I have been using the Nokia N73 for a while now, way before it got to the stores, courtesy of Nokia. And I can tell you, I love this phone. I really do. Three things blow my mind.
1. The gorgeous screen.
2. The camera
3. The size
First of all, let's get the specs out of the way. The 3G phone is dual mode, triband. I used it in our US trip, no problems. Except when LA had that power failure which knocked out mobile phone base stations, but that one is not the N73's problem.
Internal memory is about 42mb, which is good, because it lets you use the apps more. My N70 had way less memory and I believe this slowed it down somewhat. The improved Symbian software and larger memory on the N73 really made the phone snappier and less prone to crashes.
The N73 uses mini-SD, and I was using a 2gb card I bought, which is huge. I loaded it up with video clips, a few music albums, and still had space for a ton of photos taken at full resolution. The card is hot-swappable, which means you don't have to open up the whole battery compartment to get to it. Just slide it out from the botton bay, and you can take it out to copy files or hand it to the photo lab. My only gripe is that the memory bay area below is a bit of a pain to open.
The camera is 3.2 megapixel with Carl Zeiss optics, easily the best mobile phone camera I have ever used. It got to the point where I stopped using the Canon A75 I brought along to the US, and just snapped with the N73. With auto-focus and a decent flash (also love the macro function, I took a lot of toy photos with it).
The screen is a bright 2.4 inch QVGA (240 x 320 pixels) TFT color display. This is a lot more screen real estate than previous or even some of the current N series phones. For a person like me, who surfs the web and reads email on his phone all day, the larger screen means sharper fonts (even at small sizes) and less scrolling around.
Since I am talking about surfing, the new web browser on this phone is a joy to use. Based on Safari, I am told, you can save RSS feeds, browse your history visually, and scroll around large web pages with a thumbnail view. Very handy.
The N73 comes with a Flickr uploading app you can use to send stuff to your Flickr account. Once you configure your phone and Flickr at the Flickr Nokia page, you can send direct to Flickr from your N73 Gallery page.
Personally, I email photos from the Email app in the N73, because I send via Flickr to blog and because old habits die hard, but the Flickr app they provide is good for sending to Flickr alone.
Another part of the phone I recently discovered is the music. I loaded up my mini-SD card with some of my latest music, and just this morning, I decided to try on the headphones provided while having breakfast, because I left my iPod in the car. The FM radio worked beautifully, and the sound quality from the mp3s was excellent.
Now if I can get a good pair of Bluetooth headphones, the N73 will be my phone, camera and music player all rolled into one.
I am told there is a Bluetooth keyboard from Nokia that will work with this puppy. Hmm, that would be great for emails and blogging. Must try that out soon.
