I am writing again on a smart
phone, I never thought that I will lose my 5700 this soon but anyways.
I am using N79 for 5 months and will give you a review from user perspective. It’s
a user review.
N79 is a symbian based smartphone and it runs on 3rd edition with FP2.
I’ll try to make this review objective and will list the features with their
pros & cons.
First thing to start is this is a feature-packed mobile, fully loaded rarely
leave any thing for a smartphone user. Being said that I assume that you do not
want QWERTY or touch screen.
I start with positives,
It is a light weight phone.
5 MP camera, with 2 led lights and cover(I checked its **output in day light,
its really good**), not so in night as there is no xenon flash, video
quality is best with 30 frame per second VGA capabilities, in case shooting at
night is the main requirement try N82, but except for night shooting it is at
par with N82.(I really do not care for night shots you can refer my canon
review for details). It also has a 2nd camera for video calling but in India
if you are not with BSNL it’s useless.
4 GB card bundled with phone. I found it sufficient for me; I have just
crossed 2 GB till date.
Nice battery backup - 1200 mah and FP2 firmware tries to fetch max out
of it( I really faced battery issue with 5700)- There is a power saving mode
where it disable the keypad lights and make screen illumination less. When I
use it a lot with games, calls, internet It easily manage above one day, with
just calls it goes 3+ days, and on an average about 2-2.5 days.
2.4 inch screen with QVGA resolution as 320*240, (It means you’ll get hundreds
of games and almost all useful applications available for this phone, no
compatibility issues)- screen is not a lot big but is better than 2 or 2.2, you
want more, pay more and get an N85.
GPS receiver - with 3 moths subscription for voice navigation, it works fine
though they nokia maps are not as good as google maps, good thing is that you
can actually update the maps application to V3 which is Ovi maps and can update
maps also from time to time. Another goodie is that google maps can be
downloaded for free and works fine with in built receiver.
FM transmitter - *This is an amazing feature, I can hear to songs
loaded on my memory card with my i10 stereo, no cd writing nothing. I really
liked it
It supports NGage - you’ll get one game free with phone(no dedicated gaming
keys). It has a lot better keyboard than its predecessor N78, N82, N73 you’ll
feel better in gaming, But its still not good as my 5700 in this department and
I suggest you to try it first.
NaviWheel and accelerometer – it works ok most of the time. You move your finger in
circular motion and selection will change. Accelerometer is used for auto
screen rotate and works fine. It is also used when you get some call or alarm, **you
can just flip your phone it will be silent**.
It comes with WaveSecure a software application which
can be used to track your phone and to secure your data in case it’s stolen.
It’s from Nokia; you not need to pay anything.
FOTA with UDP
- that means firmware updates over the air on phone if you have internet
available. No Nokia care. Good news is that N79 is a masses phone so nokia is
aggressively releasing updates, I recently got version 31.202. My phone came
with V11 in box which was quite stable and than in 5 months I got V20 and V31.
UDP is user data prevention -
when you update your phone it will save all your data and it works fine, I have
updated couple of time.
Rest it has what any other
smartphone offers, office(**an update is available for office 2k7 support
from quick office), zip, pdf support, a music player which supports wide
format(high bit rate file too). Mail support includes **exchange server,
As usual It can be used as a modem with your PC.
A 3.5 mm audio jack so that I
can hear songs with any headset, **audio quality is good, In fact it’s better
than 5700**, even though that was a music phone, it got stereo loudspeaker,
which provides clear but not loud sound. Web browser is ok; with nice flash
support you can watch youtube on the browser itself.
Long list; now let me move to
the negatives,
It is a slow phone,
believe me, it has 369 mzh processor same as 5700, N85 etc with 128 mb RAM but
it is slow, you can switch off theme effects and auto rotate to get speed but
otherwise it is slow and though I am fine without theme effects I need
auto-rotate.
My screen got few stuck pixels,
plus the front camera got two colored spots. Stuck pixels can be removed with
some videos but no luck yet. So considering this you better **check your phone
at the shop itself for screen and both the cameras.*