Smooth contours, seamless design and refined looks – yet suspiciously brittle feeling. This was the first thing that came to mind when I picked up the Nokia N79. OK, so the first thing that came to mind was actually ‘I would sell my extended family into slavery in order to afford this phone,’ but you get where I’m coming from.
The phone certainly is beautiful; but the fake chrome, tacky glitter-clad silver sides and disconcertingly creaky plastic back cover do detract from the phones overall glamour. But although it might not be crafted from the same material as a space shuttle, it does at least look like a magical samurai sword. And that’s what it’s all about really: impressing people.
Nokia is marketing the N79 as a phone that will allow you to express who you are as a person. It promises to give you ‘personal style, personal internet’ and to allow you to ‘share your style, music and images.’ Perhaps it’s just me, but the only difference in terms of personalizing capabilities I could see is how you can choose between 3 different colour back covers. Though that’s not to say that it isn’t a cool feature, and Nokia didn’t stop there. They equipped each back cover with its own digital identification, which the phone detects as soon as you change back covers and automatically changes your theme to match the cover for you. Feeling unique yet?
But perhaps I’m being shallow; we shouldn’t judge a phone solely by its cover. What really makes this phone special is inside: its software. (Phones don’t have personalities. Yet.)
This bad boy has so many features that it’s tough to know where to begin. It’s got all the staples you’d expect from a high-end cell phone: 5 mega-pixel camera (and a VGA camera for video calls), Wi-Fi, high quality stereo speakers and a radio/music player. But the devil is in the detail and Nokia really did a top-notch job in refining these features.
The camera is of shockingly good quality and was designed by Carl Zeiss (the German optics company, not the 19th century optician), and Nokia boasts this little fact by placing it proudly on the camera shutter. The camera’s autofocus makes taking high-quality photos a breeze, especially after you’ve blinded yourself with the powerful flash, like I did a couple of times. The Wi-Fi is not special in and of itself, but the small option of being able to switch to 3G HSDPA whenever you please is quite a titillating prospect. Then there are the media capabilities: the sound and video quality rival that of the iPod, and with a memory capacity of up to 8 GB they really aren’t fooling around. To top it all off, the phone has a (very responsive) accelerometer which makes rotating what ever you may be watching a cinch – and with video quality this good, you’ll be watching a lot. Then, of course, there’s Mobile TV, or as I like to call it: ‘I’ll never get anything done ever again.’
And as if that wasn’t enough, there’s still a ‘Maps’ application. The best way I can explain this feature is by comparing it to a GPS like Garmin. Here it goes: it’s pretty much the same as the high-end Garmins and better than the cheaper ones. Just like a dedicated GPS system, you can plan routes from point A to point B and it’ll tell you where to go with voice commands. It automatically detects where you are and from there you can choose to go to a pre-saved destination, a previous destination, addresses, landmarks…anywhere your heart desires really. And if you have a big heart you can buy a range of guides for different cities which will point you to landmarks and make your tourism experiences a lot less unpleasant.
One other thing that I found very important in today’s world of often sitting in places you don’t want to be while having nothing to do, is the games. The N79 is part of the N-Gage family; the ‘N’, of course, stands for ‘awesome.’ N-Gage gives you the ability to create a gaming profile that reminds one a bit of Xbox Live, and from there you can check on your friends’ profiles to message them and make sure they aren’t beating your scores – as well as play them online. And did I mention that the games include names like Metal Gear Solid Mobile and Fifa ’09? So much for Snake II. It’s no wonder N-Gage has won a litter of awards.
Like I said; the bad boy’s got features left, right and centre. But I think that Nokia should focus less on pumping their phones with new stuff and more on polishing off what I think is a pretty sloppy user- interface. Perhaps fewer features would also lengthen the less than satisfactory ± 2 day battery life. But minor complaints aside; the phone is sexy, fast and a pleasure to use and if you happen to be part of my extended family – be worried.
Marc Sacks
Staff Writer
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Great humour, great review.
I think ill stick to my Samsung