Alright so here's my review of my new N79. First of all, thanks for all the digit forum users who helped me out make the decision in buying a phone. I got this phone for 19.8K inclusive of all taxes. The N85 and N79 were launched recently and were said to be the replacements for the the N95 and N73 respectively. Here's my view on N79.....
<USED FEW PICS FROM GSMARENA SINCE I CUDNT TAKE ALL THE PICS MYSELF>
The bundled accessories were :
->Handsfree + earphones
->Charger
->Micro USB Data Cable
->2 extra Xpress-ON Smart covers other than the one already attached (I got brown, white and red)
->Nokia Ovi Suite Disc
->TV Out Cable
The specifications of the phone are as follows ::
Dimensions: 110 x 49 x 15 mm
Weight: 97 gms
2.4" 16M-color LCD TFT display of resolution 240x320 pixels
5 megapixel autofocus camera with dual-LED flash
VGA video recording at 30fps
Symbian OS 9.3 with S60 3.2 UI
ARM 11 369 MHz CPU 3G with HSDPA support
Quad-band GSM support
Wi-Fi with UPnP technology
Built-in GPS with A-GPS functionality and 3 months of free voice-guided navigation
4GB micro SD memory card included
Built-in accelerometer for UI auto-rotation
3.5 mm audio jack
TV out (cable provided)
Stereo FM Radio with RDS FM transmitter
Stereo speakers
Navi wheel navigation
USB and Bluetooth v2.0
One free N-gage game
Keylock switch
The N79 is a standard candybar phone. Its decent on looks and packs great features. Its quite light when compared to other phones and easy to carry around. The TFT screen looks great but not good visibility under sunlight, which is the case with many phones. It has a great keypad which is very soft and a blessing for people who love to text. This is a welcome feature over the N82 I feel. the new FP2 abd the new OS have made it quite fast. The interface still remains more or less the same. Due to the new FP2,the battery life is greatly improved. The N79 is powered by a standard Li Ion 1200 mAh battery, the BL-6F which does a nice job of powering it and provides nice battery life.On a heavy usage routine (Music+Games+Camer+video Recording) , it lasted for a day. On casual use, 2-3 days. The GPS reception is alo quite nice and voice based navigation works very well. It sports all the basic connectivity features like GPRS, EDGE, 3G, Wi-Fi etc.This is a great advantage. The basic layout can be changed to any of the 4 different views :Grid, V Shaped, Horseshoe or list. This makes the main view MUCH more sexy looking like the SE phones instead of the old S60 phones which never gave a sense of style. The new themes also have transition effects and such, making it look and feel great like a more style oriented than proffessional phone (read 'Haze' theme ). Also, there is a breathing feature in the phone. When the phone goes on standby the centre of the Navi Wheel glows lightly and then dims down. This repeats regularly and looks nice. Nokia calls it the navi Wheel breathing
, and it does resemble that.
The swappable Xpress-On smart covers are fun to use and everytime you change the cover, the theme of your phone changes accordingly to match your cover. You can disable this if you want a standard theme. must say this is an added advantage since you can purchase new covers and keep your phone's look fresh. The phone works pretty fast too thanks to the ample amount of RAM available. The accelrometer changes the orientation of the display according to how your holding it. This is fun to use when you want to change the video you're playing from potrait to landscape or to view pics in different orientations. This is the first time I have used the Navi Wheel and it was fun. Its like adding the scroll button in the mouse
. You can scroll through applications or fast forward through videos using it or flip through pictures.
The music quality is good but if you couple the phone with a good set of earphones like EP630, it can give amazing sound. It may not match up to the best SE music phones around like W902 but for an average music freak like me, it is gr8.The music player can also be minimized to play in background. In this case a tab appears on the stand-by screen indicating the currently running track. The 3.5mm jack is great in this regard since you don't need a converter like old nokia phones which have a different port. That port is not existent on this phone since even the data connection to a PC is done via a micro-usb port whihc gives MUCH faster speeds than earlier models. You can connect the phone without any software for data transfers. Nokia Ovi Suite 1.0 is provided with the phone whihc is an application like the PC Suite with lot of features like Music Manager, backup maker, Multimedia Manaer , Synchroniser etc. The FM transmiter works good too.
The video playback is also very nice. It supports all the standard formats and you can also use 3rd party players like Real, Core or Smartmovie . The Ovi Suite can be used to directly convert videos that you want from the PC to the required format and quality and transfer to the phone. All you need to do is drag and drop.The 4GB provided gives ample space for all your videos and movies.
Now coming to the camera, The N79 sports a 5 MP camera which can shoot images at a maximum resolution of 2592 x 1944 pixels. It comes with autofocus and a dual LED flash and the image quality is quite decent. It is one of the average 5 MP cameras, but not as good as the Nokia N82. It offers extensive settings - from manual white balance and ISO to exposure compensation, sharpness and contrast settings. Various effects are also at hand, labeled color tones.The photos for an average user will seem great though. The camera also has a sliding cap which can be used to protect the Carl Zeiss lens when its not in use.If you are an enthusiast for taking pics, you can get N82 in the same price range which features a Xenon flash for taking good pics at night too.The video recorded was of 30fps and really good. I took around 5 videos in different light conditions. Those taken in well light and daylight conditions were great, but at night time outdoors, the videos (also the photos) were a bit grainy owing to the not so powerful flash. But as I said before, if you just want to take decent pics and take some good videos for your personal use, this phone will definately do the job.It also has geotagging which allows you to link your images with geographical coordinates although Ive never used it.
Here are a few pics I took using the phone:
There is a keylock switch available which is handy to lock the keypad instantly.Nokia N79's right side hosts the stereo speakers, the volume rocker and the dedicated camera key. Both controls are reasonably large and comfortable enough to use - no complaints here. Also, I observed that the layout of the buttons make it quite spacious and not cluttered . It feels neet due to small factors like having a single port for TV Out and audio jack, having the micro USB and memory card slot under the same cap which saves space.
A new version of the useful "Search" application is also aboard Nokia N79. It has a reserved line in the active standby menu, which is hardly a surprise given how useful it is. The application itself finds almost every item in your handset containing a given keyword. From messages to settings, every bit of data is checked and then all results are displayed on the screen. Its like Google Desktop searchbut for you phone. Just GREAT !!
I have not tried the Wi-Fi yet so can't comment on it. I havent heard of any probs on the Wi-Fi on the other NSeries phones so I dont expect anything new here either.There are many NGage games given with the phone but on trial basis. You get an activation code using whihc you can make any one of the games to full version and enjoy it. I took Asphalt Street Racing. The built-in GPS receiver works with Nokia Maps, which is one of the navigation applications to offer the most detailed maps. Haven't used it personally so cant comment on it.Nokia N79 comes complete with an elaborate browser to make use of the great connectivity set. The browser has excellent page rendering and works in both portrait and landscape mode.
There's also a software called WAVE SECURE given. It is claimed that you can use to "Track down the thief, get alerted when your mobile phone is stolen!", "Remotely lock and secure your mobile, disable it in the case of theft or loss" ,"Wipe out and delete your data remotely to protect your privacy" etc. Will let you know more of this feature later. learn more of this at
http://nokia.wavesecure.com/ . You can get infinite more softwares from the net to use in this phone so the possibilities are limitless.
N79 is a grat all rounder and can be termed as a jack of all trades. I think I made a great decision in buying it. If your needs are a good cam, great music and good looks , this phone is a definite goody in its price range.
My N79 review :)
Re: My N79 review :)
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