The Nokia N73 is a simply attractive 3G mobile phone which is a member of the N series. The handset is a bar style design & offers the user a simple & fully equipped 3G imaging & music orientated mobile phone. The handset comes in a choice of four attractive colours which compliment the phones design & include silver grey, deep plum, frost white & metallic red. The joystick in Nokia N73 is difficult to operate, being practically embedded into the casing. Never-the-less the N73 is a fast tool for email and SMS communications. The left side of the phone has the infrared window, with the holes for a carrying strap being located at the bottom. The slot for miniSD memory cards is located at the lower rim covered with a protective flap. One of the remarkable features in N73 is the presence of two speakers, providing a stereo experience. These two speakers are located at the top and bottom of the phone respectively, may be owing to space constraints. Nokia N73 features 3D ringing tone effect, and can apply various audio trajectories and reverberations.

The N73 is a lot thinner than the N70 and weighs less as well, making it one of the lightest smartphones. It has a conventional boxy design with a regular keypad very similar to the N70. The keys are a little too small for large fingers to use easily and the joystick can be fiddly too.

The display is very large with an amazing 240 x 320 pixel resolution and 262,000 colours. Its one of the best displays on any smart phone.

TFT, 262,144 colours, 240 x 320 pixels

Nokia N73 has a camera that just happens to have a smart phone attached. If great photos aren't your thing, Nokia offers a wide variety of Symbian OS S60 phones with lesser cameras and other strong points such as the Nokia E61's QWERTY keyboard and the Nokia N91's 4 gig hard drive for MP3s aplenty. If quality photos are important, the N73 and its bulkier sibling the N93 (which lacks the 850MHz band used by Cingular in the US) are Nokia's top offerings. The Nokia N80 has a 3MP camera that's quite good (once you adjust to the shutter lag), and you'd likely be pretty impressed if you saw the photos it takes. That is, until you see the N73's photos. The N73 has a 3.2 megapixel camera and adds a Carl Zeiss autofocus lens which makes for sharper photos. 

Capacity Standard battery, Li-Ion 1100 mAh (BP-6M ) StandBy Time Up to 350 hours Talk Time Up to 6 hours

This being an Nseries device, there's Media Player 10 integration and WMA file support, along with stereo audio output. Music quality didn't seem as crisp as on other Nseries devices though, despite me fiddling with the built-in 'Equaliser' and the maximum volume of playback was only just sufficient in a quiet office - I sincerely doubt that the N73 could currently power music playback in a noisy environment such as a train station or on a bus. Visual Radio is also here, though why they persist with this rather than simply calling it 'Radio', I really don't know.
 
For playing video, the phone uses RealPlayer. but RealPlayer is a horrible choice as it doesn't play any of the most popular video formats, like DivX or QuickTime.

The internal memory is 42 Mbytes and there's support for a hot-swapable miniSD card. This will provide bags of room for storing music tracks and videos, making full use of the possibility to record videos of up to 90 minutes in length.

UMTS / GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900

N73 included Snakes game, which is in full 3D and features whacky snake action on square and hexagonal grids, even on curved surfaces. It's fun and easy to pick up. Bonus points for the automatic check pointing of your progress in the game.

There are also a number of applications pre-installed by Nokia, such as the QuickOffice, Adobe Reader and various media players. Add to that an IM application, a 3D sound tool (fun for a few minutes, and would probably impress at parties), an anti-virus, a radio, the list goes on.