Nokia N79: Eye-candy in a candy bar

’Tis the season… and you know the rest.

Santa make mine new gadgets, please. I have stopped writing letters to Santa. I would e-mail him, but I have not gotten around to checking out what his e-mail address is.

Santa, are you on Facebook? Friendster? YM?

Cellphones, I love ‘em. I wish I could have ‘em all — I have been told that we need to wish big so that we can get all of them.

I wish.

And now comes the Nokia N79. In typical S60 fashion, a lot of the core functions of the older models remain, while new and improved features are seamlessly integrated, too. The Nokia N79 runs on Symbian S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2.

First, the eye-candy part. This New Nokia N79 is the smallest, slimmest N-series cellphone ever released. It comes with five different back covers (Light Sea Blue, Espresso Brown, Olive Green, White and Coral Red), out of which three different smart back covers come with the cellphone. The cool thing about these back covers is that if you change the back cover to say, a red one, then, even your background theme also changes color. This theme switching is cool and really quick.  

The Finnish company has called the Nokia N79, with intelligent and customizable design, a fully loaded multimedia computer. Behind its sleek exterior, the Nokia N79 is a technology powerhouse. It offers a full range of multimedia experiences, including integrated navigation, music with FM transmitter, high-speed connectivity, superior Web browsing, pre-loaded Blockbreaker N-Gage game and an advanced five-megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics.

“The Nokia N79 packs cutting-edge technology into a compact device — a characteristic of the iconic Nseries — which allows people to discover, create and experiment,” says William Hamilton Whyte, general manager of Nokia Philippines.

“It has been designed for those who want a device that is as appealing as it is powerful and comes with interchangeable covers that have automatically matching screen themes. This balance of performance and style means that it is a powerful and defining step forward from the popular and very successful Nokia N70 and Nokia N73,” he adds.

The convergence of photos, music, games and navigation in the Nokia N79 combines hi-speed 3.5G HSDPA and Wi-Fi to make it quick and easy to share experiences on websites, blogs or online communities.

Don’t you just love it?

Let’s talk about the Nokia N79 face. It is loaded with a 2.4-inch QVGA 16 million color screen that sits on top, crowned by an earpiece, VGA video-calling camera and ambient light sensor, while hotkeys and an alphanumeric keypad are laid out beneath it. Strangely, the Nokia logo is drawn sideways on the right side.

The screen is large, clear and bright and works really well with the ambient light sensor. Graphics and fonts are readable under direct sunlight, and in the dark, the screen looks great. On the back, the camera lens is safely hidden behind a slide-down cover.

The keys on the Nokia N79 are wide, evenly spaced and well-lit. I also really enjoyed using the Nokia hotkeys, including the special key for the multimedia menu.

Connecting on the Nokia N79 has no problems with any sort of network or device. Wi-Fi scanning is good, and even hidden hot spots can be detected, while the FM transmitter is also present to broadcast music that’s currently playing on the device’s music player. It supports Bluetooth with A2DP and uses a microUSB connection to connect with a computer.

The microUSB port is hidden behind a latch on the left side, which also houses the microSD card, pictured here. It’s an ingenious feature, but not that appealing in the real world.

The music player can also be used to toggle the FM transmitter feature. Otherwise, sounds will come out from either the headphone port, stereo speakers or Bluetooth headphones. Being stereo, sound quality turned out great on speakers. But it wasn’t as loud as I had expected.

I logged on to online communities like Flickr or YouTube by a quick click directly to Nokia services such as Share on Ovi, an online service that enables consumers to share personal pictures and videos from their mobile devices.

A Friendster widget will also be made available for the Nokia N79 via the WidSets service. This will allow people to browse Friendster friends’ profiles, view and post shoutouts, upload pictures taken with their handset, and browse their own and friends’ photo albums. All this enables more effective communication with friends while away from a computer, and using the Nokia N79. New users can even register for Friendster directly on their device via a link to Friendster’s Mobile site (m.friendster.com), create an account, and instantly begin participating in the Friendster global community.

To ensure each device is as distinctive as its user, customizable features are available at the Nokia Download! store, a one-stop personalization shop, already embedded in Nokia Nseries devices. I really love personalizing my cellphone. Personalizing on the N79 is awesome.  

Make Christmas merry this year. I know, I know, there are so many problems in the world. But for folks like me, a new cellphone — beside our Christmas belen at home — is blissful.

Dear Santa…