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By Damian Koh
May 25, 2007

Our first impression of the Nokia N76 is the similarity with the Motorola RAZRs. Either the engineers at the Finnish company worked on the same drawing board as those from Motorola, or it's pure coincidence this Nokia clamshell looks so much like the RAZR series. The N76 has a couple of admirable points such as a 3.5mm headphone jack and is running on a robust Series 60 platform, but it's mostly let down by design shortcomings.

Design
The Nokia N76 is a slim and sexy clamshell. That's something we cannot deny. Its top panel is reminiscent of the mirror-like finish on the LG Shine (KU970) which we reviewed recently. The screen itself is actually much smaller, measuring 1.3 inches diagonally across. It seems like an awful waste of the surrounding space if you ask us. Not to mention that it is also extremely fingerprint-prone.

Music lovers, however, will appreciate the quick-access multimedia playback buttons below the LCD. Because these keys are on the outside, there's a chance you may press it accidentally when the phone is in your trouser pockets, so we recommend turning on the automated keylock function. Fortunately, you can also unlock the phone using the external buttons.

There's a serious design flaw on this Nokia. The 3.5mm slot is on the top edge so you don't get the headset connector protruding from the sides of your pockets. That’s good, but this also means it restricts the top lid of the clamshell from opening fully when the headset is plugged in. When there's an incoming call while you're humming along to your favorite track, you'll have to unplug your headset before you can put the phone your ear. There's a work-around, though. You won't have to unplug your own 3.5mm earphone if you use the bundled earpiece.

Inside, the keypad on the N76 reminds us of the ones Motorola uses on its RAZRs. It looks aesthetically pleasing, but its flat, undulating surface means you can't really feel one button from the next. When you move into a darker environment, the ambient light sensor will activate the keypad's backlight in a shade of brilliant blue. There's also a customizable multimedia key which we can configure to access frequently used multimedia programs. What we didn't quite fancy were the Edit and Clear buttons that are spaced too closely to each other below the four-way direction control.

Granted that we don't change our SIM cards everyday, but one of the gripes with this Nokia is that it requires a rather flimsy tray to rest the SIM card on before we can slot it into the compartment. Just one of those things we can live without.

That's not all. The design of the N76 makes it difficult to use one hand to flip open the clamshell since there's no discernable groove between the lids. The flip action, although very firm, is a bit too stiff for our liking. We could flip it open halfway, forming a V shape, and it stays there. A spring mechanism would have been better.

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