The Nokia N82 - Style over Function?

[slitchfield]

You will excuse me if the headline was a little dramatic - but there are some serious points to be made about this, the Nokia N82. I've been playing with one of the first boxed European versions and have been a bit dismayed at some of the style-over-function choices made by the N82's designers .

Read on in the full article.

Great review. Spot on. I too am having a hard time trying to figure out where Nokia is going. Do they do any type of marketing research or do they actually listen to their customers?

I have the N81. I had the E90, and N95. Both were great but the N81 is pretty much what I need. Coupled with the LD-4W (GPS device) I am set to navigate. In fact I like this combo much more than my iPhone which is more iPod than phone. Regardless, the N81 has some issues that Nokia needs to address. The toggle gamer switch located in the ear piece speaker was and is stupid. Easy to break as I have had to have mine replaced. A slightly greater amount of pressure results in a broken device that is prone to let dust in. So my N81 sits in a plastic bag while I wait (8 days to date) for Nokia to get parts that do not currently exist as this is a new phone. I hate being forced to use the iPhone.

Nokia, listen to us for once and design what we need and want?

i like N82, but it is simply butt ugly...

This is spot on and something I've been frustrated with Nokia over the years. I've had mobile phones and sold them since the very first Nokia devices and have followed the S60 platform religiously.

Nokia implement great features in one device but then typically either remove them or ruin them in another by terrible ergonomics. Take the N73 for example - in the firmware of this great phone (ruined by cheap casing and build quality) I was able to view emails or text messages in a 'one line' view. Why then on every subsequent Nokia firmware in the N series has this option been removed? I can now only see emails via the space wasting 2 line version! aargh!

I have a Nokia N95 8GB, amazing phone. But no lens cover so my shots are blurry. Then the video centre function doesn't work so I'm reduced to watching video content only by the file browser. Then I also to my dismay find that the 'search' function (brilliant) has removed the local YELL search that was present in the firmware on my Nokia N73.

And I could go on.

When I heard that the N82 was coming out I thought this was going to be quite possibly the best Nokia mobile ever made. With all the amazing functionality of my N95 8GB but in a more useable candybar form factor....Not to be. The design looks appalling, the keypad absolutely unusuable and again the firmware will present the usual problems by the new versions offerred by Nokia.

A real shame. You know it almost seems that Nokia are reluctant to get the ideal phone built!!!!

Justin

It is kicking in an open door. At least they did improve the cameralens shutter after they did such a poor job in the N95 8GB. Worste to come the N96 pictures floating around (if real) really shows they are screwing that up again... I would have expected the N82 to have a candybar design version of the N81. It's far more attractive.

Still they can fix it with the N99? A phone with all the capabilities and size of the N95 8GB. But with a N82 camera shutter a 2AA battery operated high powered xenonflash accessory, 640x480 touchscreen - 2.8", qwerty slide keyboard, N81 gamebuttons, kick ass RAM, battery and stability. Flash 9 support and most important A HIGH QUALITY JPEG FILE FORMAT OR RAW IMAGE MODE. WiMax would be nice too. VideoCalling over wifi would be great too! Price? I'll drop a 1000 euros.

snoyt

[sturgeon]

Steve, the fact that you are not given to overly dramatic reviews and that you have done rather a lot of them, indicates that this beast touched a nerve! I thought that the keypad looked difficult to use, and wondered why the screen was smaller. I didn't think I'd like it much despite the improved flash and candybar form. You have confirmed my feelings.

Cheers,

s.

[predicaments]

Just another annoying thing I forgot to mention. Love my N95 8GB's BIG screen but why still the same silly resolution?

So frustrating with Nokia - they are like Apple run by Microsoft of the mobile phone world.

i have been using the n82 for almost 1 month, and while i agree with what you are saying, i do think that the device is much easier to use than you are letting on. i agree that it would be nice to have a Nseries device that places function over style. i work for myself and am on the road all day and love using this device. the buttons and dpad are fine for me, and i am a heavy voice and messaging user, so i am using the phone all day. i was actually thinking today how the size of the screen does not bother me the way i expected it would. i think i can see past the shortcomings because the device is just so solid in its build quality, especially when compared to the n95 (all variants). i have owned every version of the n95 and have sold them all as the slider became more and more loose. while the n82 feels like a piece of plastic in your hand, it at least feels like one solid piece that wont fall apart after a few months.

almost every nokia i have owned has suffered from some kind of design flaw that has made me hate using the phone over time. n73 had small keypad buttons that were tough to use for me (plus massive lens cover), n95 loose slider plus it would make clicking sounds when top half would hit bottom half (n95, n95-3, n95 8gb all did this withing 2 weeks), n80 keypad sounded like i was popping bubble wrap when pressing buttons, etc. nseries have great feature set, but the design team should be fired as they keep using too much plastic and too many odd choices for button layout.

[krisse]

almost every nokia i have owned has suffered from some kind of design flaw that has made me hate using the phone over time.

Try using some non-Nseries S60 models, you'd be surprised by how good they are now.

Do they do any type of marketing research or do they actually listen to their customers?

It sounds simple, but in practice this kind of research is notoriously difficult to rely on, especially in something as varied as the phone industry.

If it was as simple as that, every phone made by every manufacturer would be a hit. The problem is that there is no amorphous mass of "customers", there's millions of different people who all have slightly different priorities. On average the readers of AAS probably have a totally different set of priorities to the majority of people who buy these devices.

Which of these priorities you pick, who you listen to and who you don't listen to, is very difficult to judge. You can try making a compromise, but compromises are equally notorious for pleasing no one. It's probably the case that to make a successful product you have to annoy at least some of your potential customers.

I agree the N73 feels very tacky, yet it's sold incredibly well, whereas other similar models with much better build quality have been left in its shadow. Personally, as I keep saying, I think the numbered S60s are much better phones than the Nseries S60 models, yet the numbered S60s receive virtually no attention compared to Nseries. It's as if the success of a phone depends a great deal on factors other than the phone itself.

There's a famous saying about Hollywood, which comes from the fact that no matter how good the director, actors or scriptwriter, no matter how much research they do with test audiences, no matter how much money they pour into a production, no one has ever come up with a guaranteed hit film. The saying is: "Nobody knows nothing".

Going back to phones, the example that always sticks in my mind is when they revamped the original N-Gage into the N-Gage QD, mostly to answer the critics of the original. Amongst other things, gone was the sidetalking, and you held the QD right up to your face like any other phone. You'd think this would receive universal praise, but at least one reviewer slammed this change because he didn't like the way his beard got the screen greasy. Should Nokia have listened to him?

With regards to the free 3 months sat nav. In the manual its states to just hit purchase and any free usage period will automatically be used before it then requests you to buy. I did this and no payment options etc.. came up it just started working, so I guess thats how they are implementing it rather than with a voucher. The gps is great aswell, it gets a lock in under 10 seconds which is great compared to my MDA Compact 3 which can take several minutes some times. I would also like to add I think the screen is fine for multimedia use and is crisp and clear, if you tried to stick a 2.8" screen on a candybar phone the phone would be huge, thats the trade of for having a monoblock style of phone I suppose. On the whole I'm not a huge fan of the styling and prefer black devices if I was being honest but I am finding its growing on me.

Its interesting how Nokia E-series and their numbered phones (given relative price point) are so well made and the N-series is hit and miss - at best.

They can do it but not on their flagship models.

Wierd.

[viipottaja]

Krisse,

another great comment from you! I agree.

Look, Nokia does more market research than arguably any other cell/mobile phone company. They are using a fairly sophisticated segmenting/target user approach. The product manager of N82 said that the N82 is targeted at the "Technology Stylist" (or something like that) segment. This means that, krhm, even most of the AAS readers are not the target audience. So in N82 case, I guess, style (whether you like it or not) has equal importance to function - and the style has to work for 2-3 years without starting to look horribly old. The Technology Stylists (?? Bang Olufsen buyers??) may well think the N82 looks fantastic, and will not care too much about small usability inconveniences..

For many an AAS reader N95 may therofore remain the phone of choise - they/we have to wait for a faster camera and a xenon flash in the next model. Or the one after that.. or... well, when the next phone targeting their/our segment hits the streets!

[tomsky]

I know where all of the above comments are coming from, but for me, this is the N73 done right, and it wasn't as bad as many of you make out. I still look at the N73 and think if it had a 3.5mm jack and a d-pad instead of a nipple, I'd take it back in an instant. The fact is, the tacky plastic casing was one of the reasons mine lasted so long. Metal casings are heavy and transfer damage to delicate insides, whereas plastic makes it light and resilient and keeps the screen and circuitry safe.
I just wish you could hold it like a phone to take pictures. When did it become such a problem to let us press the centre button to take a snap?!

Its all personal opinion there isn't actually anything wrong with the phone and this phone is cool unlike the Idiotphone.

Its obvious why Nokia is releasing apparent "half-baked" mobiles all to do with money.

But still i would rather have a half-baked nokia than a microwaved apple.

[delanz]

What about the quality of the plastic? If I'm not mistaken, in the first picture of the review, looks like the upper part near the earpiece, the paint already faded away. The quality of the paint in Nokia recent handset is quite concerning.