Nokia N82: Great phone, but mind your fingers

%IMAGE=N82Front.jpg% I have been using the newly-released Nokia N82 for two weeks now. It looks like a beautiful slab of metal (but actually mostly plastic) and it's a logical upgrade from the N73: same candybar form factor, same size but plenty more features.

Like the N95, it has 3.5G (HSDPA), Wi-Fi, 5-Megapixel camera (good for snapping meeting notes) and TV output, which allows you to connect the phone to a TV/projector to show the phone's display.

And like the N95, it has Assisted-GPS. GPS doesn't work indoors, but luckily there's Google Maps For Mobile with My Location (Beta), which can use your cell ID to approximate your location. (Warning: The Google Maps cell ID feature doesn't work for all mobile operators in all countries yet; it seemed to work for some areas in Singapore.)

%IMAGE=N82Back.jpg% This is the first Nokia phone with a Xenon camera flash and the brightness of the flash really shows. See this for a comparison between the Nokia N82 and N95 camera flash. Unfortunately, the Xenon flash can't be used for shooting videos.

The N82 is possibly the first phone from Nokia that's prejudiced against fat fingers, with its tiny bumpy buttons that are so easy to miss.

Like the Apple iPhone, you can flip the phone to its side and the display will automatically adjust to the landscape orientation. But I find this feature annoying sometimes--often, I need to tilt the phone to re-orientate the phone display.

I'm happy to report that I haven't found any phone software bugs yet after 2 weeks of continuous use. If you're looking for a slimmer, improved version of the Nokia N95, the N82 is probably suitable for you... Unless you have fat fingers.