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stars
"Crashes all the time" on by ricko2112
Pros: Fantastic Screen, great functionality
Cons: Unstable, locks up, frequent crashes
Summary: I see lots of review on CNet for this phone saying "wow it looks great I must get one" and rating it 9/10. Well what a waste of time! Don't rate the phone by the pictures and specs, rate it when you've used it! I have actually owned this phone - for 3 days then I sent it back.
The phone looks fantastic, nice to hold, keypad is great and I loved the slide. The apps are what I would expect for a S60 platform phone, they're excellent and navigation is a breeze.
But beware the following: transferring data from my old Nokia 6600 did not transfer my large number of stored text messages. Transferring old text messages is near to impossible and involves copying messages from your old phone onto a PC, then copying to the memory card in the N80. I gave up in the end. However contacts, gallery items and calendar transferred perfectly using the built-in transfer function.
Next up: Tom Tom Mobile (GPS navigation software) does not yet run on this phone (expected end of June 2006 I understand). So my "killer app" wasn't going to be available. I'll have to keep the 6600 for GPS navigation for now. Oh well, worse things happen.
Web browsing on the N80 is simply fantasic: the screen is excellent, navigation is a snap and the browser renders real web pages beautifully.
Similarly, the camera and associated functionality was also the best I have seen.
Now the bad stuff: the built-in themes were in my opinion rubbish, rendering the display hard to read as they are too "busy". Once the back-light is off, the screen is impossible to read anyway, but the built-in themes made matters even worse. Well, I suppose I could have downloaded a replacement theme so that may not worry you.
BUT the final issue is by far and away the most important: the sofware is unstable causing the phone to lock up frequently, so much so that the battery has to be removed to get it to "reboot". Sometimes the phone simply refused to restart, unless the memory card and/or SIM are completely removed. Sometimes the memory card was not recognised by the phone, even after reformatting. With several lock ups PER HOUR the phone is useless as a business tool or even just a phone!
As such I decided to send it back. I didn't get chance to play with the music player, photo editing, video recorder or any of the other cool stuff. But cool stuff is no use if the phone won't stay alive for long enough to use it.
I'm very sad as I was hoping for a newer, faster, better version of my 6600. The N80 delivers on paper but not in practice. Rated 2/10. I think I'll be switching to Samsung now as friends of mine with other N-Series (e.g. N70) have fared little better so I don't see Nokia as a viable phone for me anymore. A very sad day after many years with Nokia.
- 12 replies to this review
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This is by far the most accurate review I've read for the Nokia N80.<br><br>I've found that the phone is very unstable. Very slow to load apps, needs to be rebooted about once a month by removing the battery. The mini SD card is randomly unrecognised for no apparant reason. <br><br>This phone has some great features, and I adore it's plug n play abilities, especially in terms of linking it with my Tungsten E2 palm pilot. I do wish I had a more reliable phone, however it is pretty much customisable with themes and ringtones etc. Hooks easily into the net and a number of other things, functions well overall but again, very unreliable and if given the choice I would replace it in a heartbeat with my old Motorola V3 Razr.<br><br>Seems like a good upgrade at the time, but now I miss the reliability and quality of the Motorola, even with it's shockingly bad camera etc. The N80 also has shocking battery life, not good for a mobile these days!
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I was disappointed to read your review of the N80. Oh well, the search continues. I'm looking to upgrade to a smart phone and got real interested in that one. What got me started looking was the Blackjack. I really didn't want to leave Nokia but I see you felt the same way. You mentioned you were going to Samsung was it the Blackjack you're refering too? I've know had the 6230 for a little over two years and am overall pleased with it just want more features now. The only thing I wish about the Blackjack is for it to have wi fi and maybe push to talk for Cingular. Thanks for the review
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I was disappointed to read your review of the N80. Oh well, the search continues. I'm looking to upgrade to a smart phone and got real interested in that one. What got me started looking was the Blackjack. I really didn't want to leave Nokia but I see you felt the same way. You mentioned you were going to Samsung was it the Blackjack you're refering too? I've know had the 6230 for a little over two years and am overall pleased with it just want more features now. The only thing I wish about the Blackjack is for it to have wi fi and maybe push to talk for Cingular. Thanks for the review
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This phone is great multimedia-wise.It has the best video-capturing capabilities ever and the highest video resolution for a camera phone.My phone started crashing and freezing and hanging up after just three weeks.I sent it back to the technicians and they returned it after a week and it started acting up again a few days later.<br>If u want a phone with a 3MP camera I would advise you to go for Sony Ericsson K800i...I have been using SE for ages and never had problems with it...not even once...and I mean not even once.I was getting tired of their nice phones looking similar all the time so I migrated to Nokia...what a bad decision I made.<br>My friend has a Samsung SGH-D900 and it's pretty good....I don't know if it's available in the US but in Europe we have everything.
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I am totally agreed to what ricko2112 has said. My Nokia N80 froze up all of the times and get very annoying. I am about to put this N80 of mine on ebay for a bid and get myself a samsung smart phone.
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BEYOND THE PHONE ISSUE, YOU MAKE POSITIVE COMMENTS SIGNIFICANTLY MORE THAN 20% OVERALL, MEANING YOUR RATING IS BASED ON EMOTION NOT NEUTRALITY OF HARDWARE. THE PHONE AND GENERAL FEATURES ARE QUITE AVERAGE TO REASONABLY GOOD. PERHAPS TRY ANOTHER UNIT FOR USING FOR 3 DAYS AND RETURNING IT FOR WHAT SEEMS LIKE OTHER REASONS THAN JUST THE PHONE. MAYBE THE PRICE?
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It's style over even the most basic of substance. Do yourself and your wallet a big favour and give this one a miss.<br><br>...And have you noticed how Google Cache lists posted criticism on the Nokia Forums that are then not to be found in their little realm of PR censorship. <br><br>There is nothing simple or easy about this phone. Operating it is frustrating at best and frequently leaves me swearing to myself that I will never be one of the first to buy a product without user reviews and will never again buy a Nokia mobile.<br><br>I know the operating system is in it's infancy, but that's no excuse for such instability when we're expected to pay large amounts of money for a device we're assured has been tested by Producer and Network Provider. It makes you wonder what the criteria of the tests were, other than do the specs read well and will people buy it. Even the firmware patch issued shortly after it's release has failed to turn it into something I can rely on. Even this took two weeks to have it installed by Nokia without my own attempts to do so voiding my guarantee and while it was on a prolonged holiday I missed my contract return deadline for my network. So I'm stuck with it now.<br><br>I've had it since it's UK release and in that time I've been using my old SE P910 as much as this new thing. Sure it looks great, reads like a promising little device and when you sum the whole thing up in your head it seems like a must have device, but my problems started on day one. On day seven my network provider replaced it with another to see if that made a difference and by day 14 I'd all but given up with it. The problems are quite frankly too numerous to mention, though I see many have gone into detail on some of these on here already. I do expect a lot from the device, but nothing it doesn't claim it can do. <br><br>Put it this way, it's been sitting unused on my desk all morning until I tried to send an image (size: 53kb) from it to my machine. First it failed to connect, then it ran out of memory (so much so in fact it couldn't even open the task manager), then it locked up… then I wanted to beat it against the wall.<br><br>Most scary of all is that when I send an sms the application crashes once finished rather than closing. With each new week something new adds to the list of woes this thing has created. <br><br>It is the last Nokia product I'll ever be tempted by. I feel stung, really stung.
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I was gonna suggest you update your firmware but it seems the phone itself has a lot of issue. I wouldnt give up on it yet. Not all phones are as bad.
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I have owned 2 of the Nokia N-Series phones and have found them to meet up to standards completely. I have had about 9 Nokia phones, 1 panasonic, one NEC and one Motorola. By far I would never stray from Nokia again. I really think you should have gone back to the store for an exchange before you jumped right in and abused this model as I think you would find either that particular phone had an issue, or you were trying to modify something that neednt be modified. And as for rating a phone on its included themes?!?!? Is that all you have???<br>Anyways this phone is by far the best of the N-Series so far and after playing around for numerous hours on friends N80's I am looking forward to receiving mine this week.
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I think this is an unreliable source....it seems to me that the only reason it crashes is because he was trying to modify the phone to his complex needs. I had the phone for about a week, as i just received it last weekend, and it came with everything that was promised, and it did not crash on me...and it worked perfectly smooth...except for a slight 10 second delay when switching throught QuickOffice apps..but all in all its a good phone...and very simple to use..
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ur a nokia hater, youre one of those motorola fanboys who are blind to nokias superpiority
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I got this phone in my hands back in January 2oo6. Main reason your handset was crashing is, whoever sold you the phone duped you for a test model. If you open the back where the battery is, you will notice right under the IMEI there should be an IC code that reads the original firmware release version last, but first the software serial, there should be either an A or an E, can't remember. If you have this, then you have been duped for a cheaper(whoever got this handset, got it for a fraction or the retail price) and less functional test model. The lockups are due to an invalid dump in 00E5x01 bin, located in your ram, and a few other places primarily the system folder.<br><br>Trust me, I have worked for the proudly Finnish Nokia Corp. 3 years now. My first test handset was the 6600 which I still have today, yet after falling several dozen times, more than a few times down a long stairway, it's GUI has rendered retardedly[?] impaired, however I could still navigate and work with the phone blindly, so in theory it still works.<br><br>NOKIA is the best mobile/cell phone manufacturer in the world today, and it's software/hardware has always shown it's light to burn brighter, and longer than any competition.<br><br>So ricko2112, go and buy a consumer ready N80, you will notice there are no lockups there. Your 2/10 rating is completely underrated and you might think twice about switching to Samsung... I have my grudges with Samsung over several models (incompatibility, after few falls loose parts, battery overheating on long calls[I've had a battery leak]).<br><br>that's that
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