So recently, Heather’s RAZR started acting up. Ok, not so much the phone as the battery. I was quite satisfied with my Nokia E50, so thought about looking into one of the new Black Metal edition E50s for myself, at which point I’d pass on my existing E50 to Heather. Well, the only places I could find them was at various European stores that I’d never heard of before.

So, I went off in search of a new phone for myself. Having recently had occasion to take quite a few pictures with my phone, I decided that something with a nice camera would fit the bill nicely. I wound up settling on the Nokia N73 Music Edition. Why the Music Edition? It was only a few bucks more than the standard N73, except it came in black and with a 2GB MiniSD card in the box. I was sold. The N73 Music Edition would soon be mine.

First impressions? The packaging was classic Nokia, very well done. In the box, as expected was the handset, a battery (BP-6M), charger, data cable (standard CA-53 pop-port) and a nifty clip-on remote control that has a 3.5mm headphone jack on it. Pretty much standard fare, for a phone like this.

As this is a Nokia smartphone we’re talking about here, the operating system is of course, Symbian, in this case, Series 60 3.0, based on Symbian 9.1. The rest of the specs are pretty nice as well:

• 240×320 color screen, 256k colors
• Dual mode UMTS/GSM
• WCDMA 2100 (384kbps up / down)
• GSM 850/900/1800/1900
• EDGE Class 11 (118.4kbps up / 236.8 kbps down)
• Supports video calls over UMTS
• 3.2 Megapixel camera (2048×1536, 20x digital zoom)
• Front CIF resolution video camera (352×288)
• FM Radio
• Digital Music Player (MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, WMA)
• Bluetooth 2.0+EDR

Of course, there’s loads more, but if you want to get the whole story, top to bottom, check out the N-Series website.

Unfortunately, here in the US, WCDMA doesn’t exist on the 2100 Mhz band, so speed is limited to EDGE, which while not bad, isn’t all you’d hope for.

The Good

The 3MP camera with Carl Zeiss lens and slider cover is a welcome change from the former 1.3 MP cam I was using on the E50. As an added bonus, the camera has auto-focus and a flash. It works pretty well, and is by far, the best camera I’ve ever used in a mobile phone. It’s by no means ready to replace my regular 7 MP Canon digital cam though. Also, the smartphone OS that I already know and like using – S60 3.0. I also like the built-in mail client that supports IMAP with TLS. Flickr integration with the gallery is nice as well.

The Bad

I hate the pop-port. I have no love whatsoever for the pop-port. In 2007, we have no need for proprietary data connectors. Why not a mini-usb connector? There are other Nokia phones have mini-usb connectors, and I can’t help but think it should be a requirement instead. No A2DP. A Music Edition phone equipped with BT 2.0 should support A2DP.

Another problem was the fact the Voicemail application didn’t pickup my voicemail number from my SIM card, when my other S60 3.0 devices all worked as expected.

Summary

The N73 has thus far been a great phone, and I’m very happy with it. At first I thought I should have chosen the N80 with it’s built-in wifi, but now I’m glad I picked the N73. Why? The N80 is over an inch thick, where the N73 is only 0.75 inches thick. While certainly a capable music player, it’s not about to replace my iPod. The camera is definitely what sets this phone apart.