Nokia N76: Style Over Substance

One thing instantly comes to mind at the mention of Nokia’s N series, they are bulky. Its very irritating considering Samsung can pack in the same features with a slim phone. Nokia finally took notice and borrowed Motorola’s trademark.

The result is N76, a slim clamshell with Symbian S60. It’s a pretty phone with external controls for the music player. It looks obvious that the concept is created with Motorola RAZR in mind.

The features

Nokia N76 comes in two colors, black for men and red for women. The elegant style of the phone constantly reminds you of Motorola RAZR. It inherited both the chin and the flat keypad. This actually adds up to the appeal of the phone.

This N Series handset may not be bulky but it’s bigger compared to standard phones. Fortunately the slim body is enough to cover for that. It has two excellent displays with 160 X 128 pixels on the outside and 2.4 inches on the inside.

It has a vibrant display which is fully configurable. It has a secondary camera for video calls and recording. It records videos in 320 X 240 resolution and voice of up to 60 minutes.

It runs with Symbian S60 with an improved feature pack. It’s a quad-band phone with 3G UMTS, GPRS, HSCSD, and EDGE. It has a micro SD memory card slot, miniUSB, 3.5 mm headset jack, FM radio and a 2 megapixel camera with diode flash.

Apart from the 26 MB integrated memory it has a 256 MB memory card included in the package. With expandable memory it has a great music player with several options for file formats. It’s also equipped with Real Player that can play MP4 files. With symbian the owner will have problems in handling messages.

Cons

The phone is made up of cheap plastic. The top half stops midway when opened. It has a rigid joint and the spring is useless. You have to use two hands to open it. Connecting with your USB or using the 3.5 mm headset jack limits its opening. The connectors are inconveniently located on the top of the phone. It requires constant cleaning because fingerprints can easily stick and stay.

The keypad is dead flat without any touch separators leading to typing errors. It does not have HSDPA and Wi-Fi. There are no stereo bluetooth and RDS on the radio. It cannot display Word and Excel documents. It has a mediocre camera.

Overall the N76 promises much but delivers little. If you’re just looking for a stylish multimedia phone this one is for you.

Steve works for FRCD where you can search Cell Phone Numbers free and use the Cell Phone Directory to Free Reverse Cell Phone Directory.