Nokia N73 Review

The full Nokia N73 Review

The N73 is the closest Nokia has come to matching our Phone of the Year 2006, the Sony Ericsson K800i Cyber-shot, in terms of photographic prowess and features. Give or take a few millimetres, the Nokia N73 is the same size and weight as the K800i and, like its adversary, wonderful to handle and nicely weighted in the hand.

QVGA screen

Navigating around the N73 is a prickly experience because of the joystick and keys. Nokia has ditched the navigation pad present on the N80 and 6280 in favour of Sony Ericsson's stick format. But where the K800i is responsive, the N73's five-way joystick is stiff, cranky and frustrating. Similarly, the keypad feels cramped, especially considering the ample space at Nokia's disposal.
Despite these usability issues, the Nokia N73 has a lot going for it. The Symbian Series 60 OS and interface has a fast processor and will pose no difficulty. The 2.4-inch display is QVGA-quality, displaying crisp detail and vivid colours.

3.2-megapixel camera

The Nokia N73 features a 3.2-megapixel camera with a Carl Zeiss lens, as seen on Nokia's N90 and N93 camera phones. Surprisingly, the N73 doesn't have a proper flash. Instead an LED lamp helps out in indoor and low light conditions. Its performance is fickle and the only real blot on the handset's photographic copybook.
The auto-focus is a slick worker and if you like your pics bursting with strong colour, you'll favour the N73. It's a common trait with Nokia's high-end camera phones; while some say its hues are over-saturated, it makes for vivid and bright photos. Our tests indoors and outdoors showed a consistent level of detail and exposure, and the camera works well in most lighting environments. Elsewhere, the N73 includes all the stock photographic features like exposure compensation, flash settings, scene modes and timer.
Close-ups are dealt with a 20x digital zoom but picture quality deteriorates considerably the closer you move in.

Video calling

As a video camera, the Nokia N73 is not bad despite the judder and image drag, shooting in a maximum CIF (352x258-pixel) resolution in MPEG4 format at 15fps.
A front-loaded VGA camera is on hand for two-way video calling, and it does a respectable job. The quality of our call was blighted with slight drag and judder, but the speakers situated at the top and bottom of the handset issued strong sound.

MP3 player

The music player is also decent, with an equalizer to enhance the sound. The bundled headphones aren't ideal but setting the sounds to bass booster and pumping up the volume to 80-90% produces a punchy fidelity. Sadly, the N73 doesn't have a 3.5mm headphone jack adapter so if you want to upgrade to quality cans you're out of luck. It does offer an optional AD-15 adapter that will set you back £12 but is worth investing in if you want to really use your phone as a primary digital music player.

Web browser

The Nseries has been a conduit for Nokia's pioneering new full-internet browsing technique,  MiniMap. Essentially, a semi-transparent zoomed-out view of the area you're reading is shadowed by a complete view of the whole web page, making browsing on a small-screen device less of a thorny experience.
The N73 also comes loaded with Symbian software including Nokia's LifeBlog application. There's an opportunity to download and install
F-Secure Mobile Anti-Virus if you're worried about security, while the usual QuickOffice programs are present and correct.
Despite lacking the inventive picture technology and proper built-in flash of the Sony Ericsson K800i, the N73 takes some cracking snaps and excels as a camera phone.

Specifications