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This time when touchscreens were way overrated, an ordinary looking candy bar mobile phone with the usual-looking keypad is a sigh of relief. An addition to Nokia’s N-series, the N79 a mid-range phone that are sensible enough for the common user.

Laden with a very pleasing external and offering a comfortable grip, the Nokia N79 measures 110mm x 49mm x 15mm and weighs 97 grams. It features a flat number pad to give space to 2.4-in screen with clear and bright 320 x 240 pixels resolution. The screen is good enough to make us appreciate its multimedia offerings. The screen is also equipped with an accelerometer that responds accordingly to every turn of the hand.

Shortcut buttons are situated between the screen and the number pad. A Nokia Multimedia Key is located on the far left, just like the other N-series phones, which will takes its users to a revolving menu of multimedia offerings like Internet, music, photos, and gaming. The Navi wheel is reminiscent of the iPod’s scrolling capability, but not as responsive yet still works well, and you can enable/disable this function. There is also a slider on the top edge of the handset that locks and unlocks the phone.

Customize N97′s shell among three Xpress-on back plates choices (brown, lime green and blue), although you can only replace the back, with the front portion remains at white. No problems with this though, because the front and back’s theme will definitely match.

Connectivity options in the N79 include 3G with HSDPA with download speeds to 3.6Mbps and Wi-Fi. It supports quad-band GSM, GPRS and EDGE. Two-way video calling is possible with the N79, with its front camera and a 5MP main camera equipped with Carl Zeiss lens on the rear. It has a dual LED flash auto focus and a macro mode that helps take the best indoor shoots. Overall image quality is good, although capturing moving images is a little tricky because of high shutter lag.

Music is a high point in the N79. It has stereo speakers located on the upper and lower right edge of the phone that produce nice and loud sounds. A 3.5mm headset jack is located on the top edge of the phone. Listen to music for ten straight hours and the battery can deal with it.

It is equipped with 50MB of internal memory and a microSD card slot that can handle a 4GB card for your files. It has FM radio and an FM transmitter and support for Nokia Music Store. You can also download games with this, being a N-gage phone.

Another wow factor in the N79 is the built-in GPS receiver and pre-installed Nokia Maps that works well with the accelerometer. Other productivity tools include calculator, calendar, PDF reader, unit converter, notes taker and QuickOffice for reading Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents.

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LG is the new Nokia, or at least keeping up with Nokia in terms of introducing new mobile phones in the market. After the release of its Prada II and KC780 welcomes the LG Arena KM900, another of those touch-screen handsets, but it features a 3D user interface which has never existed in other mobile phones. LG’s latest also plays DiVx and Xvid videos to be catered by the 8GB built-in memory that can be expanded through the SDHC-compatible microSD card slot.

Measuring at 105.9mm x 55.3mm x 11.95mm thick and weighing at 105 grams, the LG Arena is a good-sized phone although it is too light that some may suspect that it is a cheaper handset (which is actually in the contrary). There are almost no side buttons except for the camera button and a volume rocker and the on/off switch on top. A sliding cover protects the power connector, which is also keeps the phone from absorbing dust. There is also a 3.5mm headset connector on the top edge. The LG Arena gives a kick-off design with mercury grey titanium backplate and a silver outer frame and black inner frame. It also features a fingermark magnet glass covering, but adds extra durability to the phone.

Generally, the Arena almost has the same look and feel compared to most full-face touchscreens (read: iTouch). It features a 3-inch screen with 480 x 800 pixels. Call and End/back buttons and a button that calls up the 3D user interface are beneath it.

Talking of 3D, this is the biggest buzz on this LG gadget, which is a victim of high expectations. Press the center button and a cube pops up in the middle of the screen that represents four home screens: shortcuts screen for the nine most used apps, a multimedia screen, a contacts screen and a customizable widgets screen. Tap a screen and it animates up into a full screen. A word like “3D” is a little heavy sounding feature in that LG’s attempt to showcase through a meager flicking cube is a little disappointing and anti-climactic.

Type texts and dial numbers using either the QWERTY keypad (in landscape) the mobile phone layout in portrait mode. Using the QWERTY is a little struggle. It also included an accelerometer for automatically changing the view according the way you hold the phone.

Connectivity options are promising for the Arena. It has 3G with HSDPA to 7.2Mbps. It has Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS as well. The camera in front is designed for two-way video calling. Browsing on the large screen is easy with full page rendering, finger panning and pinch zooming possible. It is also equipped with TV-out capability.

Other impressive features in the Arena are music playback from Dolby Mobile, 5MP camera and software like Google Maps, G-mail, YouTube and Blogger, LG’s M-Toy tool, Movie Maker, alarms, a calendar, memo pad, stopwatch, voice recorder, calculator, world clock and unit converter.

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