I simply cannot resist linking to a well written and illustrated glimpse of smartphone life from 3 or 4 years ago courtesy of Deaconclgi writing at My Nokia Blog. He writes that "at that moment in time, it wasn’t about GHz, not even about MHz (the N82 was 332MHz!), the amount of cores, screen resolution or even app stores. Technology was about what the phone could DO for you". Well worth a skim if the N82 struck out a place in your heart too.

From the piece:

 

^{(Gaming on the N82!)}

In this day and age of superphones, HD screens, Quad and Dual-Core CPUs, millions of polygons per second GPUs, unibody construction, 5+inch screens and 41MP monster cameras and nearly a million apps across OSes, I almost wonder how did we make it in the “dark ages” of mobile technology a few years ago.

While browsing my external hard drive, I stumbled across some photos from yesteryear, 2006-2008 era (some older photos from Xpress music S40 1-2MP phones)  to be exact. The first few photos were of events and family, bringing the usual “oh, I remember that!” thought. As I browsed the photos, some of them caught my eye as being amazingly clear, I could see the texture on the baby stroller, I could make out numbers on a sign, I could see the snowflakes in the air and so on. My first thought was that the photos and videos must have been from some random compact camera that I had in those years but when I looked at the EXIF data, it turned out that they were from my N82!

Nicely done, sir, nicely done. My own N82 sits battered and bruised on my desk, it's been through hell and back over the last 4 years - and it still works as well as on the day it came out of the box.

Here's Deaconclgi's video that sparked off his piece. Shot in the N82's VGA, but great for the time and atmospheric even today: