Nokia users, myself included, have been up in arms with complaints of build quality issues and lacklustre high end device hardware.  All the while, Nokia’s competitors appear to be catching up, releasing devices with more multimedia features, more powerful hardware, and better, more intuitive, flashy user interfaces. The Finnish tech titan’s reputation has fallen in the minds of hardcore gadget enthusiasts, a demographic Nokia has long dominated. This is an unfavourable position to be in, especially with Nokia being a benefactor of the gadget enthusiast community’s word of mouth advertising.

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Nokia calls it a fusion of technology and style. I call it rubbish - for me N79 is the ugliest Nokia I’ve seen in ages, and definitely, the ugliest NSeries phone. If anything could change my mind, that would have to be a hands-on, on my hands, as I’ve seen live pictures, press pictures, and I’m not happy.

In terms of features, it’s an improved version of the Nokia N78, and the only thing that really improved is the camera, Nokia added a 5 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss lens. The reason Nokia recalls style is that they allow you to switch Xpress-on covers with the following colours: light sea blue, espresso brown, olive green, white and coral red. Three of those come in the box. The specifications aren’t bad at all, there’s GPS, a 3.5mm audio jack, sliding lock, HSDPA, an included 4GB microSD memory card, FM Transmitter, a Friendster widget, and 10 NGage games, with one free licence. The N79 will retail at 350€ w.s.o.t.

A “style” highlight is that the phone can change themes by auto-detecting what cover you attach to it…pretty cool. There is an accelerometer as well as a navi-wheel for improved navigation.

To tell you the truth, the only reason why I see Nokia launching such a phone is to get rid of the stock. The manufacturer has noticed that they need to start releasing phones that can stand up against the upcoming 8 megapixel camera-phones and touchscreen-phones from their competitors, so they thought it was a good idea to just dump lots of phones into the market, for the user to have some choice in NSeries, and not just go for the other brands. What happens is that the consumer will get confused. Now I don’t do any market research unlike the Nokia boffins, but I’ve been around long enough to notice that. Let’s say a person wants a Nokia N78, and he suddenly sees a Nokia N79, and he thinks to himself: “I will wait and buy it as it’s better”. Now you can see that this is bad timing as well. Nokia has just released the N78 to the retail market, and suddenly it opens the doors to the N79, which is a higher-end phone which will cost less, and make the consumer wait for it, which will translate in a loss of revenue for the N78. If Nokia wanted to put the N79 into the market, they should do it either at the same time, or 3 months later, and here is the news: The N79 is coming three months after the N78, but the consumer doesn’t know that, and thinks it will be worth the wait, and once again I say, Nokia will lose money.

If you disagree with anything, please do comment and share your views with me. If you do agree, please also state your points. It’s interesting to analyse Nokia’s current strategy.

Press release and pictures after the jump. Also do check out the promotion video, and the demo video. Jason Goh from Symbian Smashpop has been at the launch event, and had a hands-on moment with the device, check the video out.

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