Nokia N76 Review
http://merajchhaya.googlepages.com/nokian76
So when Nokia had announced this N76, I thought it was a bit late for a competitor against the RAZR V3 as it had dominated the market long ago.
When we were introduced with the specs, we saw that we had a smartphone in our hands, S60 with FP1, a great combination, but we still had too see if all that slimness worked well or not.
So here I have it in my hands, it’s a bit heavy for a clamshell, about 115g. It’s a long phone too, about the size of a 7610, 106,5mm of length. It’s not a very thick phone, it closely matches the V3, at about 13,5mm. The only reason I’m comparing it to the V3 is due to their looks, they look so alike that I’m actually impressed that Motorola didn’t sue Nokia over copyrights.
Anyways the top part is attached to the bottom via two connectors on the sides, and I believe that the flexi cable and other internal connectors must be really small in order to go through that. On the top part there is a big TFT LCD with 16m colours and QVGA resolution. The outer screen has 160 x 128 resolution which is great for such a small screen. On the bottom there are three multimedia keys. On the inside of the top part, there’s a CIF camera very well hidden, you can’t even notice it, and there is a speaker as well.
The phone when open is very big and the keypad is heavily illuminated, a very stylish move, there are many reflexes which makes the phone shine a lot, a sense of fashion from Nokia. There are also volume buttons on the left and camera and gallery buttons on the right.
Fingerprints are a constant in the glossy interior, but the brightness of the screen excludes that bad detail.
The battery cover is quite hard to remove but when you take it out, there is a small battery with 700maH only. You will see a yellow carrier which you take out and insert the SIM card inside, and put the carrier inside the phone with the SIM card on it.
On the top of the lower part, there is a 3.5mm jack, a power button and a miniUSB port. The charger port is on the left side tough. All the construction is done very well and nicely which makes the phone very attractive, especially in Pink, but I only managed to get my hands on the black version.
The N76 presents us with the S60 v3.1 Symbian OS 9.2 FP1 loaded with multitasking and all computer goodies, just as Nokia states “The computer done beautifully”.
I spoke about this OS on my N95 review, so I won’t repeat myself. Only one added feature: the outer display. The music player is running non-stop and there is no way to deactivate it, and radio can also be chosen from the multimedia keys.
Besides being used for music, this display provides a great deal of information when someone is calling and it also adds to the style.
The connectivity on this device is a bit failed, besides the great Bluetooth v2.0 and 3G, there is no WLAN or HSDPA (3.5G).
There is a miniUSB port for Mass Storage, PC Suite, Media player and PictBridge, and there is a 3.5mm in steroids for audio controller, TV-Out, headphones/speakers. Besides 3G, there is also EDGE and GPRS.
The camera is a 2 megapixel one but a poor quality one in comparison with other 2 megapixel phone cameras, this one’s pixels are less detailed, less bright as well. Unfortunately I didn’t manage to get any pictures uploaded. The video quality is only QVGA, which is the average for these kind of cameras.
The sound disappointed me, so much effort for the music keys and features and then there is a mediocre sound output, but I guess the 3.5mm jack saves the day.
In the end, we are presented with a smartphone with a high software, a low hardware and a great design. The features already included make it a great business and multimedia phone. Unfortunately the lack of a decent camera and WLAN bring it down.
Disadvantages: lack of originality, no WLAN, no high resolution camera, sound is soft.
Advantages: S60 v3.1 Symbian OS 9.2, 3G, Slim and attractive, 3.5mm jack, miniUSB, Bluetooth v2.0
Rating: 7.8/10
