Know my phone, the N73 ME.

One of the most balanced phones. The best you can get today.

I recently brought the N73 Music Edition and I am really glad with my buy. The performance of the phone has surely been beyond my expectations. My review is based on my personal experience & my research on the internet before buying this phone. Hope it helps...
The N73 ME is a smart phone that strikes a perfect balance between Ergonomics, looks, Photography, music, & basic & advanced phone functionality



What extra does the N73 ME have over the N73?
- An additional 2 GB Memory card.- An additional music adapter for 3.5 mm headphones(any headphone that can be connected to your PC).- Widened stereo balance.- Black coloured exterior body- Upgraded firmware- Additional software functionality + added applications for music.- Rs.1500 more in the cost
In all other aspects, the N73 ME is similar to the N73.

Ergonomics & design of exterior body:
The N73 Music edition comes in just one colour, Black. And it looks much better than the normal N73. The phone has a very sleek and compact look from the front. Not too large I would say, but on the larger side. Weighs around 116 gms. Lighter than all other N series models. Just 6 gms heavier than the 6233. The keypad is small and one of the negatives of the phone. After a while you would get used to typing on it though. There are additional four buttons that surround the main keypad. These are 1.Menu Key 2.Edit Key 3. Clear Key 4. Music Key. These keys are really thin & small. You will have to almost press those with your nails. If you put on a crystal case on your phone, it would become all the more difficult to operate these keys, especially the clear key. The joystick is OK. I didn’t have problems using it, though it is smaller than the average phone joystick size. It seems a bit feeble though. Avoid playing games on this phone, especially those games that need a joystick. You don’t know when it will pop out. i say this because I have personally seen and heard instances of the joystick of the N73 coming out.

The backside of the phone looks good. It has a sliding flap that protects the lens. The flap works fine. People complain that it may seem a hint loose, but I haven’t had any problems regarding it.

Camera & Photography:
This is what makes the camera cost so much! The excellent 3.2 MP Camera with Carl Zeiss lens. Today, no other Nokia phone can capture better still photos than the Nokia N73. The photos are really rich in colour. In fact the colors are unreal, ie. brighter than the actual colours. Photos of flowers and really bright coloured objects can become an eyesore sometimes, but different people react differently to the pictures. Personally, the N73 takes the best day photographs in the world (Even better than the SE k800i Cybershot phone). But the N73 cannot beat the K800i on night photography. The k800i xeon flash is too much for the N73 to compete with. But The N73 has a decent flash for the night. In the night portrait mode, the flash flashes harder and the photos come out quite good.



There are 8 modes of photography, like scene mode, macro mode, night mode, night portrait, portrait etc. And other photography options really make this a great camera phone. You can take wonderful pictures of moving objects using the sport mode. The macro mode really works wonders on close-up photographs. The night mode is perfect for dim photographs of night scenes without flash. The night potriat mode will flash a flash that will blind you. You get decent photographs at night too. There is also the sequence mode that lets you take continuous pictures by holding the camera click button down. I have taken upto 15 pictures non stop. The k790i/K800i claims to take 9 pictures in that mode.

Autofocus really helps and can be fun to use. You can 'half-click' and focus before you click. This ensures that there are no smudgy images. But unlike how autofocus should work, it captures the photo 2 to 3 seconds and a few frames later. Ideally half-clicking should give you the image that you see on the display when you click all the way through. This is one defect that probably may be corrected in the future versions. (Which I am not too hopeful of)

Videos:
The video capabilities of this phone is decent too. It captures videos at 15 frames per second. Televisions have a minimum of 30 Fps to avoid flicker. But I wont complain as phones havent reached that level except the N93 which can capture videos at 30 fps. The video capabilities are better than that of the SE K800i but not as good as the N93 which is an exclusive video phone. But note that the N93 cannot capture as good images as the N73.

Music:
You cannot compare the music of the SE walman phones to any others, but the N73 isnt far behind. It has decent stereo speakers, not the best though. And you get a 3.5 mm jack adapter, that is nice. This allows you to attach headphones to the mobile. Any headphone that you connet to your PC would fit on to the adapter. The music OP is good. If you can get the earphones of the walkman series, the music experience would be better. Or if you get headphones like seiheiser or some other brilliant band, the music experience will be worth it. The 2GB memory card that comes with the phone enables you to store ample songs. I even found some hindi songs already on the phone, but I couldnt play them as their licences had to be updated. I dont know how much the cost of upgrading the licence is.

The N73 ME phone is supposed to be a music phone, but this is like Nokia has tried to make a football player play cricket. Photography will be the prime feature of this phone and music will be the secondary feature.

Battery Life:
The battery quality of the phone is decent enough. A whole day of flash photography and the battery is still full. Though talking a lot and listening to music can eat the battery, you can go one days with full usage. If you dont talk much or dont listen to music, i say that you can go longer, upto 3 days. The official standby time is 350 h and the talk time is up to 6h.

Sound Reception:
The sound reception of the phone is good. No problems at all. Never had problems with any nokia phones on the Sound reception side.

Image Gallery:
The phone sports a cool image gallery. The animation is nice. It lets you edit the image. Lets you add cliparts (funny stuff like moustaches, ties, hairstyles) on the images. You can create muvees(something like videos created using vindows movie maker) using your images. Also the image gallery is very slick and impressive. Nice animation. The only thing is you cant hide images from the image gallery. It picks up all the images on your phone memory and memory card.

Address-book:
The phone has a great phone book. Very easy to use and nice. Well equpped.

Software availabiliy:
The software availability for this phone sporting Symbian OS 60 v 3.0 is not that great. Though I was able to install all .Jar files, 90% of the .sis files could not be installed. But I guess this should get better with time with software availability becoming better.

The Price:
The price of the phone can burn a hole in your pocket. I think it should have been priced at 20,000 max. But the N73 ME costs above 24,000.

Overall Conclusion:
This phone is an awsome phone and one of the best equipped phones today. It has all you want. Ranging from terrefic music capabilities, to large storage memory, a good processor (one of the faster smart phones, faster than the 6233 which i didnt expext), Symbian OS which multiplies the capacity of the phone by infinity (this is the one feature that Kicks SE ass). But best of all the awsome camera and the functionality that you get with it. Overall, I would go in for this phone, though i think it is overpriced, cause its really got everything that you want.

If you are gonna be really using all the features of the phone, then go for it. If you are just gonna talk on phone, then you will find phones at cheaper prices that looks quite better.