Nokia N76 review: Elegant and smart

Poor work with Word and Excel

The Finnish manufacturer presents Nokia N76 as a "multimedia computer", which explains the lack of office and work functions in the phone. For example, the phone has no viewer for Microsoft Word and Excel documents (you can download such a viewer, if necessary, though). Yet, a viewer for PDF files does appear in the main menu.

  
 
Month, week, and day view at the calendar • setup options for the calendar • the task manager is part of the calendar

The calendar is standard. It offers a month, a week, and a day view. You can insert four event types: meeting, note, anniversary, and task. Meetings can be repeated daily, weekly, every two weeks, every month, and every year. Tasks can be displayed separately and marked off once accomplished.

 
The application Clock contains a detailed and repeated alarm clock as well as world time

In the folder "Organiser" you will find text notes, a unit converter, a simple calculator, and a voice recorder which can make records of up to 60 minutes. The voice recorder can also be used as a call recorder. The phone is well equipped for connection to a wireless Bluetooth keypad and GPS module, of which the applications featured by the menu are sufficient evidence.

 
Office • text note • the voice recorder is no more limited to a mere minute • calculator • unit converter

 
Viewer for PDF files • Nokia N76 is prepared to connect to a GPS module

Entertainment is what matters

Nokia N76's primary purpose is to entertain users and thus its functions are designed to perfectly meet the needs for multimedia fun. It offers a great music player manageable through external keys and thus controllable even with a closed phone. The player works with MP3, AAC, eAAC, eAAC+, and WMA formats. It first indexes music files and then names them according to the available ID3 tags. Songs can be sorted by various criteria and organized in playlists.

   
Music player • songs can be sorted by various criteria

The function for displaying the most frequently played and the last played songs is quite interesting. The player has an equalizer and a pair of video visualizations too. The player is constantly active, even if it's not used, which is rather unusual. It cannot be deactivated at all, which might be considered a con by some users as it slows down the phone and occupies precious operational memory.

   
There are two visualizations available in the music player • FM radio • list with stations • Real Player  

The phone also offers a FM radio. Its main con is the lack of RDS, its plus - it can store up to 50 radio stations. Videos are played in the famous Real Player. A flash animations player is available too.

   
The music player can be easily controlled from the external display  

The same holds true for the integrated FM radio

The earphones delivered in the retail package of the phone are pretty good. They hold well in one's ears and produce good-quality sound. You can hang them around your neck thanks to a special black strip. If you do not like the original earphones, feel free to plug another model. The 3.5mm jack makes this possible, which is great. Bluetooth does not support A2DP and thus excludes the use of wireless earphones.

    
The earphones enclosed in the retail package are quite good • their tiny control box including a microphone on the cable has new design; they also feature a special strip, thanks to which you can hang them around your neck

There is only one game in the phone - 3D snake. If you want to download other games you'd better use Symbian-based instead of Java-based as the latter is rather slow.

The snake is the only available game in the phone

jBenchmark results:

• jBenchmark 1.0:     6020 points
• jBenchmark 2.0:       636 points

Minimizing data

As far as data transfers are concerned, Nokia N76 does not offer what is expected. Data transfers are backed by UMTS at a maximum transferring speed of 384 kbps. If you don't have a good 3G signal at your location you might have to put up with EDGE or GPRS. There is no HSDPA support. The lack of Wi-Fi is an even more serious obstacle, though. The phone has Bluetooth 2.0 and offers a connection to a miniUSB connector through a data cable. A data cable is enclosed in the retail package together with the phone. Once you have connected it, N76 will offer you 4 modes to choose from: PC Suite for synchronization, Data transfers for Mass Storage, Image print via PictBridge, and a Media player for connection to applications in Windows Media Player.

 
Yahoo! Search engine is also available • the Log counting the amount of transferred data

Nokia N76 is supplemented by a CD including a number of useful applications, like the new Nokia PC Suite, Nokia Lifeblog, and Adobe Photoshop Album for work with pictures, Nokia Multimedia Player and Nokia Music Manager.

The web browser in landscape mode

Let us now say a few words about the web browser integrated in Nokia N76. It is the same as the one used in all previous handsets based on Symbian 9.1 S60 3rd edition. Along with WAP pages it also opens fully-working Internet pages, and all of these can be browsed in landscape mode. Font size and graphics are user-configurable, of course. The phone offers an application called Setup Guidebook, which will help you set up data transfers.

Inconsistent personality

Nokia N76 is a controversial device. On one hand it presents itself as an elegant phone of modern slim design and high-tech functions underlined by the presence of a brilliant display and Symbian 9.2 with S60 3.1. On the other hand, however, a closer look reveals several significant drawbacks: cheap-looking plastic material, expressed susceptibility to fingerprints, which requires constant cleaning… You?'d better put gloves on your hands, if you try to show off with your new N76… In terms of hardware we should mention the flatness of the keypad resulting in uncomfortable usage of the latter as well as the impossibility to fully open the phone when earphones are connected to it.

Accessories: data cable, earphones and 256MB memory card

The situation regarding the functions of the phone is similar. Picture quality does not fascinate at all; data transfers cannot be fully made use of because of the absence of Wi-Fi and HSDPA. A2DP Bluetooth profile necessary for connecting wireless earphones is missing too.

To sum up, Nokia N76 can be considered an interesting purchasing option mainly by people who refer to their phone as to a stylish fashionable accessory and do not care about its functional abilities too much. On the other hand, exactly such clientele will remain disappointed with the cheap looking plastic covers and the fingerprint smudges. The cons become even more visible when combined with the high price of the phone. As you can see, sales records are the last Nokia N76 is expected to achieve.