The Nokia N82 phone & The Canon IS S5 camera

Sigh, this is a sad post now. The goal of this post was to be a resource guide for my wife so she could go here and check out the links and info on her cool new Bday gadgets. However, both Dell & MacMall have screwed me. Dell finally shipped the Canon IS S5 Camera yesterday, but my MacMall order for the N82 is still on backorder and I’m caught up in back and forth emails between myself and MacMall’s customer service. They never told me that this product was going to be on backorder when I first placed the order. If I had known, I would have bought the phone from somewhere else.

Normally, getting a birthday gift for your wife is a bit of a big deal, but this year it was pretty easy. I had gotten her the Nokia 8801 in fall, 2006 and had wanted to replace it for her after voyaging myself into the Nokia N series in late fall 2007 with my N76. Having the internet on your mobile was the biggest thing I could see her wanting. Also, texting on the 8801 was annoying so I wanted to get her something easier to text with. Getting her an iPhone was a bit out the question since we with Tmobile. Sure we could hack it, but it would be too hard to stay on top of the hacks. Plus, her and I are both big texters and I’m not sure how any big texter would feel about the lack of a hard keyboard.

The N95 was what I had always been eyeing, but it seemed a bit bulky. Then around November, 2007, the perfect phone came out for her: The Nokia N82.

Here are some of the first pieces of info on this phone from Engadget & Engadgetmobile. In the Engadget post, you’ll see my comment here.

Integrated GPS was also something this phone carries, but I’m not sure if that’s something she’ll totally need. But maybe it will come in handy.

I sort of took advantage of a more recent post on engadget which mentioned the N82 to ask on where good places would be to buy this phone. A few kind people helped me out. Also, some people helped me out over on slickdeals also. In particular, this thread in the Help me find a deal section specifically for N82. This other thread was also interesting because the thread was about the E65, but we started discussing the full fledged browser on the phone. I’m still a bit confused on which phone this was – the E65? or another phone.

The N82 will also come in handy for something else, and I’ll get back to it after the next section.

One of the other things I was looking to get also was a new camera for my wife, but at the same time, this would be more of an “our” thing as we’re looking forward to using this on vacations. I had added a Canon Deal alert on slickdeals and started paying attention to some new threads that were popping up, mainly on SLR cameras. I had inquired on one of the SLR threads and justal recommended not to get an SLR, but perhaps a Point & Shoot with Hybrid functionality. So when the Canon IS S5 slickdeal came around over here, I asked around a bit and finally purchased. The Canon IS S5 thread I just linked to has some nice questions and answers on the camera, but also, this thread has some real nice info on lenses and photography in general (especially interesting is this short discussion on HDR that starts with this post check out the beautiful Chicago shots). Also, this is another Canon thread which talks about a hidden menu to mess with some options.

So there was a post I saw in the Canon S5 thread I mentioned above where a guy said he was looking to own the S5 and an SD870 which is a dedicated P&S (there’s another more elaborate thread on the SD870 here if anyone’s interested). I thought for a bit on maybe getting this camera too for my wife to be her dedicated P&S camera. But, a) her Bday gifts would really start to get pricey for all 3 of these high end gadgets and b)… I noticed something else on the Nokia N82. Apparently, it has an amazing camera. So much so that in this thread over here, a user asks about getting rid of his N82 and EVERYONE tells him not to strictly on his camera alone. I asked in that thread if the camera’s so good that I could forget about getting a secondary P&S to go with the Hybrid S5 I purchased, but am still waiting on a response.

So, to my wife, I’m sorry your gifts aren’t here on your birthday. I meant well, placing my orders on April 11th. But, unfortunately, they are taking longer than expected. And to any other S5 or N82 owner who stumbles upon this thread, please take the time to place a comment here.

Here’s some additional info I thought I would post:
1) Here is some handy info from a slickdeals’ thread on rechargeable batteries (thanks nutz4utwo).
2) And this is a good site for info on digital photography (someone sent that info to me on slickdeals via private message)