Nokia N73 review

Features
The Nokia N73 is a compact multimedia phone and comes with almost every feature available on the market. The 3.2-megapixel camera lets you take still photos, with the option to take macro shots and adjust the ISO levels, white balance, colour tone, scene mode, brightness and image quality. It has a 20x digital zoom, which lets you zoom in on distant objects but it won't give you the same clarity as an optical zoom. You can also take video at 15 frames per second.

Once you have taken a picture you can print it out using Nokia XpressPrint, which lets you print a picture on a Bluetooth printer. You can send it to another person via Bluetooth, infrared, MMS and email. You can transfer it to your computer using Nokia XpressTransfer, or upload it directly to Flickr. We tried the Flickr uploading service and it works really well, letting you set up an account or access a current one straight from the N73.

If you want to make any changes to your images before you upload them, there's a built-in photo editor that lets you change the image's colour, crop it, rotate it, reduce the red-eye, resize, add text, insert clip art and cartoonise. While it's no Photoshop, this application is useful if you want to edit something quickly before you send it to somebody in an MMS or upload it to Flickr.

Making sure it keeps the music fans as happy as the photographers, Nokia has also added an MP3 player that supports MP3, AAC, eAAC, eAAC+ and WMA and lets you adjust the equaliser and shuffle songs. There's also an FM radio (although you need to use the proprietary headphones in order to make it work) and visual radio, which is still a limited service in the UK, providing live visual information while you listen to a radio station. Aside from using the proprietary headphones to listen to music you can also use an adaptor to plug in your own 3.5mm headphones or use the stereo loudspeaker system.

Don't worry if you're wondering where you're going to store all your SMS and MMS messages, photos and MP3s, because the N73 comes with 42MB internal memory and an expandable miniSD slot that will support up to 1GB.

Other features include a Web browser, which comes with a useful page-overview tool that lets you view the whole page while scrolling across a small section. The Lifeblog application, which is Nokia's own blogging service that lets you blog pictures and text messages to your PC in a journal format. The RealPlayer and Flash Player applications that let you view video and other similar content including flash content on Web sites, AMR-NB, AMR-WB, AAC, RealAudio, RealVideo, H.263 and MPEG-4.

The N73 also comes pre-installed with an Office suite that lets you view PDF documents, create and read Word, PowerPoint and Excel documents. You can also make notes, take voice memos, calculate sums and covert measurements, weights and currencies among other things. If you get bored with the camera, MP3 player and office suite, you can always play java games or download wallpaper and ring tones.

An interesting feature is the 3-D tones application that uses the stereo speakers and lets you add a 3D effect to your favourite ring tones. The advantage of running on Symbian is that you can download applications like this quite easily and install them in a matter of minutes using the bundled PC suite. The PC suite also lets you back up your entire phone, including messages and calendar data, synchronise information with Outlook and Outlook Express, connect to the Internet with your phone, send SMS messages, store images and transfer music.

Performance
Audio quality during calls is clear and there was no distortion or unexpected lulls in sound during calls. The speakerphone mode works well and, due to the stereo speaker setup, sounds audible even over some noise. The MP3 player also sounded clear using the proprietary headphones. We're disappointed, however, that there's no support for A2DP (stereo Bluetooth).

The picture quality from the 3.2-megapixel camera was clear and significantly better than the camera on the N80, featuring less blurring. The interface is straightforward and taking still shots or videos wasn't a difficult task due to the dedicated shutter button and easy to understand interface. Our main niggle with the N73's camera compared to the Sony Ericsson K800i's is the lack of a xenon flash. Pictures taken in very low light don't come out properly lit using the LED photo light.

It's also a shame that neither the N73 or K800i feature optical zoom -- it would undoubtedly increase the phone's bulk -- but this will probably appear in future models.

Video and voice calls worked as expected without any noteworthy problems and the battery life was acceptable, only having to recharge it once over a three-day period. However, this was reduced to charging it daily when making 3G video calls regularly. It's quoted at 246 minutes talk time and 350 hours standby time.

Edited by Mary Lojkine
Additional editing by Nick Hide