maps application, so you can see if the voice navigation is worth the extra dime.

In other words, if you want to make use of the built-in receiver you;ll be better off relying on Nokia maps as not all other third-party applications can detect and work with the integrated GPS receiver.

So, leaving this aside, we have to admit that the Nokia Maps application itself is not bad at all and has very decent looks. Furthermore, its route planning algorithm can be easily customized to the user preferences. Toll roads and motorways can be avoided and so can tunnels and ferries. The route selection can be set to either fastest or shortest. The app is also usable for pedestrian navigation or you can switch the GPS receiver off to use instead of your paper map.

The overall impression of using the Nokia N82 as a GPS navigation system is positive, except for the flaws already pointed out. Still, if you don't have the highest expectations, you might find the Nokia N82 GPS perfectly adequate.

Nokia N82 is the kind of gadget to make high hopes inescapable and it is important to know whether it lives up to the responsible job of being the N73 successor. And here it is: in our view, it carries the burden lightly. N82 has all the premises to become a true bestseller, combining full smartphone functionality with the best camera on the mobile phone market. Upgrading from Nokia N73 seems the definitive choice, if not the only option.

As for the rest, who are considering Nokia N82, we say it's a buy you will hardly ever regret. Looking at your options first won't hurt though. The simple math tells that Nokia N82 with an 8GB microSD memory card costs about the same as Nokia N95 8GB, so the choice between the two is purely a matter of priorities. Whether you prefer larger screen or xenon flash should tilt the scales this way or the other.

As for the cameraphone lovers, the decision is as simple as that - if you want the best camera on a phone and you're willing to pay for it, Nokia N82 is the way to go.