Convergence

On paper Nokia's N73 looks certainly looks the goods. The headline specification has to be its pairing of Carl Zeiss optics with a 3.2 megapixel imager (2048 x 1536 pixels), but there are other attractive photographic options rolled into the package such as the 15 fps video capture mode and the built-in flash. The phone is equipped with a miniSD card slot and, wonder of wonders, there was a usefully capacious 128MB card packaged with the test unit.

While not a strategy unique to Nokia, I nonetheless liked the way the N73's camera mode is activated simply by sliding back the protective lens cover. The shutter button is positioned so that it rests more or less under a right-handed person's forefinger. Lefties can flip the phone around so that the button is comfortably activated with one's left thumb. Shutter lag performance is not terrific it has to be said. The best I could manage was about 0.6 of a second between pressing the shutter and capturing an image. That's a long lead time for candid situations and oddly enough is roughly twice as long as my older, lower resolution Nokia 7610. Flash output is acceptable for a phonecam, but you'll find that subjects more than about 2 metres away are largely unaffected. The N73's 240 x 320 pixel display is impressively bright and clean, but like most LCDs, it's still a challenge to use when lighting conditions are bright.

While the shutter lag performance was not as quick as my old 1-megapixel 7610, the N73 was streets ahead when it came to image quality. The engineers have built in a fair amount of JPEG compression, but the tonal values are noticeably smoother and very much more finely graded than images from the 7610. It is also possible to adjust white balance, to change sensitivity, to shoot sequences, and to select different scene modes.

As part of the image assessment process, I photographed the same scene with four different devices: the N73, my 7610, a 7-megapixel Olympus 725SW and a Nikon D70. The image quality ranking breaks down exactly as you'd expect, but what I found interesting was how well the N73 scrubbed up when compared to the Olympus. Yes, the latter was clearly superior to the former, but the difference between the two was not as great as the difference between the 7610 and the N73. If you're sending someone a snapshot via email or printing out at standard machine print size, my guess is that most people would regard the quality as comfortably within what might be termed acceptable snapshot parameters.

As a video device, the N73 won't be making camcorder manufacturers nervous, but it equally has to be said that the quality of the 15 fps 352 x 288 MPEG 4 video clips was surprisingly good. A 10-second clip consumes roughly 1MB of memory, so it would be reasonably practical to use this facility to capture short illustrative clips for such purposes as web display and emailing. I've no doubt that any number of clips on YouTube will be shot with N73s in coming months.

Along with its photographic modalities, the N73 also offers users an FM radio, an MP3/WMA/AAC compatible music player, a clever web browser (that shrinks pages down so that you can more easily navigate them on the small display), video call capability, email support and a fairly basic Personal Information Management suite. The connectivity options include a USB 2.0 cable, Bluetooth and IrDA (but no wifi, sadly).

Dimensions: Weight: 116g; Height: 110mm; Width: 49mm; Thickness (max): 19mm
Image Sensor: CMOS, 3.2 megapixel with autofocus and digital zoom up to 20x; Carl Zeiss Optics, Tessar™ lens; Focal length 5.6 mm; Focus range from 10cm; Macro mode; Mechanical shutter with 1/1000~2s shutter speed
Flash: Integrated - up to 1m range
Scene modes: automatic, user defined, close-up, portrait, landscape, sport and night
White balance: automatic, daylight, cloudy, tungsten, fluorescent
Color tone: normal, sepia, B&W, vivid, negative
Light sensitivity: high, medium, low, automatic
Settings: brightness adjustment, image quality, self-timer, white balance and color tones
Display: 2.4 inch QVGA (240 x 320 pixels) TFT color display with up to 262,144 colors; On device photo editor and video editor (manual & automatic); Ambient light detector.
Operating frequency: Dualmode WCDMA/GSM and quadband GSM coverage on up to five continents (WCDMA2100/EGSM850/900/1800/1900 networks); Automatic switching between bands and modes
Memory: Up to 42MB internal dynamic memory; Support for miniSD memory card
Video: (MPEG4 CIF @ 15fps AAC audio) up to 175 min
Music: (eAAC+) up to 1092 tracks