Nokia updates the likeable N78 with a slimmer, faster phone. Is this the Nseries phone you want in your pocket? Find out in our Nokia N79 review.
Review summary of the Nokia N79:
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 The Nokia N79 is a smaller, powerful Nseries device, and it fits neatly beneath the Nokia N85 in the lineup, even though the larger dual-slider can be found for less. Regardless, the candybar N79 won't win too many fans for its hodge podge design, but if the insides count more than the outside, the Nokia N79 shines from within with good call quality, robust Web browsing and good performance all around, especially in multimedia playback and GPS navigation. In some ways, its better than we expected, with acceptable Flash support in the browser and a wide range of music features. In other ways, such as the inferior messaging options and the disappointing camera performance, we'd go for the N85 instead, especially while its the better bargain. If you like the form factor, the customizable back plates and Nokia's reputation, this is a great choice. Other wise, Nokia's Nseries phones are still winners, but this one just didn't come in first. Release: December 2008. Price: $350.
Pros: Outperforms some larger, more expensive Nseries phones. Good call quality. Advanced Web browsing features.
Cons: Camera isn't as sharp as other Nseries devices. Messaging options lagging. Design is a mixed bag.
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76%
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Full Nokia N79 Review:
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Design Good
The Nokia N79 is a slick little pill of a phone. It looks very much like the Nokia N78 that it replaces, except that it's a bit more colorful, a bit more slippery and Nokia is no longer relying on the 'hidden keys' gimmick of hidden symbols that spring to life. In fact, though the build quality seems pretty good, the phone is fairly plain looking, as most of the goodness is hidden within. There are too many different materials and surfaces on device. The front of our Nokia N79 review unit was glossy white. Around the edge sat a band of chrome. Further down the side, the phone uses a sandblasted metallic look. Around back, swappable battery covers are glossy with a textured-looking finish. One cool note, those back panels, of which there were 3 in our retail box, talk to the phone and switch the Wallpaper and theme to match whichever color you choose. We wish there was more to the theme switch than a simple color change, though, as the Symbian S60 user interface could really use a more dramatic facelift than a simple paint job.
The Nokia N79 has many of the standard Nokia Nseries tricks up its sleeve, but many of these don't come out right on this smaller device (to check out Nokia's recent Nseries phones, click here). The phone's 4-way button also acts as a touch sensitive Navi Wheel, and we liked this idea on the Nokia N85. On the N79, it wasn't as responsive or ubiquitous. It worked on the main menu screen, but most applications ignored it. We wish the same were true of the accelerometer. Turning the phone sideways swapped the screen orientation from landscape to portrait mode, but with this feature turned on the phone was often a bit too sensitive, switching screen modes at the slightest dip in attitude.
It wasn't all bad, and the Nokia N79 had a few design elements we liked. We liked having a proper lens cover on the 5-megapixel camera, and opening this cover activated the camera app. We also liked the camera's 2-stage shutter button. Instead of crowding the phone with ports, Nokia has wisely hidden the microUSB port and microSD card slot behind the same door. The 3.5mm headphone jack is top and center, a convenient placement.
Calling Very Good
Call quality on this generation of Nokia Nseries phones continues to impress, especially when we made calls over AT&T's 3G HSDPA network. Here in the Dallas metro area, we had a packed set of signal bars, and calls sounded nice and clean. That 3G network is something of a battery hog, though. Our Nokia N79 review unit died within 4 hours of our test call, which is a little on the low end, but in line with what Nokia promises.
Otherwise, the phone is a solid choice for calling features. We synchronized it with our Microsoft Exchange contacts, thanks to Nokia's Mail for Exchange app. If you don't use an Exchange account, the Nokia PC Suite can handle the job as well. As much as we love their call quality, these Nokia phones continue to let us down with voice dialing, and the Nokia N79 had the same trouble we've seen on most other Nokia devices. It couldn't pick the right contact 8 out of 10 times in our tests with the speaker independent voice dialing app.
Messaging - Good
The Nokia N79 doesn't come with many messaging features on board, but as a Symbian S60 device, there are plenty of third party options available for download. Even so, we'd like to see a better SMS client on these phones, as Symbian seems to be the last smartphone OS to incorporate threaded messaging into all of their text messaging devices. Again, we used Mail for Exchange to handle our corporate e-mail, and it was fine if we didn't need to dig past the basic inbox, but it couldn't check our subfolders or handle advanced mail features. There was no instant messaging client built into the phone, but we've been playing with a third-party option from Nimbuzz, and it seems to be a robust app, capable of handling all our favorite social messaging services.
The keyboard on the Nokia N79 is slick and a bit short for our tastes, but it's a definite improvement over the keypad on the N78. Keys had a nice width, but our fingers tended to run into the wrong key between the rows. We'd like to see Nokia cut out some of the white space around the screen to make more room for the keyboard.
Multimedia Very Good
The Nokia N79 falls a bit behind when it comes to the actual look and feel of the media player apps, but in terms of capabilities its actually a strong performer. We had no trouble loading our music onto the included 4GB microSD card, using both the Nokia software for media transfer and the simpler mass storage mode. In either case, our songs and their accompanying artwork came through with no trouble. Like we said, the app was pretty ugly, but we liked the wide range of music playback options. The phone packs an FM transmitter for broadcasting to a nearby radio. The stereo speakers on the side of the phone were also surprisingly loud, though a bit tinny, especially in bass-heavy tunes. To balance the sound, there are plenty of EQ and sound modifying options built in. For headphones, the Nokia N79 can thankfully accommodate a standard set of cans with its 3.5mm jack, or you can pair with a stereo Bluetooth set for wireless listening.
For video playback, we ran into some trouble. The phone had a hard time playing all of our encoded videos, especially videos sized for the Apple iPhone's 480 by 360 pixel display (the N79 uses a QVGA, 240 by 320 pixel screen), even though the Nokia N85 had little trouble with these. Even encoded properly, videos were mostly a letdown. The N79 has a brilliant screen, no less than we'd expect from a Nokia Nseries device, but it didn't impress us when the pictures were moving quickly.
Web browsing Very Good
The Nokia N79 has a surprisingly good Web browser, perhaps even better than it needs to be, though we won't complain. We've always like the Nokia Mini Map browser, and on the N79 it managed to load all our favorite pages, especially our own homepage, with clean layout and sharp pictures. Pages loaded fairly quickly over AT&T's fast HSDPA network, and even quicker when we were browsing Wi-Fi. Our biggest complaint is that the Navi Wheel was no help in scrolling through long Web pages. We tried circling the 4-way button with our thumb, but the device never registered the input.
For such a small device, we were surprised to find Flash Lite capabilities in the Web browser. We were let down by Flash on the much larger, pricier Nokia N96, but on the Nokia N79, flash performance bordered on acceptable. We watched some clips on YouTube, and though playback was a bit slow, it never fell into stop-motion territory, and the audio tracked played back quite smoothly.
Camera - Good
At first glance, the Nokia N79 seems to pack similar camera hardware to its bigger Nseries brothers, like the N85, with a 5-megapixel lens carrying Carl Zeiss branding. Unfortunately, image quality fell short of the high expectations set by its sibling. Images still looked pretty good, but lacked some of the fine detail we found on the N85. Images had a more digitized, video-like quality, especially at full crop, but still looked clean and free from fringing or aberrations. Check out our samples below for our favorite pics from our test sessions.
Flower and Ladybug
Buttercups and Rusy Lock
Cholmondeley Points
Self Portrait at Sunset
Bark Close Up
Snowy Town Square
The Nokia N79 is capable of recording VGA-resolution videos, but video performance was even more disappointing than the still images when compared to the better Nseries devices. Our videos had plenty of noise and a wobbly effect as we moved the camera. Even under strong, outdoor light, videos still looked shakier than we'd like. Quality was still much better than on most cameraphones we see, but we expect Nseries phones to be at the top of their class in terms of imaging, and the Nokia N79 couldn't keep up with the Nokia N85 for video quality.
GPS navigation Very Good
We were happy with the GPS performance on the Nokia N79. The phone uses Nokia Maps for mapping and turn-by-turn navigation, and the phone was powerful enough to handle the robust mapping app. Maps zoomed and scrolled smoothly, and the phone usually had no trouble finding our location. The app wasn't a particularly fun or appealing looking bit of navigation software, but it performed very well, and the phone zoomed from an outer space view of the globe to our precise location in a series of smooth steps. Maps also loaded quickly over the fast, 3G connection. We wish the scroll wheel worked in this app, as it would have made zooming easier while we were on the go. Still, the phone had easy shortcuts for zooming, and panning around the map was fast.
Price and availability
The Nokia N79 is available now unlocked from online retailers like Amazon for as little as $350.
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