Flipping through

GIZMO GALLERY

Just when we thought the Razr-craze had died a natural death, there comes the Nokia N76. To begin with, it's just a 14 mm thick flip phone, adorned with a keypad that is wider and slicker than a Motorola phone.

Even though both the N76 and Razr V3i feature flat keypads, large colour screens and mini-USB ports, the Nokia N76 runs on Nokia's Series 60 3rd edition user interface.

So technically, it becomes a smartphone and can be used to synchronise your Outlook calendar, to-do lists, notes, contacts and even install third-party applications and carries a price tag of Rs 23,869.

Usability This eye-candy phone definitely lacks ease of use. Due to the lack of an auto-spring mechanism, the phone opens rather clumsily and top of it, the phone's width and slim design makes it difficult to open the handset single-handedly. At this point, N76's apt utilisation of the external screen should also be highlighted.

Motorola Razr V3i and so many other flip phones have had external screen, but none have exploited it the way Nokia has done. Press one of the external soft keys and the phone reads out all messages; push the other button and it activates voice dialing. Even missed calls and attachments can be checked without flipping the phone open.

Camera and music Nokia has added two cameras on N76, a 2-megapixel version for pictures and a small VGA one for video calling (usable only once 3G networks come in).

There is a 3.5mm jack in the bottom of the phone which means you can plug your music headphones straight in. Now, since the 3.5mm slot sits on the top it restricts the top lid of the clamshell from opening fully when the headset is plugged in. The N76 can store up to 2GB of music "� about 200 songs "� on a microSD card.

Performance With Nokia phones getting powerful, multi-tasking functionality in such a slim package is nothing short of impressive. With 26MB of internal memory, and another 512 MB as external memory (comes free with N76 pack) is sufficient to get started with the multimedia applications.

Press the menu key, and it will give you a list of the applications (running in the background), a feature that can help you minimise memory wastage.

Predictably, for a smartphone with a 2.4-inch screen size, the power performance was a dampener. Nokia N76 is a handset that will require you to plug in the charge every evening, which means on an average day the battery gives a cumulative of up to 4-4.5 hours.

Conclusion The N76 represents a real step forward for the company in terms of style, and certainly gives the Motorola's range of phones a run for their money. In terms of looks, maybe the Razr and N76 look like twins, but it is the advanced smartphone features of Nokia N76 that leave it unchallenged in the category.