The phone Previously available in white and silver, Nokia has released a sleek, black Internet Edition of the N73. This 3G smartphone works on quad-band GSM and dual-band WCDMA.
It has Bluetooth 2.0 and a slot for miniSD storage cards. While it packs an amazing number of features, the phone is pocket friendly at just 110mm x 49mm x 49mm and weighing 116 grams. The Symbian Series 60 operating system is robust and stable, although it does not have as many third-party applications as other phone operating systems. As with other recent Nokia smartphones, the PC Suite software is a breeze to install and synchronisation with Microsoft Outlook is fast and efficient.
First and foremost a phone should be a phone - and the N73 is an excellent phone. In my house, I'm lucky if the signal registers one bar on my Dopod 838Pro. With the Nokia N73, I seemed to have full coverage everywhere.
Despite its name, the phone's internet capabilities seem the same as Nokia's other Symbian-based phones.
The camera: One of the strongest features of the Nokia N73 is its 3.2-megapixel camera, featuring a Carl Zeiss optical lens, autofocus and a light-emitting diode flash. Slide the rear cover open and the camera is ready for still or video photography with a wide variety of options and settings, including multiple scene modes. The phone contains basic software for still and video editing and the package includes a starter edition of Adobe Photoshop Album and Ulead Video Toolbox. Videos are captured at 352x288, 15-frames per second resolution in MPEG4. It took several minutes, however, for the phone to save a 25-second video to the memory card. A great camera phone needs a great screen and the N73's 2.4-inch Quarter Video Graphics Array 262k colour screen is up to the task.
The autofocus feature means the camera takes half a second to focus before capturing an image. This is not suited to action shots, but for snapshots of friends and scenery it produces reasonable pictures.