Nokia N73 review

The Nokia N73 has a similar feature set to the Sony Ericsson K800i Cyber-shot phone, featuring a 3.2-megapixel camera among other things. However, this is a slightly different phone that isn't totally aimed at the photography market. If you're a feature fiend or businessman who wants a camera phone with smart phone extras then the N73 is worth checking out, but we were disappointed that there's no xenon flash.

The N73 is currently available for free on a monthly contract for £20 to £70 a month at O2, 3 and Vodafone.

Design
The N73 is a candybar phone that's more compact than the rest of the N-series range, measuring 49mm wide, 110mm tall and 19mm deep, and it weighs 119g. The front section of the N73 is matte silver and houses a large and bright screen that displays 262k colours, which is not only great for viewing pictures and videos on, but makes viewing Web pages easy too. It measures 38mm wide and 50mm tall, and relative to the size of the handset is one of the largest screens we've seen.

Underneath the screen there are two soft keys that can be programmed to open a selection of applications and underneath those are the send and end call keys. This section also houses the navigation joystick. One of the problems with the joystick is that it doesn't protrude enough -- you have to press it from the sides rather than diagonally from the top.

Further down the front section of the N73 is an alphanumeric keypad flanked by a series of reflective silver dedicated keys. To the left are the menu and text settings keys and to the right are the multimedia and cancel keys. The keypad itself is quite small in relation to the rest of the phone, measuring 31mm wide by 21mm tall, and we're not sure why the space between the screen and the soft keys at the top of the keypad section wasn't used to make the keypad slightly larger.

The effect of having a small keypad is that dialling or texting can be awkward and the keys do feel more squashed together than on other Nokia handsets. On the top right side of the front section above the screen is a VGA (0.3-megapixel) camera for 3G video calls. Next to the camera is a light sensor that activates the backlight on the keypad depending on ambient light. It also flashes blue to let you know that the phone is on. Next to the light sensor, in the middle of the top section of the front of the phone, is the ear speaker.

The rest of the handset is dark purple. On the left side of the N73 is an infrared port and the right side houses a series of dedicated buttons. The top right contains the volume and zoom rocker, further down is the dedicated gallery key, and right at the bottom is the dedicated shutter button, which accesses the 3.2-megapixel camera on the back. The gallery key is useful if you want to check out your pictures quickly without having to navigate through the menu's subsections.

The camera is protected by a large cover, which when slid down automatically activates the camera application. It might not be to everyone's tastes -- it's rather clunky to open -- but the cover does protect the camera well and it doesn't open too easily, so it won't activate the camera every time you take it out of your pocket. The camera itself uses a 3.2-megapixel sensor and features a Carl Zeiss lens, autofocus and an LED photo light.

At the bottom of the phone is a charging port, a USB port that doubles up as a headphone port and an expandable miniSD slot. There's also a loud speaker at the bottom and another one at the top next to the power button that can be used for listening to music and speakerphone mode.