Roland Tanglao's Weblog

Fellow Bryght guy Steven's N73 review is brutally honest (he's Belgian but still just as blunt as the Germans)! I agree with his review, the N73 is a sweet cameraphone marred only by the less than optimal and not easy to use S60 software (which is better than the competition but could learn a thing or two from Apple's iPhone) and by the non standard ports (the POP port is cumbersome and unnecessary but to be fair to Nokia the competition features lots of proprietary connectors too)! Luckily it appears Nokia is "doing the right thing" and standardizing on USB and standard headphone ports!

From Nokia N73 Review | Steven Wittens - Acko.net:

QUOTE

After two months, the only thing I've consistently used other than voice calls and SMS is the camera, because it is really good for a phone. All the pictures on my Flickr page since December 1st were taken with the N73. I also listen to music whenever I can, but the MP3 player and proprietary headphones are too cumbersome.

The only part of the N73 that really stands out for me is the phone's form factor. I love that in spite of all its features, it's only as big as a typical phone. It's clearly designed for snapping pictures with and the screen is large and gorgeous. If the data-cable and file system didn't suck so much, I'd probably use it as a USB stick too (or better, if you could mount Bluetooth storage as local, ejectable drives).

Having used this phone, I can clearly see why traditional cellphone makers should fear Apple's iPhone. I've consistenty avoided using the phone's built-in tools like address book and calendar editing, because doing it on my Mac is orders of magnitude easier and faster. From what I've seen, the iPhone changes that. I really wish the iPhone will bring a fresh wave of usability improvements for mobile devices. But, if usability was all that mattered, we wouldn't be seeing so many Windows installs out there either...

END QUOTE

Compare this N73 shot of Trout Lake:

With this N93 shot of Trout Lake (taken moments apart):

Which do you like better?

I think the N73 shot reflects what I was trying to capture better.

It's totally objective, but from my experience the N73 takes better still photos than the N93. But of course there's no optical zoom on the N73.

What do you think?

Check out Ken's N73 versus N93 shootout (I think the N93 shot looks better in Ken's comparison) and I agree with Stefan that $200 point and shoots are better. But not for long!

Also, $200 point and shoots are NOT connected to any network, mobile, WiFi or otherwise. Which means a long chain of pain to get the photo out into the 'online global conversation' that is the Internet and far less 'documenting the moment/zeitgeist shots'. In the future all cameras will have network connectivity even $200 point and shoots.

Unlike the N93, the N73 camera app allows photos to be arbitrarily labeled instead of being hardcoded to 'Image xx'. Thank goodness Nokia didn't break this on the N73 too.

After using the N73 for a while, not having 850 MHz and EDGE support on the N93 is painful simply because the reception is bad in my house (I guess and have heard that 850 is what Rogers is putting in and the lower the frequency the better it works indoors) and ShoZu uploads over GPRS are reaaaaaalllllllly slow. I will never again buy a phone without quad band support!

As pointed by Phone Boy, the N93 lens cap strap is very nice but it's not obvious. It's on page 15 of the English language version of the N93-1 manual. I figured it out right away because I am paranoid about smudging the lens! And also very absent minded so a lens cap without a strap is useless to me.

Anyways here's a photo (taken with the N73's fantastic macro mode) that illustrates how to attach the lens cap strap:

[Cross posted from ShoZu support Forum ]

I am running Shozu 3.0 on a Nokia N73 with firmware 2.0628.0.0.3 (which I know is NOT the latest; I will upgrade next week when I have access to a Windows box). My phone is on Canada's Fido roaming to its sister network Rogers using EDGE.

After taking about 40 photos, ShoZu hangs. If I look at the tasks by holding down the "menu" key, I see 3 "medmanshozu" processes. I tried to kill these processes using the "C" key but that didn't work.

The only way I could get ShoZu to work again was to reboot the phone.

Is this problem fixed with the latest firmware which I think is Version 3.0638.0.0.1? Or is this a ShoZu or Symbian OS S60 v3 bug?

I am happy to report that the N73 is a quadband phone (as reported by Skype Journal) which supports both 850Mhz and EDGE. This means ShoZu uploads of photos are much faster (subjectively seems to be about twice as fast). Almost makes up for the absence of WiFi :P !

Still haven't finished my Nokia N91 review (unfortunately my review of the Series 60 v3 OS won't be the kindest since even with just Lifeblog and Opera Mini and the latest firmware, my N91 is still unstable after snapping about 50 pictures so it's not a ShoZu issue as I implied previously) and Andy Abramson and Brooke sent out the N93 and N73 which I received today! Wow! Mobile Christmas at Halloween. And the N93! I thought the next phones in the program were the N80 and N73! Thanks to Nokia and Communicano for continuing to allow me to review phones frankly and honestly!

One problem: the N93 only came with a 128MB card, which is not going to be enough for my videoblogging experiments with it and the N73 didn't come with a card.

The pressure is on. Need to get the N91 review finished. I think I am going to go to Future Shop and buy a card tomorrow for the N93. I'll finish my N91 review shortly. In the meantime I'll use the N73 and the N93 without a SIM.