Nokia N70 - Review

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Nokia N70

nokian70front1s0ke.jpg


Full Phone Specifications:

http://www.esato.com/phones/index.php/phone=210
http://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_n70-1153.php

So let's get on with it - The Review :

I bought N70 for 21k from a priority dealer in New Delhi. It was available in 2 colours - One Silver and Black, and one Blue. The Silver and Black one is the most common. And besides, you have lots of colour combination housings available for worldwide shipping from Ebay.

When i first looked at N70, i was amazed at actually how smaller it was compared to what i got on screens. It was a little heavy, but it surely felt strongly built for rough use.

The inbox accessory included a 64mb RS-DV mmc, and HS-3 Stereophonic headset, USB cable, Driver CD and manuals.

Nokia PC Suite was supplied in the Driver CD, with which only i could connect my N70 via the USB cable with the PC. The installtion was stable and i got my N70 connected within 5 minutes of popping the CD in. With the PC suite manager you can transfer any files and access your N70 like a USB flash drive.
Also, you can send any sized wallaper (say 2000x1000) to the application and it will automatically resize and it to N70 in its screen resolution. The suit also has tons of more misc features like backing up contacts, sms's and a sound converter for converting to midi files (so not much here) Now onto the phone.

The phone when started for the first time powered with 64mb mmc was quite fast, than say 6600 which i was using previously. The card which came with N70 has official and 3rd party softwares, like Kodak image printers and office applications for .xls and .ppt files. When switched on for the first time it asked for regular user settings like date/time/city, and then the home screen.

I can see the light! - The Screen :

The screen is not much impressive than what 6680/81 packed. More or less the same, although one can say N70 packs more sharpness when compared to 6680/81. But Nokia could have done better here. And when i compared it with W550i, N70 suddenly lost a lot of colour juice.A little stale.
But alas - The screen isn't bad at all, on a scale of 10 i'd rate it 7.8.

I think i felt it! - The Build :

At first, N70 felt very slippery. Dunno weather it was due to its coating. The housing interface is very smooth and lustrous. However, complains definitely can be made regarding its back camera slider. It doesn't really promote that tough build quality, and can easily be slipped down when handling it with a lazy/lousy attitude. I've had a couple of slips just while dialing the numbers switching the camera on!

Coming to the keypad, it feels small yet perfectly placed. It can be hard for those with larger fingers, can be hard to reach out for the menu/sms/C/Multimedia buttons which are located vertically alongside the number keys. The joystick is a 4-way pad, with a central key. So one thing i can assure you is that navigating along the menu's and all is as comfortable as it can get! You hardly need to press it, just moving your thumb around does all the work.

The battery cover again has complains. It can get very hard to remove. I've seen Nokia employees themselves struggle with it! In my one month, i've yet to master the art of removing it easily.

Its a Smartphone! - The OS, The Speed, The Performance :

Now coming to N70, it packs: Symbian OS v8.1a.
Developer Platform: S60 2nd Edition Feature Pack 3.

N70 and N90 are the first phones to feature S60 2nd Edition. There have been 2-4 upgrades to this OS which can be performed at Nokia Care centres.

Coming to personal experience, it is a very stable OS. 6600 crashed often to the point you had to remove the battery just to shut it off. I've never had that once in N70. The OS is stable, each upgrade just making it faster and better.

Now i soon bought a 1GB Samsung's RS-DV mmc. I loaded around 700mb of mp3's which were of 192kbps+, and 50mb worth of games and applications on the memory card. and 2-4 apps on the inbuilt 30mb memory. The phone went slow, the menu took 2-4 seconds to open the first time after switching the phone on, after which it became faster. The camera access took nearly 5 seconds to initialize, applications and games took 4-6 seconds to open. Although, i will say that this is what you're supposed to get from Symbians. But, as i noticed i was sitting on Firmware V3.x for n70, while V.5x was out in the market! I immediately went on search for a Nokia Care center from where i got my n70 upgraded.

The phone was sooo noticeably faster! Along with new features (like the 'Now Playing' songs title was now being displayed on the home screen as it plays in background). The camera button took only 2-3 seconds to initialize, Gallery the same time for a first start and 0.5-1 seconds after that. There wasn't much diff on the speed of applications though, but it was still a neat improvement, while more firmware upgrades are to be expected in 4-5 months.

The N70's OS has a wide support for regular S60 apps. Those apps/games stated to run for S60 and while n70 not specifically has been mentioned N70 will still run it. It scores 'heavily' in this area and it beats N90 here. N90's OS has lots of errors on some of the existing Symbian applications, like the Nes emulator from VNES for example, for some reason its incomaptible and gives an error. Every application i have installed on N70 has worked, and the phone is renowned for running almost any symbian application out there. N70's a topper here.

The Music's Got Me! - Sound Performance :

I was once a severe Blockia hater. Motorla was so much flashier, I hated everything about Nokia till i actually found the hidden secrets of a smartphone/Symbian Series 60 OS. My dad bought a black 6600 for himself, in which i tried some applications, like the Nes and Game Boy Colour emulators and i was left shocked! The 6600 ran the roms just like the console itself! Right that moment i decided that i have no choice but to go for a new symbian phone now. Not only the emulators, i found several applications the J2ME can't even imagine, like FExplorer, video players which play DivX files, etc.

Coming to music, i was never in the habbit of carrying my Mp3 players around, so when i was allowed to buy a mobile phone, i made sure i buy the onethat coorperates music as its No.1 Priority, and so i bought the Motorola E398, which i call the 'Father' of all music mobile phones. It was one of the first mobiles in the market to highlight music as its main prority. E398 was a perfect music phone, I still love it.

So now i had to go for a symbian S60 which plays music just as good as any other. Which was very hard to decide especially when you got W800i in the market with a cheaper and guaranteed music satisfaction tags on it.
I searched a lot and ended on some Symbian forums where i asked the guys how N70's performance is in music. There i understood that all SE WALKMAN is is pure brilliant marketing logo!

W800i is a brilliant music phone, but turn it black, remove the walkman label and it becomes K750i, and then, give it symbian, 3g and EDGE and it becomes...you guessed it - N70 - Even if Nokia never once highlighted its music playing feature.

In fact, N70 is the first phone to feature an entirely new dedicated official music playing application called 'Music'. The interface gives the Pods and WMP a run for their money. One of its many features is it displays the image stored in Id3 tag of the mp3's while playing them.

There's only one negative drawback here - The rewinding or forwading in music. Not in single tracks, but in 100 minutes mixes and sets, since i listen to trance i have mostly those, and forwarding to say 60 mins in the mp3 can be a pain sometimes as you have to hold the button down for forward which forwards at like 35-45 seconds/second. But except this, the program is very cool.

Now coming to performance, N70's audio abilities are very high. The sound through an Ad-15 Nokia audio adapter which allows the access of regular 3.5mm headphones is of very high quality, that is, the N70 satisfies the conditions for competing with the Ipods and dedicated mp3 players out there, so easily levelling the Walkman brand of SE. I think the reason why Nokia never highlighted N70's music in advertisements is because they wanted to save it for its 'All-Rounder' look and give it to N91 instead.

One of the features i got from the firmware upgrade to V.5x is the increase in volume.

Coming to 3rd party programs, N70 can play almost any audio extension from wma to aac to ogg. POWERmp3, a brilliant mp3 program for N70 features a groundbreaking effective equalizer and a stylish digital interface.

All this is through the Ad-15 and headphones though, the single speaker of N70 doesn't do music enough justice. Its loud, shrieking and unclear. E398 and W550 sound wayy better with there dual stereo speakers. Comparing the speaker to 6680/81 i can say here N70 is better or almost on par.

I make DVD's with my N70 - The 2mp Camera and Video Recording :

N70 features a brilliant 2mp Camera which is comparable and has beaten N90's Carls Zeis lens in some areas. The flash is effective. The only complain here is the Macromode. It is the suckiest in its brilliance! The closeups of magazine scans are blurry as hell and one can make nothing out even on the 2mp size of the image. Sorry, no Autofocus here.

But, N70 makes it up for all that by featuring an equally wonderful Video-Recording feature. The VHS/TV quality high resolution of 355x288 and 15 fps recording is amazing. It records this high quality in .mp4 extension. But nothing is perfect, and because of this high resolution, a 2 minute clip will yield 5-7 mb memory.

The recorded video clips, can be stored on PC, then can be converted to DivX or DVD or VCD and can be burnt on cd for viewing on your TV. Getting a more than just decent quality on. N70, N90 and SE W900i (all of them were almost simultaneouly released and all featured recording at high resolution) have marked the rise of Camcorders as well on mobiles. Pretty soon, like say in 2-4 years time we can expect a true mobile with dvd quality recording....

The All-Rounder? - The Overview :

As rightly stated by GSMarena's reviewers as well, N70 is truly Universal. It has literally everything. EDGE? Check. High quality music? Check. Good support and browser for HTTP Internet? Check. A rough, intensive Smartphone? Check. A good 2mp camera with an excellent video recording? Check. MMC slot? Check. Good build? Check. 3G? Check. A very good Radio with an extra fast instant station tuner and Visual Radio? Check. Check? Check..ugh.

However those are the checks before the latest N-Series phones like N80 and N91. One of the main things N70 doesn't have is Wi-Fi support. Rest, n70 is not much different than say n91 or n80.

Should i get this phone? - The pricing and the upcoming N72 :

The phone has hit 18k in the market. For those of you going for 6681 or 6630, at 12-13k i suggest should wait for N72. Note that this review also applies for N72. Because what 6681 is to 6680, N72 will be to N70. That is N72 is actually a clone of N70 with 3G removed. That means when N72 hits the market in India, it'll be cheaper and rid of 3g which will be of no use at all in India for a long while. So what i reccomend is, that its of no use for going for N70 now. It has sold well in India, and is becoming another top hit seller (Nokia's sales report includes N70 as the best selling phone since the past 5 months, according to Nokia, N70 should equal the sales of 6630 in a years time if it keeps selling like this) but in India i don't see a reason why anyone should go for n70 now that N72 has been announced. Those who can't wait for the release on N72 though can make their minds up for N70. But as suggested, N72 will be N70 but much cheaper.

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With that i'll end my review. I hope it offers the readers with answers and information, but if you have a question you can post it here or at the 'Portables Zone' section. Good Luck.

Thanks to the readers and TE.


Params7.
 
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Nice review ! but you din't mention anything about the battery life ? And 15fps and 355*288 isn't = vhs/tv resolution especially the fps.

Btw you turned from moto/se > Nokia and i went the other way around, nokia 3650/6600 to k700/k750i :P The amusement and fun of using symbian wears off after bugs, compatibilities, and time. But to each his own. And how much was the rs-dv mmc ?
 
^lol. i know. Guess we all like changes. Symbian60 does need a lot of attention.

About the resolution and FPS, its often quoted that way so i put it too. Basically, its viewable on TV :P.
And i bought 1gb Samsun Rs-DV mmc for rs.2700 from Nehru place in Delhi.

Thanks for appreciations guys. it makes it worth my time writing the review only for TE :)
 
params7 said:
^lol. i know. Guess we all like changes. Symbian60 does need a lot of attention.

About the resolution and FPS, its often quoted that way so i put it too. Basically, its viewable on TV :P.
And i bought 1gb Samsun Rs-DV mmc for rs.2700 from Nehru place in Delhi.

Thanks for appreciations guys. it makes it worth my time writing the review only for TE :)
K thanks for that. So the total cost comes to around 21k from what i gather. A farcry from the 13.5k i've spent on the k750i + 1gb pro duo :). Thread rated, reps pending though..........
 
Great review params7.

Just wanted to know what the read speed and write speed of ur memory card?

Blade_Runner symbian has improved a lot. I have used 6630 without restarting for more than a week. 6600 had very buggy symbian but these days it more stable than windows :P
 
^ lol yeah well i lack another digicamera to take pics of it :P

And again thanks to everyone for their comments! I'm really glad it helped :)

edit - hey looks like someone edited the formatting. Since i'm using the dark TE skin its sometimes difficult to chose the most comortable formatting to the eyes. thanks to mod who did all that :ohyeah:

@Archish - Guessed i missed the writing speeds part in the review.
The transfer to MMC from the USB cable of from the internal memory is i think 200-300 kB/S. It completes an MB of transfer by 4-6 seconds.
 
Hi there,

I was hoping that you could help me out. I have the N70 and i would like to upgrade my software to the symbian v8.1a now my question is is there a way I can download it to my pc then onto the phone as i use my phone as a model?

Hope to hear from you soon.

Thank you
 
lol...N70 was my first N series phone, paid a whopping 20K when i got it but never the less it was a awesome phone specially the camera was great
 
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