I got my N73 about 3-4 days after the official shipment announcement, and I've found very little to dislike about this phone. I was a pretty big SE fanboy for a while, as I had a K750i as my main phone for a good year and change.
Things to really love about the N73:
- The screen is huge and gorgeous. I've never seen a phone screen this crisp.. and there is plenty of room here too.
- Series 60 3rd edition is beautiful.. Nokia has paid a lot of attention to details here... The icons, colors, and layout of the default theme have kept me aesthetically pleased which I've never been able to say for any phone.
- Boot time, menu loading, installing apps, etc.. is all very snappy with Series 60 3rd edition. I had a 3650 back in the day and let me tell you what a horrificly slow interface that was...
- Nokia's new browser is really fast, and can scale a webpage down to 50% making it very readable on 320x240 with little or no horizontal scroll (I read engadget frequently at 50% with no scroll). Also it comes bundled with a free RSS reader, which is really nifty.
- Still images are really good for a cell phone. You're not gonna replace a standalone digital camera, but that shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who's been following the cell phone market for the past few years. I found the photos to contain much more color and detail than the photos my k750 was capable of.
- CIF video (352x288)@15fps is pretty dang good (again being an old SE fanboy i've been used to QCIF)
- I've heard a lot of complaints about the joystick on the N73, but in comparison to the K750 (which sold me on the idea of joysticks), it is actually better, believe it or not. The up/down/left/right movement of the stick feels very solid, and you are almost never "in the dark" about which state the joystick is in.
Things that could be better:
- The buttons on the right side of the phone manage to clicked a lot whether in my pocket or just normally handling the phone... I highly recommend getting a software auto-locker to help here.
- The small keypad can be a problem sometimes, but i'd say about 85-90% of the time it is fine for my needs (I write about 3-4 text messages per day, and do late nate RSS / web browsing).
- There is a dedicated button for an animated graphical menu that will take you to one of a few high level tasks (i.e. Media, Internet..). I wish there was a way to disable only this button as sometimes I accidentally press it instead of the "C" button.
- The USB/PopPort cable doesn't actually charge the phone. This is a pretty minor thing, but I had grown accustomed to just plugging my usb cable from my K750 into any available USB port for charging.. hopefully Nokia will fix this in other phones down the road.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Marshall Culpepper @ Sep 5th 2006 8:08PM
I got my N73 about 3-4 days after the official shipment announcement, and I've found very little to dislike about this phone. I was a pretty big SE fanboy for a while, as I had a K750i as my main phone for a good year and change.
Things to really love about the N73:
- The screen is huge and gorgeous. I've never seen a phone screen this crisp.. and there is plenty of room here too.
- Series 60 3rd edition is beautiful.. Nokia has paid a lot of attention to details here... The icons, colors, and layout of the default theme have kept me aesthetically pleased which I've never been able to say for any phone.
- Boot time, menu loading, installing apps, etc.. is all very snappy with Series 60 3rd edition. I had a 3650 back in the day and let me tell you what a horrificly slow interface that was...
- Nokia's new browser is really fast, and can scale a webpage down to 50% making it very readable on 320x240 with little or no horizontal scroll (I read engadget frequently at 50% with no scroll). Also it comes bundled with a free RSS reader, which is really nifty.
- Still images are really good for a cell phone. You're not gonna replace a standalone digital camera, but that shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who's been following the cell phone market for the past few years. I found the photos to contain much more color and detail than the photos my k750 was capable of.
- CIF video (352x288)@15fps is pretty dang good (again being an old SE fanboy i've been used to QCIF)
- I've heard a lot of complaints about the joystick on the N73, but in comparison to the K750 (which sold me on the idea of joysticks), it is actually better, believe it or not. The up/down/left/right movement of the stick feels very solid, and you are almost never "in the dark" about which state the joystick is in.
Things that could be better:
- The buttons on the right side of the phone manage to clicked a lot whether in my pocket or just normally handling the phone... I highly recommend getting a software auto-locker to help here.
- The small keypad can be a problem sometimes, but i'd say about 85-90% of the time it is fine for my needs (I write about 3-4 text messages per day, and do late nate RSS / web browsing).
- There is a dedicated button for an animated graphical menu that will take you to one of a few high level tasks (i.e. Media, Internet..). I wish there was a way to disable only this button as sometimes I accidentally press it instead of the "C" button.
- The USB/PopPort cable doesn't actually charge the phone. This is a pretty minor thing, but I had grown accustomed to just plugging my usb cable from my K750 into any available USB port for charging.. hopefully Nokia will fix this in other phones down the road.