Nokia N79 vs N82

I recently got my hands on an N79. Before buying, I already had a preconception of what to expect based on the reviews and specifications I gathered in the Internet. S there were many more changes than what I had mapped in my mind. It was a more or less a nice surprise.

N79 has almost all features that are there in N82. In short, what I had in mind was the following equation:

N79 = N82 - Xenon Flash + FM Transmitter.

While that is more or less true, I found that there is a lot more in there about it.

N79 Pros

1. FM Transmitter - It can be accessed and turned on from the menu of the music player on the phone. It can then transmit the song to the frequency you want instead of playing in the phone. It also works with GPS - if you're listening to a song over FM and using GPS navigation, the instructions will be audible over the song. Although there were some hiccups with one of the beta version of the Maps, it now appears to be fixed.
   
2. Comes bundled with many commercially licensed applications - SMS Timer is a special mention. It pops up a message whenever you click the send button after composing SMS, which lets you send it immediately or choose a future date and time when it will be sent. Also worth mentioning are the Oxford English Dictionary, Indic SMS and Wavesecure apps.
3. The Radio now has Internet Radio built into it - a feature can be added to N82 free of cost from Nokia site.
   
4. Can read out SMS - an ability added to the Feature Pack 2. This facility cannot be added to N82 through additional software as of now.
5. Has better 'GPS Data' - where instead of seeing bars for each satellite you see all of the simultaneously, and even where they are positioned relative to you
   
6. Has two led flash lamps - while not as bright as the Xenon, they have specific advantage because Xenon flash cannot be kept permanently on. For example, you can now keep them on while videos, or use a third party software (eg. Brightlight) to use them as flashlight
7. Camera now has record location feature for videos as well.
8. [Need to check if side scrolling is allowed in the RSS reader now]
   
9. Naviwheel - You can now move your finger around the d-pad to navigate menus - iPod style
10. FP2 adds effects to the menu which are pleasing to the eye - eg. menu interactions and auto rotate features are now animated
11. Has stronger battery - 1200mAH verses 1050mAH of N82
    
12. Comes with 4GB card while N82 comes with 2GB card

N79 Cons

1. In N82, you could zoom in and out a picture by using the 5 and 0 keys. So far I could not find any keys for doing the same in N79 in the gallery. However it is there when you Edit the picture, but it is definitely inconvenient to first go to edit menu and then use the zoom keys. If there is no workaround, this is probably the most annoying omission in N79. Update: You can use the Volume Up/Down buttons to zoom out/in a picture in the gallery.
2. Absence of Xenon flash - Disadvantages are you don't get as bright flash as Xenon, and you cannot take high speed pictures anymore (Xenon lamp burst lasts for about 1 millisecond allowing you to take still picture of high speed objects in the dark). However this disadvantages are partially (or totally depending on your judgment) balanced by the advantages of a LED lamp discussed on the previous section. (If you want more reasons why the LED flash is better, you can read the article here.)
3. Internal storage and RAM - N82: 100mb storage, 128mb ram, N79: 50mb storage, 72mb ram. What that means is you are more likely to see the 'out of memory' message when you are running too many apps simultaneously - though 72mb should be more than enough. However only 50mb storage means you have to be choosy while installing applications to the phone memory. Unfortunately this might be a problem, many Nokia applications (eg. Ovi Maps 3 with 5mb footprint) do not give you the option and by default install on the phone memory. However, with 50mb you should still have enough storage to load these apps, especially if you remove the useless ones that come with the phone - eg. all the N-Gage demo games which take up a lot of space.
4. N79 does not have inbuilt 3D Accelerator - all the 3D games you play will have to be rendered directly by the CPU through software and hence are likely to suffer in performance. Also N79 has a single processor (albeit little faster clockspeed of 369MHz) while N82 has two processors (of 332MHz each). So the N82 will be better at multi-tasking, whereas the N79 will outperform N82 while running a single app with high demands on the CPU.
   
5. Does not have Barcode reader, though it can be installed separately free of cost.