Nokia N79 Review

Introduction:

The Nokia N79 is another featured packed device in Nokia’s N-Range branded handsets.
At a glace physically, there won’t appear to be much difference between this device to say the Nokia N78 or even the older N73. However, when you examine the N79 more thoroughly, you will notice some enhancements both in looks and personality.

The N79 that we received from Nokia came with some of the normal boxed contents that you get with the N-Range series:  A Nokia Travel Charger (AC-5),  A USB Connectivity cable (CA-101), Nokia Music Headset (HS-45, AD-54) CD with Nokia PC Suite software and the User Guide. In addition, the handset came with a 4GB microSD card (MU-41) as well as two extra Nokia N79 Xpress-on smart covers to modify the look of the N79.

Let’s take a closer look shall we?

Design:

The first thing we noticed about the N79 itself was the colour! Looking at the handset from the front, the device has a white plastic front with a chrome trimmed finish. Slightly unusual but not bad we thought; quite distinctive. Try accidentally or even purposely smudging the bodywork of this device and you’ll fail miserably, which of course is good news. The screen of course is easier to smudge, but that is what screen protectors are for!




You can compare the Nokia N79 with many other phones using our Size Visualization Tool.

The alphanumerical keypad is 100% flat which we found were very responsive when they were pressed which is what you want from a flat keypad. The directional key pad button located in the middle of the handset was not marked by a line or symbol like they are on some phones; no big deal though. However, we didn’t feel it would make playing platform games the best experience on this mobile which does by the way support the N-Gage games’ platform. The select button in the middle works well and produces a satisfying ‘click’ when you press it. It also has a light underneath, which blinks every few seconds to show that the handset is still on when it enters the power saving mode or to notify you of any incoming communication e.g. missed calls, messages etc.

The screen on the N79 displays 240x320 pixels and measures 2.4 inches; smaller than that of an N96 for example, but equivalent to the N78 or N73. We do feel in order to truly maximize the N79’s potential, the screen could have been made bigger. There is enough room to have enlarged it, so this was a negative for us. Perhaps we have been spoiled with 2.8 inches screens we have seen in the past by Nokia which are so useful, especially for internet browsing etc. The actual display itself is good. Clear enough to see in poorly lit conditions but has enough contrast to be seen under direct sun light. It’s just the size that lets it down somewhat.

The back cover has a quite impressive feature which changes theme of the phone to match the colour of the back cover that you put on the handset. This is not a big thing as most people will probably download their own theme anyway, but a small innovation I feel is worth mentioning.


All in all the handset feels quite solid in your hands but is also relatively light which we believe is important for most.

Ok, so those are the looks of the N79, so now let’s look at its personality! 

Interface & OS:

The N79 runs on Symbian’s OS 9.3, Series 60 v3.2 UI same as the Nokia N96 and N78 and in all honesty, there are not many differences. Everything is laid out in pretty familiar locations to other Nokia N-Ranged phones, especially its direct predecessor the N78.

We found the phone’s processor was pretty fast when navigating through the menus. It was also impressive in its speed when loading applications and we were able to load multiple applications and switch between them without too much trouble. Although it is not recommended to run too many applications at once, we didn’t notice any sluggish performance or the phone freezing when we did try it, which by the way was for evaluation purposes only!


You will find a task manager at the top of every sub menu. When selected, it allows you to see what applications are open and switch between them accordingly. You can also use the popular shortcut available on all Nokia Symbian devices which works by holding down the menu key until all open apps pop up, allowing you to switch between them or press ‘C’ to exit and close them completely.

The N79 has an accelerometer that sometimes seemed to have a mind of its own. Don’t get us wrong, it worked well 95% of the time once the handset was taken off its keylock and out of stand by mode. The screen would re-align when the handset was rotated 90 degrees to the left. The transition effects are pretty nice too during the screen rotation; the screen will calmly zoom out, the display will turn around to landscape mode before the screen finally zooms back in. Incidentally this is the only direction it will change the display and not for example if you rotate the handset 90 degrees to the right or turn it upside down. Sometimes however, we would notice the screen would rotate to landscape mode and then almost immediately back to the portrait position without us moving the phone. Ok, sometimes we did move the phone slightly, but even then it was not moved 45, let alone 90 degrees. This didn’t happen all the time, but did happen enough times for us to notice it.



Phonebook:

The phonebook is the same as previous models; fully functional with practically unlimited contact storage space which is saved on the internal phone memory, with familiar features like multiple field labels which you can duplicate and edit if required. You can customise ringing tones to specific names as well as video imagery. You can also assign both of these to your own groups that you can create. The general phonebook functions of Nokia handsets especially the N-Range is spot on with plentiful functions and the N79 is no exception to this notion.



Connectivity:

The Nokia N79 has a host of connectivity features that you would expect from a top ranged handset. It uses micro SD cards and worked well with our 8GB card although the supplied 4GB card should be more than adequate for most users. A2DP worked flawlessly when we used this function through our stereo Bluetooth headphones with no audio disruptions or interference. The USB port on the N79 supports 2.0 for faster data transfer albeit not the popular miniUSB connector, but now has a microUSB port. The N79 of course has Wi-Fi which supports 802.11 b/g, and has UPnP technology.

With the exception of the screen being too small, using the internet on the N79 could have been a real joy with its HTML browser. The added benefit of the accelerometer makes it more practical on the N79 as it is easy to switch between portrait and landscape mode during browsing. When you access the browser, you get the mouse pointer controlled by the D-pad which will hover over any links within that page. You can zoom in and out of pages, re-size font to get a better page fit and the speed that web pages are rendered is superb, thus making it a pleasure to navigate through them, with the option to use panning mode (press button 8 or choose it from the menu) for fast moving through large pages. Of course it depends on what method you are connected with and again the N79 has no shortage of options. Although WLAN will give you the fastest speed, the handset also supports HSDPA, UMTS (3G), EDGE and GPRS. Overall we were really impressed by the browser, the obvious exception being the size of the screen.

Camera:

When it comes to image quality, we think it would be fair to say that we have seen and used better 5-megapixel cameras on other handsets. The ease of use from the camera’s menu interface is fine. Manually slide the lens protector at the back and the N79 will automatically unlock its keypad, rotate to landscape mode and go into the camera function; no surprises here then. The button for taking shots or recording video is in its best possible position and the camera’s options can be accessed by using the directional keypad which is practical.


However, whilst the images that the camera on the N79 produces are not bad, they wouldn’t challenge say the Nokia N95 in terms of quality and light contrast. Yet again, the size of the screen becomes a hindrance here, not allowing the taken images to be displayed to their highest potential. When viewed on a computer, the image quality of the N79 is more exposed. We took pictures using its highest quality setting and did the same thing with a N95. Although they are both 5-megapixel camera handsets, the N95’s image was sharper and hence a tad better in terms of quality.



On a positive note though, the N79 does host a feature called ‘Record Location’ (Geo-tagging) which if activated, any taken picture or video will be tagged with GPS co-ordinates, providing of course the handset’s GPS can obtain a fix. We found it took around 90 seconds from when we activated the camera for the GPS to pick up our location and for best results from this function, you need to be outdoors.

Video:

The video camcorder records in MP4 format with a VGA resolution of 30 frames per second which is 15fps better than the N78. There is therefore a noticeable improvement of the video taken on the N79. It is slightly clearer and more stable in terms of movement. It is only that old Achilles heal that prevents the video being really good, (the screen size!) but we won’t harp on about that anymore. We used the video record function a few times and were pleased with the footage it recorded, with clear audio as well as images and a good length which is determined by the available space on the memory card.
               
Music:

Music on the N79 again has a familiar feel as with previous models. It plays MP3 s plus a range of audio formats, supports album art as well as plays playlists created on Nokia PC Suite or even those imported from Windows Media Player. You can also of course create your own playlists directly from the handset. The graphic equalizer has 5 default settings and there is room for you to create your own ones if none of the preset sounds are to your liking.  Function wise the music player is more than adequate and does support A2DP as previously mentioned.


The Nokia N79 features a FM radio which supports RDS feeds and also has a visual internet radio which operates over an internet connection. If using the internet radio, make sure you have an unlimited data plan or are using a Wi-Fi connection otherwise you could rack up a huge phone bill with all the data charges. We used it for roughly 30 minutes and managed to receive over 10MB of data!



One really cool feature found on the N79 is the FM transmitter function. This basically broadcasts the audio from the handset’s music player over a defined frequency, thus allowing you to listen to your phone’s music through any FM radio within radius. We tried this out a car and were very impressed with the functions’ ease of use, performance and practicality. Definitely a real plus for those who like us, enjoy playing music from the phone over a car or home stereo.

Let’s check out the video player. We loaded a bunch of test videos to see if the smart phone will be able to play them. Believe us, we were surprised by the results. None of our MP4 clips played. Neither the ones with the H.264 codec, nor these with the H.263 one, which usually works fine with even the non-pretentious phones. The DivX and Xvid videos we had prepared were rejected with the message that they are not supported (not that Nokia claims the opposite), so we were left with what we had preloaded on the phone. These videos were in 320x240 pixels resolution, with a bitrate of 371 kbps. They played flawlessly, in full screen and with great audio quality. We decided to see which format has been used by Nokia and were left really surprised once again - choosing the clip’s properties through the handset file manager showed that they were using Xvid, although it is not said to be supported. We’ve asked Nokia on this one, so expect more information soon.

Performance:

Voice and call clarity was quite good for me listening in and likewise we never had any complaints from the recipients of our calls with regards to not being able to hear us properly, even when we specifically asked for such feedback if this was applicable.

The speaker phone or loud speaker functionality was ok, but admittedly we have noticed better sounds from previous Nokia’s. It is loud and sufficient enough in a quiet environment for listening to music, taking calls or hearing the ringer. However, in a more noisy location (i.e. outside on a busy road) it could prove difficult to hear the phone, thus the potential of missing one or two calls is a fairly realistic possibility.

We found the Nokia N79’s battery life to be pretty impressive. On receipt, we charged the handset for approximately 8 hours before booting it up with a SIM card. After 3 days of average usage (not only making phone calls, but using multimedia functions like music and pictures/videos as well as using the GPS) the handset still had 2 battery bars left. This is approximately still a third of battery life which we thought was excellent. This is even more so when you take into consideration that this was the first charge the handset had received and phones usually need to go through a few charging cycles before the handset’s optimal battery performance is achieved.

We used the N79 with two different UK network carriers namely O2 and T-Mobile that both operate on different frequencies; 900 MHz and 1800 MHz respectively. This was mainly to see if there were any noticeable signal issues in various places.

We are pleased to report that this was not the case on either network and even when used in some notoriously poor areas of coverage, the N79 always showed at least the equivalent, if not better signal strength to other mobiles we had on us at the time.

Conclusion:

In conclusion the N79 is a strong ‘all round’ handset. Although not innovative in design , it does sport the ‘intelligent’ changeable back covers which changes the phone’s theme, something that is unique in its own right. In addition to this, it does have some other nice little features and capabilities described in this review. Good multimedia, a host of connectivity functions plus an excellent internet browser are all wins for the N79.

Ok, so the camera is not the best in the world, the screen size could and should have been bigger and the choice of back covers which should be in synchronisation with the front are precarious, but overall the Nokia N79’s performance is solid and reliable, with battery life to satisfy even the most demanding users.

There are definitely more pro’s than cons with this device which we can see being a popular phone for those that love the Symbian platform. Even those that are not too keen on Symbian will have to acknowledge the N79’s ability.

Nokia, overall you get our thumbs up with this one!