Nokia Boosts Photo, Video For 'Storytelling' Smartphone

Nokia this week upped the ante with its new N82 smartphone, adding a powerful camera, GPS, and a multitude of connectivity options. The world's leading mobile vendor has also upped the price: $630.

The new smartphone has a 5-megapixel camera with Xenon flash and Carl Zeiss optics. In addition to ultra-fast camera activation, the unit has autofocus with a dedicated assist lamp, and captures DVD-quality video, the vendor said Tuesday.

Nokia appears to have a special user in mind for the N82 -- the adventure traveler who wants to chronicle every moment, then plot it on a map. The phone has an integrated A-GPS functionality so that images are "geo-tagged," or automatically labeled with capture location metadata. That then makes it possible to view the capture location on a map either on the Internet or on the device itself.

Users can also install Nokia's free Sports Tracker application, which lets them share their whereabouts and travel route information with other Sports Tracker Web site members.

"The Nokia N82 is made for storytelling," said Juha Kokkonen, director for Nokia Nseries devices, in a statement. "We make it easy for consumers to quickly share those moments as they happen."

The N82 supports microSD memory cards up to 8 GB. That sort of capacity is equal to 3,600 high-res pictures, 5 hours of high quality video, up to 6,000 songs or all available regions for the Nokia Maps application, the vendor said.

The smartphone also is able to connect to Wi-Fi and HSDPA networks to enable When it comes to sharing easy uploading and sharing of pictures or videos directly to services like Share on Ovi, Flickr, or YouTube.