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TIPA (Technical Image Press Association) recently honored Nokia's N82 smartphone with the 'Best Mobile Imaging Device in Europe 2008' award. Composed of 31 member magazines from twelve countries, TIPA is the largest organization of its type in Europe.

"The Nokia N82 is a compact multimedia computer that integrates GPS, web, video and music functions around a 5 megapixel camera with a high-speed, f/2.8 auto-focus lens," noted the TIPA jurors. "This Carl Zeiss Tessar focuses from 10cm to infinity and produces sharp prints up to and beyond A4 size."

"Several scene modes are also available to optimize the Nokia N82 for great images, whether shooting portraits or night shots," the TIPA jurors added. Additional N82 features highlighted by the jurors included the N82's Xenon flash and 20X digital zoom.

Taking advantage of its integrated A-GPS functionality and high resolution camera, the Nokia N82 automatically geotags images with capture location metadata, making it possible to view the capture location on a map either on the Internet or on the device itself.

Its microSD slot supports storage cards up to 8GB in capacity.

It Can Read Too
This year, a company K-NFB Reading Technology found something useful for the N82's camera to do besides taking pictures and video. It developed an application, in partnership with National Federation of the Blind and Kurzweil Technologies, that allows a smartphone to read text out loud.

Targeted at anyone who has difficulty seeing or reading print, including the blind and learning disabled, the software, called Mobile Reader, when paired with a N82 creates - in the words of K-NFB - "the smallest text-to-speech reading device in history."

With the press of a button, the combined solution, called knfbReader Mobile, reads (in a synthetic voice) most printed materials back to the user as it displays the words on the N82's screen. This allows blind users to hear the contents of a document, while those who can see the screen and with learning disabilities to enlarge, read, track, and highlight printed materials using the phone's display.

The system worked flawlessly during a demonstration we received at CTIA earlier this month.

The combination Reader and cell phone weighs 4.2 ounces and can store thousands of printed pages on a memory card. Users can also transfer files to computers or Braille notetakers. While this text-to-speech solution fits comfortably in the pocket and hand, it's interesting to note the first such device was approximately the size of washing machine.