Nokia N73 review (Unlocked)

The N73 runs Symbian OS 9.1 so you get the basic PIM capabilities and more. There's a calendar, a to-do list, notes, a calculator, a voice recorder, a currency converter, and an HTML/XHTML Web browser. An app called Quickoffice lets you view (but not edit) Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files; plus, Adobe Reader is there for PDFs. The N73 is also equipped to handle e-mail capabilities. The phone supports SMTP, IMAP4, and POP3 accounts with full attachment viewing and mobile VPN support for corporate users. Finally, the Nokia PC Suite helps you synchronize your N73 with your PC (using the included USB cable) to manage appointments, music, device memory, and more.

Now, without further ado: the multimedia show. The Nokia N73 ups the ante slightly compared to the Nokia N80 by offering a 3.2-megapixel camera versus a 3-megapixel camera. It features a Carl Zeiss Optics lens, an autofocus function, and 20X digital zoom. Once again, we're blown away by the vast array of photo customization and editing options available on the N73. You can choose from eight scene modes, ranging from portrait to sports to night portrait; four image qualities (large, medium, small, and multimedia messages); and five resolutions (2,048 by 1,536, 1,600 by 1,200, 1,280 by 960, and 800 by 600, 640 by 480). You can tweak the brightness, contrast, white balance, color tone, and exposure value. There's also a self-timer, sequence mode for up to six pictures in a row, and flash with red-eye reduction as one of the options. As we mentioned earlier, there's a second camera, which is of VGA quality and features a 2X digital zoom. The N73's camera captures video with sound in MP4 or 3GP formats with up to 4X zoom. You get a choice of two shooting modes (auto and night) and three quality settings (high, normal, and sharing). In addition, there are white balance and color tone controls.

Once you're done with your photos and videos, you can touch them up with the preloaded editors. For photos, you can add clip art or text, resize the image, reduce red eye, and more. For videos, your editing options include changing sound, trimming clips for multimedia messages, and more. You have several methods of sharing your masterpieces with others. In addition to being able to e-mail or save your images, you can use some of Nokia's Xpress Solutions to print photos, upload them to the Web, or transfer them to other devices. There's also a slideshow gallery and we really like that you can add music to play in the background. Overall, we thought the N73 took excellent snapshots for a camera phone. Colors popped from the images and lines were clearly defined. Video quality could use a bit of improvement, though, as clips were a bit washed out and grainy.

For more entertainment, the N73 comes with an integrated music player that supports MP3, AAC, WMA, m4a, and eAAC+ files. To get tracks onto your handset, you simply drag and drop files from your PC to the N73 via the included USB cable. The mobile has an equalizer and you can loop songs or play them at random. There's also an FM radio, but you must use the included stereo headset to take advantage of this feature since the tuner is built into the headset. RealPlayer is also available with 3GPP and MPEG4 video streaming support.

We tested the quad-band (GSM 850/900/1800/1900; WCDMA 2100) Nokia N73 in San Francisco using Cingular service and in general, call quality was good. On our end, callers sounded a bit hollow, but we were able to carry on with the phone call. Our friends said they could hear us loud and clear and couldn't even tell we were using a cell phone. Activating the speakerphone diminished the audio quality just slightly, as an echo plagued both ends of the conversation.

Unfortunately, as we've experienced with some other Nokia phones, the N73 suffered from sluggish performance when switching between apps or performing its multimedia capabilities. There was a noticeable lag when we called up different menus and activated the camera or music player. In fact, the phone completely froze on us one time as we tried to switch to video mode. Though the delays are relatively short, it still gets annoying and frustrating over time. Music playback was decent, although the included set of uncomfortable earbuds leave much to be desired.

The Nokia N73 is rated for 4.1 hours of talk time and up to 14.6 days of standby time. In our tests, the N73 blew the rated talk time out of the water by clocking in 9.5 hours--good news for all you chatty Cathys out there.