Well, finally the day came to replace my good old and trustworthy K750i. And the only phone out there that really appealed me was the new Nokia N73 Music edition.
A sexy new version of N73 was released by Nokia in october and it immediately became popular due to its looks and new feature additions to already popular N73.
So without westing too much time lets head to the features.
[BREAK=Specifications]
Specifications
[BREAK=The Phone]
Now lets have a look at the phone itself. The phone comes in nice nokia box which includes phone, manual, charger, Stereo Hands Free, usb cable and 2GB miniSD card. Pretty much standard package. inclusion of 2GB is added value and makes this phone totally worth the additional expense over regular N73.
The phone is not exactly slim but its slick and looks classy. The all black colour gives it that much extra sexy feel.
The screen
The Screen is absolutely amazing 256K colour TFT with resolution of 240x320. Its crisp, clear and easily readable even in daylight. Its pleasure to look at.
The keypad
The joystick is very good and responsive. Coming from K750i joystick this feel a lot better. The menu keys are in crome and rest if the keypad is black. The number keys are small. It might take some time getting used to for new user.
The volume control, Video & Images and camera keys are located on the right edge of the phone
The speaker
The phone is equipped with dual speakers on the top. I was not expecting much from these built in speakers but i was surprised to see how loud and clear they are. Even at full volume there was not much distortion coming from the speakers and it was clear.
The camera
Probably the best thing about this phone is its camera. Without doubt the best camera phone i have used till date. A 3.2MP camera provided very good results during the day and decent results during night time photography.
The pics came good enough to be used as a desktop wallpapers or even take small printouts.
The camera has wide variety of options. Different scene modes including portrait, night, macro/closeup, landscape, Auto and user defined. The flash has Auto, red eye reduction, on and off options.
The phone even has ISO, white balance and colour tone settings to give the best results.
A word of advice. Avoid using phone camera in auto mode. Manually select the scene, flash, ISO, white balance mode and then take pics. It gives much better results
[BREAK=Using the phone]
Those who have used any S60 phone before wont feel alien to this phone. Its typical S60 interface. Nice and easy to use.
Network reception
I tested this phone in the house, inside the operating room of my dad's hospital where signal strength is usually very low and my K750i always struggled to picup signal there.
N73 didnt face any problems picking up the signal and where K750i had single bar or no bar and having difficulties making calls, the N73 was working effortlessly. Network reception has always been the big plus for Nokia and N73 is no exception.
Music playback
The phone comes with stereo handsfree. The nice thing about this hands free is that it comes with 3.5mm stereo jack. So you can use your choice of earphones with this phone. The bundled earphones are not that decent but not that good. I was disappointed with nokia regarding this. A phone in premium segment (which this phone is at over 20k) should come with good set of earphones. The bundled stereo earphones lack the tight bass and Treble is horrible. And it does not sound good for rock and metal music at all.
I immediately switched to the earphones that came with my Cowon player and it made huge difference. The phone obviously is capable of producing excellent results playing your favorite music collection. Results were good and you wont miss a MP3 player if you have this phone.
The music playback is good as long as you dont convert your song collection to eAAC using nokia pc suit. It does degrade music quality.
Camera
The camera is protected by the sliding cover which is good thing. It protects llens from dust and scratches. The phone has dedicated camera button and you can hold it sideways similar to a conventional camera while taking pics.
The results as i said before were excellent.
Here are some day, night and indoor pics taken using the N73 camera.
[BREAK=Camera Comparison with K750]
To do a fair comparison between the camera, i reduced the N73 resolution from settings to 2MP ( no image was edited in any way after its taken from camera). This page will see more additions as i take more images.
An attempt was made to replicate exact same image but there will be minor differences as hand move.
Images on left side are K750i images and to that of right side of page are N73
Test 1, indoor pic of a plastic object
K750i------------------------------N73
Test 2 Outdoor pic in sunny bright light
K750i------------------------------N73
Test 3 Black and white test pattern
K750i------------------------------N73
Test 4 Sculpture picture under natural light
K750i------------------------------N73
Test5: Outdoor, Sun behind the camera
K750i------------------------------N73
Test 6: Night shots with flash on
K750i------------------------------N73
[BREAK=Conclusion]
Conclusion
In all the N73 music edition is great phone and certainly best option in 23-24k range. There is hardly anything wrong with this phone. And Nokia has managed to put out a sleek sexy looking phone packed with features.
Positives
Negatives
My Rating : 8.5/10
The only reason this phone lost 1.5 points in my book is lack of A2DP support. They managed it in N91 ME then why not for N73 ME.
A sexy new version of N73 was released by Nokia in october and it immediately became popular due to its looks and new feature additions to already popular N73.
So without westing too much time lets head to the features.
[BREAK=Specifications]
Specifications
- Network: UMTS / GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
- Dimensions: 110 x 49 x 19 mm
- Weight: 116 g
- DIsplay: 256K TFT display, 240 x 320 pixels, 36 x 48 mm
- Memory(Internal): 42MB shared internal memory
- Memory Expansion: MiniSD Hot swapable, 2GB included
- GPRS: Class 10 (4+1/3+2 slots), 32 - 48 kbps
- EDGE: Class 10, 236.8 kbps
- 3G: 384 kbps
- Connectivity : USB2.0, Bluetooth(v2.0), IrDa
- OS: Symbian OS 9.1, S60 3rd edition
- Messaging: SMS, MMS, Email, Instant Messaging
- Browser: WAP 2.0/xHTML, HTML
- Java Support
- Camera: 3.15 MP, 2048x1536 pixels, Carl Zeiss optics, autofocus, video(CIF), flash; secondary VGA video call camera
[BREAK=The Phone]
Now lets have a look at the phone itself. The phone comes in nice nokia box which includes phone, manual, charger, Stereo Hands Free, usb cable and 2GB miniSD card. Pretty much standard package. inclusion of 2GB is added value and makes this phone totally worth the additional expense over regular N73.
The phone is not exactly slim but its slick and looks classy. The all black colour gives it that much extra sexy feel.
The screen
The Screen is absolutely amazing 256K colour TFT with resolution of 240x320. Its crisp, clear and easily readable even in daylight. Its pleasure to look at.
The keypad
The joystick is very good and responsive. Coming from K750i joystick this feel a lot better. The menu keys are in crome and rest if the keypad is black. The number keys are small. It might take some time getting used to for new user.
The volume control, Video & Images and camera keys are located on the right edge of the phone
The speaker
The phone is equipped with dual speakers on the top. I was not expecting much from these built in speakers but i was surprised to see how loud and clear they are. Even at full volume there was not much distortion coming from the speakers and it was clear.
The camera
Probably the best thing about this phone is its camera. Without doubt the best camera phone i have used till date. A 3.2MP camera provided very good results during the day and decent results during night time photography.
The pics came good enough to be used as a desktop wallpapers or even take small printouts.
The camera has wide variety of options. Different scene modes including portrait, night, macro/closeup, landscape, Auto and user defined. The flash has Auto, red eye reduction, on and off options.
The phone even has ISO, white balance and colour tone settings to give the best results.
A word of advice. Avoid using phone camera in auto mode. Manually select the scene, flash, ISO, white balance mode and then take pics. It gives much better results
[BREAK=Using the phone]
Those who have used any S60 phone before wont feel alien to this phone. Its typical S60 interface. Nice and easy to use.
Network reception
I tested this phone in the house, inside the operating room of my dad's hospital where signal strength is usually very low and my K750i always struggled to picup signal there.
N73 didnt face any problems picking up the signal and where K750i had single bar or no bar and having difficulties making calls, the N73 was working effortlessly. Network reception has always been the big plus for Nokia and N73 is no exception.
Music playback
The phone comes with stereo handsfree. The nice thing about this hands free is that it comes with 3.5mm stereo jack. So you can use your choice of earphones with this phone. The bundled earphones are not that decent but not that good. I was disappointed with nokia regarding this. A phone in premium segment (which this phone is at over 20k) should come with good set of earphones. The bundled stereo earphones lack the tight bass and Treble is horrible. And it does not sound good for rock and metal music at all.
I immediately switched to the earphones that came with my Cowon player and it made huge difference. The phone obviously is capable of producing excellent results playing your favorite music collection. Results were good and you wont miss a MP3 player if you have this phone.
The music playback is good as long as you dont convert your song collection to eAAC using nokia pc suit. It does degrade music quality.
Camera
The camera is protected by the sliding cover which is good thing. It protects llens from dust and scratches. The phone has dedicated camera button and you can hold it sideways similar to a conventional camera while taking pics.
The results as i said before were excellent.
Here are some day, night and indoor pics taken using the N73 camera.
[BREAK=Camera Comparison with K750]
To do a fair comparison between the camera, i reduced the N73 resolution from settings to 2MP ( no image was edited in any way after its taken from camera). This page will see more additions as i take more images.
An attempt was made to replicate exact same image but there will be minor differences as hand move.
Images on left side are K750i images and to that of right side of page are N73
Test 1, indoor pic of a plastic object
K750i------------------------------N73
Test 2 Outdoor pic in sunny bright light
K750i------------------------------N73
Test 3 Black and white test pattern
K750i------------------------------N73
Test 4 Sculpture picture under natural light
K750i------------------------------N73
Test5: Outdoor, Sun behind the camera
K750i------------------------------N73
Test 6: Night shots with flash on
K750i------------------------------N73
[BREAK=Conclusion]
Conclusion
In all the N73 music edition is great phone and certainly best option in 23-24k range. There is hardly anything wrong with this phone. And Nokia has managed to put out a sleek sexy looking phone packed with features.
Positives
- Great screen
- Nice looking and sleek
- Great camera
- Good music playback
- 2GB miniSD card included in the package
- 3G ready
- Dual camera for video call
- Good network reception
Negatives
- Keys maybe small for some users
- Screen catches fingerprint too easily
- Bundled stereo headphones not good enough
- Last but probably one of the biggest drawback of this phone. No A2DP.........argh why nokia why....
My Rating : 8.5/10
The only reason this phone lost 1.5 points in my book is lack of A2DP support. They managed it in N91 ME then why not for N73 ME.
