Nokia N80

So this is what the Europeans have been keeping from us. The Nokia N80 ($799 list) is the ultimate bleeding edge convergence phone and the first 3 mega pixels camera phone in the U.S., packed with connectivity and multimedia features.

At 3.7 by 2 by 0.9 inches and 5.2 ounces, the N80 is a boxy, businesslike slider phone that feels solid in the hand. The 352 by 416 screen is just bright enough and shockingly high resolution, so photos and text look beautiful. A tiny VGA self portrait camera sits above the screen.

Below the screen, there's a bunch of confusingly labeled buttons that turn out to be pick up, hang up, menu, clear, two soft keys, and a quick application access button. The camera button is on the side, encouraging you to turn the phone 90 degrees to use the 3MP camera on the back. Dedicated music playback and volume buttons are, sadly, absent. Slide the screen up to reveal a keypad of tightly packed, rectangular black keys.

The N80 has excellent reception and good sound quality through the ear piece and speaker phone. Calls that I made from a noisy street came through clearly, and the speaker phone is loud enough for most situations. Speaker independent voice dialing lacks digit dialing, but it generally works with names in your contact book, and it works over Bluetooth.

Battery life, at a little more than 5 an a half hours of talk time, is short for a GSM phone, and it drops further with extensive Wi-Fi use. Still, the N80's battery life is comparable with that of some CDMA phones on Sprint and Verizon. The phone is ideal for world travelers, with quint band roaming the usual four global bands and the 2,100 MHz band used for high speed data in Europe and Asia.

Connectivity is a big strength here get EDGE, stereo Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi. EDGE speeds were a bit poky, at around 80 Kbps, when the phone was hooked up to a laptop as a modem. Wi-Fi zipped along at up to 925 Kbps using the built in Web browser.

Connected the phone up to several Plantronics headsets, a PC, and a Mac via Bluetooth. file transfers, PC modem use, and syncing with Microsoft Outlook via Nokia's PC Suite all worked fine. I couldn't get the N80 to sync with the Mac, though file transfers worked.