Nokia N73 Music Edition-A Detailed Review

Nokia N73 Music Edition Review

 Introduction

The Nokia N73 is a Smartphone by Nokia officially described as a "multimedia computer”. The feature which most distinguishes the N73 from other 'N'- or 'E'-series Nokia mobile phones is the 3.2 megapixel autofocus camera. The N73 does not support Wi-Fi. Since the N73 supports access via Bluetooth and USB Mass Storage (amongst other methods), it is possible to transfer large collections of files to and from it using any computer that also supports either Bluetooth or mass storage via USB (e.g. Microsoft Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, etc.)notably, Nokia supports firmware upgrades to the N73 to be made by the user via a module in Nokia PC Suite or directly over-the-air. This Music Edition is similar to the standard Nokia N73, but with an improved music player application and better headphones. It has a large screen, but this leaves little room for the keypad. The joystick and soft keys are a reasonable size and easy to use, but the numeric keys are small and tightly spaced, so you have to type with your thumbnail.

Unlike Sony Ericsson's Walkman phones, the N73 doesn't come with an application to convert and transfer music. Instead, you use Windows Media Player to synchronies music to the phone. The handset comes without a memory card, so you'll need to buy a mini SD card to store songs. The music player itself is far better than Nokia's standard Series 60 version. Music can be chosen by artist, album and genre, and the current song appears on the home screen. The headphones have playback controls on the cable and sound good, but you can plug any pair of headphones into the supplied headphone adaptor. The N73's auto focus camera is superb. It has an LED flash and works well in low light, while daylight shots rival those from a dedicated digital camera. Photos are in focus and have accurate colors and contrast. The battery isn't great, though, and ran for just over 13 hours in our test.

Nokia's N73 has a fiddly keypad and is pricy, but it's a great music Smartphone with an excellent camera. If you don't need Wi-Fi and want music on the move, it's a good buy. As with each 'Music/Internet Edition' that Nokia produces, the end result is mainly an exercise in marketing, at least in that those who bought the original device certainly don't need to upgrade, since their hardware can almost certainly be used for the same purposes. But full credit to Nokia for making the extra effort to get across to consumers that you can (shock horror) listen to stereo music on their S60 Smartphone.But what has actually been added? After all, the original N73 was a fairly complete package. The hardware had its limitations, in the tiny keypad and the camera which couldn't handle very bright light conditions, and the hardware here's identical. What's different is the music software, a key assignment and the accessories shipped in the box.

Oh yes, and it's black. Music biz black and, in my opinion the best looking N73 yet. And it's not as obvious now that it's all plastic. The key assignment mentioned above and pictured on the right is that of making the previous 'Media' key now go straight to Music player. I never liked the Media key and I think this is a definite improvement. Having only the single dedicated music key isn't as flexible as on some other devices, for example the HTC STRTrK and Nokia's own N75, N91 and 6290, not to mention the imminent N95, but at least any music function is now only two key presses away at most. Staying with hardware for a moment, the main changes for the N73 Music Edition are the welcome addition of a 2GB mini SD card (enough for around 30 CDs worth of music) and the superior AD-41 adapter/stereo headset. This has a standard 3.5mm stereo connector embedded in its control unit, meaning that you can plug in your own in-ear headset rather than having to stick with the slightly cheaper Nokia ear buds. 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 wasting too much time lets head to the features.

Editions

Besides the simple edition, Nokia released three other editions of N73.

Music Edition

In addition to the basic N73, Nokia subsequently released the N73 'Music Edition'. It has technically the same hardware as the N73, but the 'multimedia button' on the keypad has been replaced with a button that starts the music player. The Music Edition also includes a 2GB memory card and the phone is completely black. The music player on the Music Edition supports album art and visualizations, while that on the regular N73 does not. It also has an improved control interface where 'play', 'pause', 'stop', 'next' and 'previous' may all be selected directly by simply pushing the phone joystick in the appropriate direction rather than having to scroll through on-screen buttons for these controls and then select them as on the ordinary N73. The Music Player application stays in the background at all time (even when music is not being played) in the Music Edition of N73. In the latest firmware versions this application can be terminated, but doing so prevents from using the Music Edition remote control to start listening to music, until the application is started again by using the phone's keypad.

Internet Edition

The 'N73 Internet Edition' was essentially the Music Edition, but retaining the 'multimedia button' function, rather than a dedicated 'music button'. The 'N73 Internet Edition' is not available in the Middle East and North Africa.

Special Edition

Nokia has also released another model of the N73 called the 'N73 Special Edition' in the Middle East and North Africa. The phone was released during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan in 2007. The phone has the same hardware as the other editions of the N73 but comes pre-loaded with Islamic applications and the phone is completely white .Nokia also released N73 Special Edition in Indonesia without pre-loaded Islamic applications.

Firmware

However, all three versions of the N73 appear to have been updated to the same software as each other, essentially making them exactly the same phone – the V4.0726.2.0.1 dated 26-06-2007 updates the standard N73's Music Player to the same version as the Music Edition's enhanced Music Player detailed above, while keeping the 'multimedia button' function, essentially making it an Internet Edition. Although Nokia N73 Software version 4.0735.3.0.2 & 4.0736.3.2.1 was released October 2007, some might not have availed this firmware version, because of limited actions to other countries.

As of 2008 the new firmware version of this Smartphone is V4.0812.4.0.1 (exclusively released for Asian phones) updates with the standard features still with Nokia Maps Application installed by default (requires an external Bluetooth GPS receiver), Nokia Life blog, PTT, and Search applications carried on from the V4.0726.2.0.1 plus the latest addition is the Nokia Mobile TV application also installed by default (requires an external Nokia Mobile TV Receiver SU-33W) which is an application available on N77. The camera is much improved from earlier firmware. The phone now takes only 27 seconds to boot. It took 47+ seconds in earlier firmware. Also, the N73 has 20 MB of RAM available after boot. A little change was users may not be able to install the N-Gage application which is modified to work in N73. Making it better compared to ME because of its multimedia keypad rather than having only a single usage button, same features of Music Player like ME that supports album art and visualizations, enhanced control interface and also available on start screen when menu key is pressed and hold after the phone boots up.

Later, in June 2008 Nokia released firmware version 4.0823.4.4.1 which added improvements on its interface. 4.0839.42.0.1 Was released on September 2008, which is a beta version of 4.0839.42.3.1 released same date and not available in some countries. Also, during recent UK Nokia poster campaigns, the black version of the phone was advertised without the term 'Music Edition', and the O2 UK shop sells the N73 in both Silver/Plum and Black, with the Black version having the multimedia button rather than the music button.

Software

In common with other Nokia 'Nseries' and 'Eseries' phones of its time (late 2006), the N73 comes loaded with many software applications, including contacts, messaging, picture and video galleries, a music player, a Visual FM Radio, RealPlayer, an IM client, a WAP browser, a full web browser based on KHTML/WebKit, a Microsoft Office document viewer, a PDF viewer, an Adobe Flash Light viewer and some games.

The majority of these applications support background execution; for example, one may listen to music while browsing the Internet, and then may switch to write a text message or e-mail, without having to close any applications. With the exception of newer Sony Ericsson phones like K550 and W610, Smartphone' typically cannot do this or can do it in only a very limited way; for example, only the music player can run in the background.Java applications as well as Symbian (S60 release 3) applications can be installed to or removed from the phone by the user, using either the Nokia PC Suite software, which is included with the phone, or the installer application on the phone itself.

The N73 uses a database system for the supplied 'Gallery' applications (which permanently run in the background, in order to reduce seek and operation times) and again these databases can be updated locally on the device itself. This means that supported image, video and audio files can be placed almost anywhere in the file system and browsed easily, and in the case of MP3 audio files, by ID3 tag (e.g. 'album', 'artist', etc.).

The Phone

Now let’s 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 mini SD 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 color gives it that much extra sexy feel.

The screen

The Screen is absolutely amazing 256K color TFT with resolution of 240x320. It’s 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.

3.2 Mega Pixels on the Back

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 desktop wallpapers or even take small printouts.
The camera has wide variety of options. Different scene modes including portrait, night, macro/close-up, 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. The camera is protected by the sliding cover which is good thing. It protects lens 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.

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

Using the phone
Those who have used any S60 phone before won’t 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 pickup signal there.
N73 didn’t 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 hands free. The nice thing about this hand 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 won’t miss a MP3 player if you have this phone.
The music playback is good as long as you don’t convert your song collection to eAAC using nokia pc suit. It does degrade music quality.

What I Like

1) Great screen

2) Nice looking and sleek

3) Great camera

4) Good music playback

5) 2GB mini SD card included in the package

6) 3G ready

7) Dual camera for video call

8) Good network reception

What I Don’t Like

1) Keys maybe small for some users

2) Screen catches fingerprint too easily

3) Bundled stereo headphones not good enough

4) Last but probably one of the biggest drawbacks of this phone. No A2DP

Final Words


In the entire 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. The Nokia N73 is the best selling phone in the Nokia N Series, and one of Nokia's best selling phones, owing to its balanced features and attractive price.

Specifications

Manufacturer	Nokia
Series	Nokia N-series
Compatible networks	GSM quad-band UMTS 2100
Availability by country	Q3 2006
Predecessor	Nokia N70
Successor	Nokia N78 Nokia N82
Form factor	Candy bar
Dimensions	110×49×19
Weight	116
Operating system	Symbian OS v9.1 + S60 3rd Edition
CPU	Dual CPU ARM9 220 MHz
Memory	64 MB
Storage	42 MB (Nokia N73) 40 MB (Nokia N73 Music Edition)
Removable storage	mini SD up to 2 GB
Battery	BP-6M Battery, 3.7 V, 1100 mAh
Data inputs	Keypad
Display	2.4 inch QVGA, TFT, 262,144 colors, 240×320 pixels
Rear camera	3.15 megapixels (Carl Zeiss Tessar lens, flash, red-eye reduction, auto focus, 20x digital zoom)
Front camera	VGA camera (640×480 pixels) with up to 2× digital zoom
Ringtones & notifications	Yes
Connectivity	EDGE UMTS Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR Infrared

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