Nokia 7600 review in the old - this mobile is very classic for you

Nokia once again proves its successful marketing strategy. It’s simple; release the phones, when they should be released- right now, not in the future. Even by releasing the UMTS phone 6650, Nokia kept to their strategy, you can buy this phone in countries that don’t even have UMTS-networks. A lot of users choose these types of models because it’s a sign of prestige, mostly due to the price and amount of the released handsets. On the other hand, Nokia 6650’s design and size resulted in poor sales. This is why the 7600 was introduced. As you’ve already guessed, it’s the same 6650, but in a different casing. It’s not a smartphone.

The phone looks unusual; almost square, shaped a little like a water drop. The sides are made a bit oval, which results in great ergonomics and it fits in your hand nicely. At first it becomes rather unaccustomed to talk on the phone. Even though, after using Nokia’s N-Gage this seemed alright. The size 87õ78õ18.6 mm is not typical for UMTS-phones, although its capacity remained the same (103 cbcm), this was made possible due to a new casing. The phone’s weight is typical as well, 123 grams. The 7600 is a little lighter than the 6650, but the battery also has a smaller capacity. The phone comes in two colours: yellow and grey.

The keypad is located around the screen with a blue backlight, giving a futuristic look, however when using it for a while it gets obvious that it’s not as good as an ordinary keyboard layout. An almost identical design is used in the smartphone Siemens SX1.

The speaker is located on the top left corner and the microphone is on the other side of the phone. The volume control and IrDA are located on the left side, and the camera- and Power buttons are on the right side. The Pop-port is located on the bottom, which is custom.

The TFT screen supports up to 65000 colours, but the picture looks a lot worse than on Samsung phones because of less saturation and contrast.

The display’s resolution is 128x160 pixels (32x40 mm), displaying up to six lines of text, and an extra line is used for service needs. No changes from previous models with same amount of colours were made, but the screen’s larger size allowed the developers to use bigger font, and as a result readability has greatly improved.

The camera is located on the back of the phone, it’s similar to the one used in the Nokia 6650 (VGA-resolution).

This model is shipped with a Li-Ion 850 mAh battery. Nokia claims that the phone will work up to two hours and 20 minutes when talking, and about 350 hours in standby-mode. We tested the phone in Moscow, where it worked for about two days with 50 minutes of phone conversation daily, and a minimum amount of time using the other phone features.

Menu

The introduction of the joystick has led to a new sign appearing on the screen during stand by mode – Menu, it’s located in the center of the screen. The left and right soft-keys are used for the Gallery and Phone book, but they can be changed to any other functions.

You can access the Phone book, Organizer and Messages with the help of the joystick by pressing it in the direction you want. You can’t enable other functions to the joystick which is disappointing.

The menu looks unusual for Nokia phones – showing a vertical list of items, with their titles on the right, and it utilizes more of the screen and seems more convenient to me. You can navigate with shortcut number navigation. Let’s review the basic features of the phone.

29mb of memory are dedicated to your needs and it is used dynamically. (see below)

Phone book. The Phone book features are similar to the ones of the Nokia 6610 and 6100 etc. Up to three numbers and one line of text can be added for each entry. As mentioned above, the memory is used dynamically, which means that if you have less than 300 numbers, you’ll be able to save to about 4-5 numbers and 4 text fields for each contact. Groups are present. You can make 50 voice dials, which works well.

Both the SIM and the phone’s memory can be viewed simultaneously, with functions for copying entries from SIM to memory and vice versa.

Messages. The phone can store and send joined messages (up to 459 characters), and it’s obvious that Nokia Smart Messaging is supported. T9 can be used while typing an sms, or if you feel like chatting – use the good old Chat function.

It is possible to create and receive MMS messages.

150 sms and 50 EMS messages can be stored. MMS messages use the rest of the memory together with Java, ring tones and images. 10 small images are also preinstalled, just like templates.

Call list. Consists of a traditional list of Received, Dialed and Missed calls. Each list can store up to 20 numbers. The call length and cost is shown here as well.

Profiles. Nothing extraordinary in this menu, just activate the profile you want, you can also set the time for a profile to be active and personalize each of them.

Settings. From here you can choose wallpaper, colour schemes, list of shortcuts used for right soft-key and auto key lock.

Camera. The built-in camera allows you to take pictures in VGA resolution and portrait mode (80x96 pixels) and the pictures are stored in JPEG format. When viewing pictures on the screen the quality is awful, however, after transferred to a PC they look slightly better, but still not as good as expected. The camera could be considered as a useless part of this mobile, since you can’t even set a picture in a phone book entry (which is pretty basic). The images can be used only as a wallpaper or an MMS attachment. Three types of image qualities are available, and despite Nokia claiming on their website that there is no Night Shot mode supported, it actually is present.

Video clips can be recorded at 15 frames per second with a maximum length of 2 and a half minutes. The quality is average and the sound is often out of sync. You can’t really make good use of this feature.

Gallery. All pictures made by camera, sound files, and other images are stored here. You have the ability to create folders which is common.

Organizer. This feature is similar to one used in other Nokia phones. You can enter 100 to 500 entries depending on their length. Automatic deletion of old entries can be enabled. The Calendar can be viewed monthly and dates can be accessed as well.

The To-Do List has the option to set a deadline for each entry.

The Alarm Clock is simple, you can only set it to a specific time.

This menu also features a program named ‘Wallet’, where you can store personal details about credit cards, passwords etc. and it requires a password to access entries.

Games. The phone doesn’t come with any games installed, but some of them are located on the CD which is shipping with the phone. Unfortunately, our package didn’t have it. Java is supported (MIDP 1.0), so you can download games or software from the internet.

Applications. A unit converter is the only preinstalled application.

Extra. Once again, nothing more than a Calculator, Timer, Stopwatch and settings for Voice Commands.

Connectivity. Settings for GPRS, IrDA and finally Bluetooth can be found here. The phone worked with the most of headsets, provided they have the latest firmware installed.

Services. A WAP browser v2.0 can be accessed from this menu.

Impressions

Since this phone is the almost identical to the Nokia 6650, except in a different case, we’ll just repeat the impressions from 6650. It’s a typical Nokia phone, nothing extraordinary is featured in this model. It works only in 900 and 1800 MHz GSM networks with no support for the 1900 MHz which seems strange. The polyphonic ringtone volume is loud enough, but the vibrating alert is weak. Surprisingly, you can use the Dictaphone to record a ringtone (up to 1 minute in length). Since the phone supports AMR files, you can transfer them together with messages. The Dictaphone works during both talk and standby mode.

A lot of features you expect to find in 3G phones are missing. A mail client or any additional multimedia functions are yet to be found. Voice marks, Dictaphone and joystick – well, I guess that’s it on this model.

The new type of display doesn’t look as good as it’s supposed to, and you just can’t see 65000 colours in it, it looks more like a great 4096 colour display. The extended memory is dedicated for the mp3 player, but we get the picture that 29mb is just not enough for this feature. The quality of the 16-tone polyphonic ringtones isn’t impressive and is no competition to any Korean phones.

Considering that the Nokia 7600 is an image phone, there is no real use in talking about its functions, the main thing of importance for the consumers is its unusual but nice design. We expect the phone will be popular mainly among youths and businessmen who like to stand out from the crowd and feel different. First shipments will begin in January 2004, the approximate price will be set at $400-$500, depending on how consumers will accept the phone.