Nokia 6220 Classic Review

Reviewed by: Andrew Lim

Camera phones with 5-megapixel snappers are all the rage these days, but they're often too heavy or lacking a good flash. Nokia's 6220 Classic offers a more lightweight alternative and a xenon flash among its myriad features. Is it the perfect, pocketable solution?

The Nokia 6220 Classic is currently available for free on a monthly contract from most networks.

Design
As the name suggests, this is a classic-looking phone. A standard candy-bar handset, the 6220 Classic features a medium-sized screen, which is bright and sharp, and a flat but sensible keypad. Unusually, the 6220 sports a black glossy front and a matte grey finish with a grainy texture on the back. It's a strange combination that offsets the smooth feeling of the front.

Considering how many features are crammed into this handset, it's rather small and light, but not so petite that you feel you need to handle it with care. We accidentally dropped it from waist-height a few times and it survived unscathed.

It's the camera on the back that we're really interested in, though. Similar to the Nokia N82, the 6220 Classic comes with a 5-megapixel camera that sports a xenon flash and is protected by a sliding cover. To use the camera, you simply slide the cover open and click the dedicated shutter button on the side.

If you look closely on the left side of the phone, you'll also notice another dedicated button that gives you access to Nokia Maps and activates the assisted GPS. Above the button is a useful blue light, which flashes if the GPS is on.

So far, so good: all the buttons are in the right place, the screen is easy to view and the camera packs all the right design features. Unfortunately, there's one area of the 6220 Classic's design that disappointed us: the headphone jack. Unlike the Nokia N82's 3.5mm headphone jack that will work with any pair of normal 'phones, the 6220 Classic only comes with a 2.5mm jack. You either have to use the in-box headphones or buy a special pair.

Features
The 6220 Classic's star feature is its camera, boasting a similar spec to the Nokia N82's snapper. Slide the protective cover open and the 5-megapixel camera is automatically activated, although it does take a few seconds to start up.

We found pictures taken with the Classic's camera came out looking good on the 6220's screen but less sharp than we expected when viewed on a monitor. Compared to the quality of picture from N82's camera, our results weren't as well balanced.

Happily, low light performance impressed us. The xenon flash provided a high level of illumination and, in our opinion, is much better than using a camera phone with an LED photo light. The xenon flash is particularly useful at night because it's so bright.

You can transfer your pictures using the phone's HSDPA or Bluetooth options and you can add the picture's location using the built-in GPS. Simply upload your pictures to sites like Flickr and then pinpoint them on a map. The Classic's assisted GPS manages to find your location fairly quickly, too. We tested it out with Google Maps and it worked well, which is very handy when you're lost and need to find your way home.

If you want to see your pictures on the Web, you can use your 6220 Classic to browse sites using Nokia's own browser or you can download Opera Mini. While the screen isn't iPhone 3G-size, browsing the Internet isn't too uncomfortable.

HSPDA (3.5G) helps make this Web surfing much quicker. We do wish that the 6220 Classic also had Wi-Fi, similar to the N82. The lack of Wi-Fi means that you'd better get a flat-rate data contract if you don't want to incur massive data charges.

Performance
Battery life was adequate and didn't present any unexpected highs or lows. We found that with moderate use, we managed to get around two days but obviously that figure decreased when we used HSDPA and GPS more often.

Conclusion
Playing it safe, Nokia has stuck to a tried and tested candy-bar design, but still manages to pack in enough features to keep most people happy. It's definitely more attractive than the similarly-specced N82, but the camera isn't as good.

If you're looking for a compact camera phone with a xenon flash, it's worth having a look at the 6220 Classic. Alternatively, the Nokia N82 will give you more bite with its excellent snapper.

Edited by Shannon Doubleday

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Samsung F400 Review

Reviewed by: Nate Lanxon

Remember the £600 Samsung Bang & Olufsen Serene handset? So do we, and not because we ponied up the cash to buy one -- it was preposterous. Bangsung, as we like to call the joint entity, now has a slicker, more affordable music phone on the market: the F400.

It's out now with deals from O2 and several other networks, from free on contracts from £25 a month, and around £220 SIM-free.

Design
One of the most important aspects of the F400's design is the native 3.5mm headphone socket -- there's no need to use any bundled cables to connect your favourite 'phones to the handset. This may seem like a given, but even some of the highest-end music phones lack this simple feature.

Playing host to this headphone socket is a generally solid-feeling dual-slider chassis. It's not the most slimline of phones, or the lightest, but it's well-built and pretty rugged. What it isn't is a cute phone designed for life in your skinny jeans' pockets, unless you really want to feel that it's there.

This is partly to do with the integrated Bang & Olufsen mini-speakers, located behind the screen and revealed by sliding the screen downwards. Slide it upwards and there's also a terrific chunky keypad that's dead easy to text on at speed -- we were up to our usual texting pace within a day of getting used to it.

Slide the screen down to reveal the B&O speakers

The 56mm (2.2-inch) 240x320-pixel screen is clear and easy to read, but its glossy plastic coating makes it a poor performer outdoors when the sun's out.

Features
Behind this distinctly average screen, aside from the cute speakers, is a microSD slot for expanding the 20MB of internal memory up to 2GB. This helps store pictures and MPEG-4 video captured by the 3-megapixel camera, itself backed up with an LED flash.

The most common audio formats are supported by the F400, including MP3, unprotected AAC and WMA. Purchased content from online stores should be compatible, and we had no problem playing songs purchased from Napster. Built-in stereo Bluetooth (A2DP) will beam these files to wireless headphones.

Videos enjoy less usability, not only because they're less accessible than music within the phone, but because strict file formats, bit rates and resolutions of video files must be obeyed. To make things easier, Samsung includes a fairly usable bit of software that allows novices and advanced users to tweak the video conversion setup, but it's not a particularly friendly process for anyone. To be fair, very few phones make this rigmarole easy.

With 3.2Mbps HSDPA data connectivity, browsing the Web is reasonably speedy. And although the built-in browser is pretty basic, installing the terrific -- and free -- Opera Mini browser turns the F400 into an enjoyable device to browse the Web with, even if the average screen quality somewhat hinders the readability of small text.

The usual phone applications are included as well, such as a calendar, voice recorder, world clock and calculator, and Java games and apps are supported.

Performance
As a portable music player, the F400 falls short of competing with the likes of dedicated players from Apple, Creative and Sony. Compared to music phones, both the iPhone 3G and Motorola Rokr E8 offer dedicated 3.5mm headphone sockets and the former certainly offers greater audio quality.

One thing we noticed is a not-too-subtle distortion with bass. During Ingrid Michaelson's beautiful track Masochist, there was a distinct distortion, or 'rattle', that accompanied the bass-heavy kick drum.

The 3-megapixel camera has an LED flash for low-light snaps

We compared the F400's sound quality with the iPod classic's, with the same lossless-encoded tracks, and through the same studio-grade reference headphones, and felt the F400 was definitely the weaker performer. The classic offered a slightly cleaner sound and an improved sense of spaciousness.

Normally we wouldn't compare a music phone to a £250 dedicated music device, but the F400 is pitched as offering "breathtaking sound quality" and features audio by Bang and Olufsen, so we felt it necessary to give it a real run for its money.

We genuinely believe most people will be more than happy with its performance however, and indeed most sub-£60 earphones aren't good enough to convey the F400's shortcomings anyway.

Though while the phone is generally easy enough to use, we never particularly enjoyed it -- certain oversights reek of unfinished software design. For example, there doesn't seem to be any easy way of browsing your music library without stopping the song currently playing.

Finally, call quality is certainly above average, but has a slightly dull tone -- clearer call experiences do exist.

Conclusion
The F400 excited us so much before we got to test it, but let us down once we started. It's still a good phone on the whole, but it feels at times almost unfinished, with occasionally annoying usability and no features that stand out from the crowd. And it's certainly no competition to dedicated MP3 players.

The Motorola Rokr E8 and Samsung F400 gave us similarly mixed feelings, but the Motorola has the edge as a music phone. The F400, on the other hand, has a better, flash-equipped camera, a friendlier design and improved usability in terms of texting and navigation.

Care about music in particular but nothing else that much? Choose the E8. Like music and usability equally? Choose the F400. You should also consider the Sony Ericsson W760i, an excellent phone despite its lack of a 3.5mm headphone socket.

Edited by Nick Hide

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Sony Ericsson Z750i Review

Reviewed by: Frank Lewis

With its mirrored finish and attention-grabbing colour scheme, Sony Ericsson is obviously aiming the Z750i at the style-conscious. This handset has substance too, however, thanks to its decent onboard music player, GPS and speedy HSDPA support. Our phone was supplied by 3, which offers the handset for free on most contracts.

Positives
The Z750i is available in either purple or silver, and as both variations have a mirrored finish, the handset certainly stands out from the crowd. The front of the phone also has a small OLED screen that remains hidden beneath the mirrored finish until you receive a call or start up the phone's music player when it suddenly springs into life. The screen only shows a single line of large text, but it's still useful and looks quite neat.

Flip the handset open and you'll be greeted by the excellent main screen. Not only is it large and brightly lit, but it also has a high resolution of 320x240 pixels, so pictures and text look crisp and sharp.

Sony Ericsson seems to be forever experimenting with different shaped keys for its ever more elaborate keypad designs. The Z750i is an exception to this rule, though. Its keypad is unusually spacious and has traditional, large and responsive keys that are a joy to text with. You also get dedicated call answer and hang up buttons along with three short cut keys and two soft buttons.

The phone supports HSDPA (3.5G) for fast download speeds and has twin cameras so you can use it to make video calls. It also has a built-in GPS chip and although there's no navigation software included, there is a link provided in the Location Services menu to Google Maps that can use the GPS coordinates from the phone to pinpoint your location. The chip seemed a little bit slow to lock on to our location when outdoors, however, and couldn't get a signal at all indoors.

Naturally Bluetooth is present too for transferring files to a laptop and there's 32MB of built-in memory. 3 supplies the handset with a 128MB M2 Memory Stick for storing pictures and music tracks.

As we've come to expect from Sony Ericsson phones, the handset's music player is excellent. It's very similar to the one found on the company's Walkman range of handsets, so track navigation is a cinch and the sound quality is top-notch.

The Z750i is also a good performer when it comes to battery life. You'll get around 9 hours of talk time from it and over 16 days on standby.

Negatives
The Z750i's camera is rather a letdown. It's only got a 2-megapixel resolution, so while shots look fine when viewed on the mobile's screen, transfer them to a PC and the lack of resolution quickly becomes apparent. The shutter speed is a tad on the slow side too, and because there's no side-mounted camera button it can be tricky to avoid taking blurry shots -- holding the phone steady enough while pressing the d-pad shutter button takes practice.

What's more, the camera lacks a micro mirror for taking self portraits and doesn't have any kind of flash. As a result if you try to take a shot in a dimly-lit club or pub, your friends are likely to be rendered as little more than a few grainy black bobs.

The Z750i's design isn't going to appeal to everyone. The handset is on the chunky side and the phone can look slightly awkward when it's open, because the hinge is not at the edge of the handset, but instead slightly further down the body of the phone. And although the mirrored finish on the front is initially quite easy on the eye, after you've used the phone for a while you'll be cursing the fact that it picks up more finger print than a forensics expert.

Conclusion
The Z750i is an accomplished budget 3G handset. You'll either love or loathe the design, but there's no doubting it's very easy to use and has a good screen and great keypad. If you're after a no-fuss handset with a dash of style, it's certainly worth a look.

Edited by Nick Hide
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Nokia 6650 Review

Reviewed by: Frank Lewis

A clamshell phone is something of a rarity from Nokia, so it's interesting to see the 6650 sporting a design that's not a million miles away from that of Motorola's Razr range. Some of Nokia's previous clamshell offerings, such as the N76, have been rather clumsy affairs, but with slimmer styling and onboard GPS, the 6650 looks to be a much more tempting proposition. It's currently exclusive to T-Mobile and available for free on most contracts.

Positives
There's no mistaking where the inspiration for the design of the 6650 came from. The phone looks so similar to the Razr you'd be forgiven for mumbling "knockoff" under your breath when you clap eyes on it. The 6650 may be slightly thicker than most of Moto's Razr models, but its metallic finish is very similar and when you flick it open it even has the same distinctive lip jutting out at the bottom of the keypad. Nokia's designers have added some of their own touches, however. One of the coolest is the keypad backlight, which can be changed between seven different colours, ranging from ruby red to sophisticated teal.

Because the 6650 runs Nokia's Series 60 operating system, you get plenty of applications, including RealPlayer for watching video files and Nokia's Flash Player for viewing Flash files. The phone supports HSDPA and can cope with download speeds of up to 3.6Mbps. It certainly feels very nippy when using the onboard Web browser.

That HSDPA connection also comes into play when you start making use of the phone's GPS features. Like most Nokia handsets, the 6650 doesn't store maps locally. Instead its Nokia Maps software uses the data connection to download maps on the fly as you need them. We found that the phone was a little slow when initially finding a lock on our position, but once it had the location established it was good at holding on to the signal -- even indoors, surprisingly. The Nokia Maps software is pretty easy to get to grips with and very handy when you're lost in a city. It also has a good Points of Interest database for looking up hotels, restaurants, car parks and public transport.

The 6650 doesn't shun entertainment features either. It uses proprietary headphones, but you can use them to either listen to MP3s, WMAs or AACs via the rather good music player application, or to tune into radio via the FM tuner.

Negatives
The 6650's camera is one of its weak points. We're getting used to seeing increasingly high megapixel counts on the latest phones, but the 6650's snapper has a resolution of just 2 megapixels. Its fine for taking the odd spur of the moment snap, but the res is so low the shots look smudgy when you transfer them to a PC screen. And although the camera does have a flash, it's a simple LED affair. The other issue is that Nokia hasn't kitted this handset out with a secondary camera, so you can't use it to make video calls, despite its 3G support.

Apart from the multicoloured keypad backlight, the 6650's design is also rather dull. It might have been heavily influenced by the Razr range, but it doesn't feel as well put together as those handsets and isn't as pretty to look at. The plasticky keypad is especially disappointing.

Conclusion
The 6650 is certainly packed with great features. The onboard GPS functionality works well and is a real boon when you're out and about. Download speeds are also speedy, thanks to the HSDPA support, and the onboard music player is first-rate. The poor camera and lacklustre styling are the only elements to let it down.

Edited by Nick Hide

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Sony Ericsson W980 Review

Reviewed by: Nate Lanxon

Flash memory is getting cheaper and more capacious by the month and gadget makers are falling over themselves to shoehorn the stuff into their latest kit. In this feature-packed new clamshell phone from Sony Ericsson, 8GB of memory is crammed into the uber-stylish chassis.

The W980 Walkman will be out very soon, on a range of networks and price plans, or for around £350 SIM-free online. There's a good deal of excitement surrounding this phone, but is it going to justify it?

Design
For once on a clamshell phone, both the primary and secondary screens are excellent. Sony Ericsson has given the W980 a terrific, ultra-sharp primary screen with a 240x320-pixel resolution and awesome pixel density.

The external colour screen sports a lower resolution, but is dedicated to browsing music with its accompanying touch-sensitive buttons, making for quick music navigation.

Conversely we found the main keypad less enjoyable to use. The circular keys are spaced apart a little too much, requiring extended finger travel. Users with chubbier digits may find the small menu and call-handling buttons too minute. One quirk is that the buttons required for taking photos are exactly opposite the camera. This means your fingers naturally cover the lens when holding the phone up, which is mildly annoying.

It's a solid, sturdy phone, however, with plenty of strength in the hinge to survive life on the road. But like all Walkman phones, this Sony Ericsson has no 3.5mm headphone socket -- you have to use a horrible proprietary adaptor to connect your own headphones.

This adaptor, when attached to a standard pair of earphones, gives you about three metres of cabling to deal with. It's long enough to use as a skipping rope. Music phones need 3.5mm headphone sockets as standard.

Features
Still, inside the W980 is 3.6Mbps HSDPA data transmission, quad-band connectivity, A2DP stereo Bluetooth, 3D Java games, twin cameras for video calling, an FM radio and an FM transmitter for sending music to radio receivers, which works really well once you snag an empty part of the radio spectrum.

It's also got respectable support for Microsoft Exchange right out of the box, giving you BlackBerry-like push email, contacts and calendars over the air. We tried it out with our corporate email system and it worked perfectly. A terrific feature, if a little out of place on a music phone.

More relevant to its calling, the W980 is compatible with MP3, AAC, WAV, WMA and protected WMA format music files from Napster and 7digital et al. You can either drag and drop these files through Windows or sync them up with Windows Media Player.

In an iPhone-esque touch, screen orientation is handled by an internal accelerometer. Landscape photos, for example, rotate by simply flipping the handset on its side.

Unfortunately, the 3.2-megapixel camera doesn't have a flash, or a memory expansion slot. The 8GB of internal memory is a fair reason to consider omitting expandability, but we're all about having options.

Finally, forget the bundled Web browser included on the phone, and instead install the free Opera Mini browser. It's free, and it'll transform the W980 into a fast and enjoyable Web-browsing handset.

Performance
Sadly, apart from the sporadic feature addition, Sony Ericsson has failed to innovate in terms of software. The user experience is good, that's for sure, but it's little more than the same software inside a new case. In fact, the Xperia X1 is the only truly innovative thing we've seen the troubled manufacturer come out with in a long time.

The W980 is a pleasant phone to use, though, and it shouldn't give even the fairly technophobic any trouble.

Musically, it's a decent little performer. We tested with lossless WAV files and studio-grade reference headphones and noticed certain shortcomings, but as a little MP3 player for listening to music on the way to the shops, it's fine.

It isn't, however, as good as a dedicated player such as a Creative Zen or an iPod. These offer audibly superior sound quality, and are still preferable as music devices. If optimum sound performance is essential, very few phones on the market are hitting the mark yet anyway.

Conclusion
Not an innovative phone and not without subtle annoyances, such as the easily obscurable camera and the lack of a 3.5mm headphone socket, but in most other ways the W890 is terrific, and packed with features.

It wouldn't cause us to ditch our dedicated MP3 player, but it's ideal as a second music device for those times when carrying two gadgets isn't practical.

If you want a music phone that really is worth ditching your dedicated player for, consider Apple's iPhone 3G. Or if you want to steer clear of Apple but still use your own headphones easily, have a peek at the Motorola Rokr E8.

Edited by Nick Hide

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BlackBerry Bold 9000 Review

Reviewed by: Andrew Lim

Most people associate BlackBerry with business email, but things are about to change. The BlackBerry Bold is certainly aptly named: it's a very daring step into the world of all-in-one super-phones. The Bold's core features are still made of serious stuff, but with the addition of HSPDA (3.5G) and GPS, RIM hopes to capture a larger piece of the smart phone pie.

We boldly went where several reviewers will likely follow to see if the Bold lives up to its name. The BlackBerry Bold 9000 will launch around September for free on contracts from several networks, including 3, Orange, T-Mobile and Vodafone.

Design
The first thing you notice when you pop the Bold out of its box is its considerable width -- but this does allow for a full Qwerty keypad and a wide screen. Similar to the Nokia E71, the Bold's keypad is superb. Its keys are spread out just the right amount and they're raised at one edge so you can easily distinguish between each one.

As if a good keypad wasn't enough to grab our full attention, the Bold's screen is also impressive. RIM claims the Bold got its name during user testing, when many people remarked how 'bold' the screen looked. We can confirm that it is indeed very sharp -- excellent for watching videos or reading emails.

In between the bright screen and easy-to-use keypad there's a trackball similar to the one found on the BlackBerry Pearl, which some users like while others found fiddly. We think it works well and once you get used to it, it can make searching through lists or going through the menu very straightforward.

We've never been huge fans of the BlackBerry menu system, but the latest redesign takes the old icons in a much sexier direction. Gone are the naff icons on white -- behold an array of neon symbols, which still take some time to figure out but look far prettier than anything we've seen on a BlackBerry before.

Slightly less impressive is the faux-metal border that surrounds the keypad and screen -- it simply doesn't have the same quality feel as the Nokia E71's metal casing. Then there's the back, which houses a 2-megapixel camera and is covered in mock leather -- it's a bit 'BMW interior' for us but you may like it.

Features
Before the Bold came out we struggled to understand why RIM omitted certain features from its BlackBerries, such as HSDPA or Wi-Fi, but the Bold has it all. HSDPA and Wi-Fi are present and correct, offering high-speed email and Internet access almost everywhere you go, and GPS means you can accurately find out where you are.

Setting up email is fairly straightforward, depending on what you need, but if you're not going to use it to access your company email, you can use BlackBerry Internet Service to setup a variety of email accounts, including Microsoft Exchange. The Bold's Internet browser is equally easy to use, rendering pages in a desktop format, although it doesn't support Flash.

The GPS works well outdoors, but don't expect great things when you're indoors. Navigating around town, you can use BlackBerry Maps, which lets you do cool things such as sending your location to other people, but we prefer using Google Maps, which you can download from the Internet.

RIM understands that most people prefer using their own headphones to the ones in the box, so it's kindly included a standard 3.5mm headphone jack. We would have preferred it on the top or bottom of the Bold, but it's good to have it nevertheless. The music player is basic, but supports several formats and is usable enough.

Less satisfactory is the Bold's 2-megapixel camera. It didn't take great shots in daylight and with only an LED photo light, didn't overwhelm us at night either. It's fine if you just want to take the odd snap to send to your friends over MMS, but don't expect pictures to look great when you view them on a computer.

Performance
The Bold is a vast improvement over older BlackBerries and combined with a speedy processor (624MHz) offers a really punchy experience. You feel like it's delivering the kind of power you expect from a smart phone -- from browsing the Web to accessing apps, the Bold doesn't lag much at all.

It's worth mentioning that audio from the loudspeakers can be set to go very loud indeed, which is useful for hands-free or conference calls, although it still has the tinny quality you expect from a phone speaker.

Battery life is quoted at around 10 days standby and around 4 hours talk time. We found that with intermittent use of all the features it lasted around a day before needing to be recharged, which isn't bad considering everything you're likely to use it for.

Conclusion
For some time we were worried that RIM didn't understand the increasingly powerful consumer market. Businessmen were no longer content with boring business phones and the likes of Nokia were quickly moving in on its turf. But the Bold is a clear statement from RIM that it's listening to the market.

If you're a BlackBerry user, we seriously advise you to check out the Bold and even if you're only considering investing in a super-phone, we recommend you have a look too. This is RIM's pièce de resistance and will most definitely delight BlackBerry fans who refuse to get an iPhone.

Edited by Nick Hide

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Vodafone 725 Review

Reviewed by: Patrick Wignall

Priced at just £50, the 725 is an own-brand handset from Vodafone that's aiming to tempt you with the double whammy of a low price tag and an impressive range of features. But has Vodafone done enough with the 725 to persuade you from plumping for a higher-profile handset from the likes of Sony Ericsson and Nokia? It's available now direct from Vodafone.

Positives
The 725 is a fairly conservative-looking silver handset, but its traditional candybar form factor has been jazzed up with rounded edges and a black band running down either side of the handset, which nicely frames the glossy fascia. The black version has a silver band.

The keypad has largish keys, so you don't have to have the fingers of a small child to be able to get up to a decent texting speed. As well as the central d-pad for moving through the menus there's a pair of soft keys directly beneath the screen. Like most handsets sold by Vodafone these days, it comes with the company's traditional theme, so the icons and graphics look instantly familiar and the traditional grid layout of the menu system makes it a cinch to get to grips with.

The 725 is a 3G handset, so you'll have no problems downloading music tracks or video clips from Vodafone's Live service at a decent speed. There are also twin cameras mounted on the front and rear so you can use it for video calling too, although this will be of little use to most pay as you go users.

Vodafone has kitted out the handset with an MP3 player and as the phone supports A2DP Bluetooth, you can listen to tunes wirelessly on a stereo headset or beam the music to a wireless speaker kit such as the Logitech Pure-Fi Mobile. There's no headphone socket at all though, not even a proprietary one.

Call quality was very good, with the built-in speaker sounding crisp and clear in both normal and speakerphone modes. Battery life isn't half bad for a budget phone either. You can expect to get around 3 hours 30 minutes talk time from it, and it'll tick over on standby for around 14 days.

Negatives
Like many budget handsets, the 725 has a below-par camera that's only capable of capturing 2-megapixel images. Even without the resolution issue, the camera isn't great because colours tend to look washed-out and colours bleed into each other somewhat. It also lacks a flash, so shots down your dingy local boozer will just descend into a sea of black.

The phone's music player is also very basic in comparison to the ones found on handsets offered by Sony Ericsson and Nokia. For example, it doesn't support some common formats, such as WMA. The limited 20MB of memory also means you'll have to invest in a microSD card if you want to store more than couple of tunes.

Conclusion
The 725 is not the most advanced phone in the world. Certainly its camera could be better and its music player is a tad basic. For the price, however, it offers a good range of features and it is very easy to use. As such we think it's a good budget buy.

Edited by Nick Hide

http://reviews.cnet.co.uk

Vodafone 526 Review

Reviewed by: Frank Lewis

Among the usual line-up of handsets from manufacturers such as Sony Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung and Motorola, every now and then Vodafone slips in one of its own-branded phones. The 526 is a classic example. Priced at £30, it's aimed at pay as you go users looking for a bargain -- but can its low asking price tempt buyers away from the big-name brands?

Positives
The 526 may carry Vodafone branding, but the phone is actually made by French company Sagem. It's not surprising then that the design looks very similar to Sagem's other budget offerings, such as the my511X and my150X. That's no bad thing though because, like those handsets, the 526 has a certain air of French chic to it that makes its unfussy design quite visually appealing. The handset's slim and small frame also adds to its charm.

The 526 isn't exactly packed with features, but the lack of extras combined with the intuitive menu system means it's very easy to use.

There are also some neat shortcuts included in the user interface. For example, pressing the down key takes you directly to your contacts list, while hitting the call button in the main menu brings up a tabbed display showing your received and missed calls, as well as recently dialled numbers.

One of the best things about the phone is its keypad. The buttons are quite large and nicely spaced, so it's very easy to get up to a decent speed when texting.

Budget handsets never have fantastic battery life, but the 526 is not too shabby in this area, as it offers up 3 hours of talk time and around 220 hours of standby time.

Negatives
Vodafone has made a number of compromises with the 526 to keep a lid on costs. For starters, there's no connector for hooking it up to an external handset-free kit, so the only hands-free calling available is via the built-in speaker, which is on the quiet side.

If you live the life of a high-profile international man or woman of mystery, this handset isn't for you -- it's dual-band only, so it won't work in faraway lands like the US of A. It's also unlikely to appeal to music lovers because, unlike most modern handsets, it lacks an MP3 player.

The phone is also saddled with an older-style CSTN display rather than the modern-style LCDs used on pretty much all the latest phones. As a result, it has a limited range of colours and tends to look muddy and washed-out.

Conclusion
The 526 is a very basic handset that offers little in the way of superfluous features. It's definitely a case of what you see is what you get. But if you're just looking for a cheap handset that's easy to make calls with, it's certainly worth a look.

Edited by Marian Smith

http://reviews.cnet.co.uk/

Nokia 7310 Supernova Review

Reviewed by: Andrew Lim

Reviewed on: 3 September 2008

If you grew up during the early 90s you'll remember that certain Nokia handsets boasted removable covers. Some years later Nokia decided that swapping covers was rather passé, but now they're back -- and Nokia's latest handset to feature a fully removable case is the 7310 Supernova. It's available now SIM-free for around £120.

Design
The Nokia 7310 Supernova is a slim candybar phone that fits comfortably in a pocket. As with very old Nokia models you can completely remove the cover on the 7310 and swap it with other compatible covers. Unfortunately you're limited to a handful of designs compared to the plethora you used to be able to get when the removable covers craze was at its height -- ultimately making it a more boring product.

To give it a little more spice, the 7310's provided cover packs an extremely reflective screen and keypad, the result of which is that until the screen is activated, it looks like a mirror. Handy for a little emergency lippy, but it also means that in bright light, you might find it difficult to see clearly.

Features
Adding to the sense that this is a blast from the past, the 7310 is pretty thin on features. What you do get, though, is an easy-to-understand menu system that keeps things simple, while offering added functionality such as being able to display shortcuts on the start page.

There's an MP3 player that supports various formats including MP3 and AAC, and the option to store all your music on an external microSD card (up to 4GB). But be warned, the 7310 only has a 2.5mm headphone jack, so you have to use the headphones in the box or buy ones that fit -- standard 3.5mm headphones won't.

There's also an FM radio, Bluetooth and a 2-megapixel camera that's very basic -- no LED photo light or flash. If you're looking for a decent camera phone, steer clear; but if you just want to take the odd picture in well-lit locations for MMS messages, it'll suffice.

To add some extra functionality to the 7310 you can download and use a variety of third-party Java apps, such as Opera Mini, which makes browsing the Web much more enjoyable. Another app worth downloading is Fring; it lets you connect to a variety of IM clients, including MSN and Yahoo.

Performance
Battery life is quoted at 4 hours talk time and 300 hours on standby. Because there aren't that many features on the phone, we found we didn't use it that heavily and got around two days of moderate use out of it. It's worth pointing out that the loudspeaker worked surprisingly well and pumped out a fair amount of sound.

Conclusion
While we'd genuinely like to say that the Nokia 7310 Supernova has brought back exchangeable covers with a bang, that would be a lie. With a basic set of features and a limited number of covers, the 7310 is another straightforward Nokia phone that does the basics well, but doesn't inspire the cover-changing madness we miss so much.

Edited by Marian Smith

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Samsung Omnia i900 Review

Reviewed by: Andrew Lim

Reviewed on: 4 September 2008

Samsung continues to push deeper and further into every conceivable tech market, including every category of mobile phone. The next big thing to be added to its hefty mobile portfolio is the Samsung Omnia i900, a Windows Mobile smart phone that packs a cornucopia of features. But is this another Samsung touchscreen phone that fails to deliver?

The Omnia is available on several networks, including Orange and Vodafone, for free on a monthly contract. You can also buy it SIM-free at eXpansys for £480.

Design
Samsung's dalliances with touchscreen phones have been hit and miss, but the Omnia looks every part the high-end touchscreen phone you want it to be. A black and silver colour scheme gives it a serious look that echoes the iPhone's casing. What it doesn't have, unfortunately, is the iPhone's quality feel.

The Samsung Omnia feels a little on the light side and that's due to its plastic casing. In our opinion, it's inspiring to hold than the glass and plastic combo on the iPhone 3G or, better still, the glass and metal combo of the original iPhone. The Omnia's plastic screen in particular lacks the quality feel of the iPhone's glass one.

Casing materials aside, the Omnia is just about the right size. It's slim enough to put in a pocket comfortably, but the screen is large enough to enjoy watching videos or browsing the Web on. The Omnia is also pretty comfortable to make phone calls with using just one hand -- and there's not a stylus in sight.

The Omnia's screen is large and responsive but not always as accurate as we'd like

Features
While it doesn't always work, there's something admirable about Samsung's approach to features, which essentially consists of cramming as much stuff into a phone as possible. To start with the Omnia boasts both HSDPA and Wi-Fi, giving you high-speed access to your emails and the Web almost everywhere you go.

Like the HTC Touch Diamond, the Omnia comes pre-installed with Opera Mobile 9.5, which lets you browse full Web pages in a similar way to how you do on an iPhone -- allowing you to zoom in and out of pages by tapping the screen. The screen is not as responsive as the iPhone's when it comes to accurately tapping something, however.

Indeed, the Omnia's screen is a great point of contention for us, because while it isn't always as responsive as we'd like -- when scrolling, for example -- it's one of the most responsive Windows Mobile touchscreen devices out there. So while we'd like to say that it's as good as the iPhone's screen, we can't, but it is good compared to its Windows Mobile competition.

Samsung has done a superb job at making the Windows Mobile interface more finger-friendly, adding shortcut menus and large icons galore. It's fairly easy to navigate your way around, and unlike the HTC Touch Diamond's lag-inducing TouchFLO 3D interface, Samsung's additions don't seem to slow things down at all.

Given that it's Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional, you get all the Microsoft features you expect, including Exchange and Office support and the ability to edit documents -- something the iPhone can't do. You can also use Windows Messenger, which is handy if you regularly use it on a desktop and want a mobile instant-messaging solution.

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