Nokia 7205 Intrigue is a phone made for fashion conscious people and it looks very attractive. But sometimes, it feels that the manufacturer has tried too hard. For instance, the navigation array has a cross button for navigation instead of the traditional circular or square button. It took some time to get used to this button. The keypad of the phone has two options – faded pink and faded silver. I got the silver version in my labs for testing and both the handsets are same except for the change in color. The rows are separated by silver ridges, the keys are slippery and flat on the surface. I didn’t have much problems while typing long pieces of text. There is enough backlighting for the buttons. The letters and numbers on the buttons have standard size. Nokia 7205 Intrigue’s contact book can take 500 entries which is a bit small. Normally these phones take 1000 entries. A single entry can store multiple phone numbers and e-mail addresses. You can make groups of your friends  [...]

The Nokia N96 is an impressive smartphone that offers 16GB storage. It costs $776 for the unlocked version and offers advanced multimedia highlights that are enough to replace your portable video or MP3 player. Not only this, but the N96 also offers full wireless capabilities, GPS, 3G support, and productivity suite. It looks like its predecessor the Nokia N95 and keeps similar candy-bar and dual-slider design. The N96 is similar to the HTC Touch Pro in size. We like that the Nokia has employed few tweaks to the overall profile of the N96. You can slide down the phone to access the alphanumeric keypad. On sliding the screen at other side, the N96 will reveal the media playback controls. The screen rotates from portrait to landscape on accessing these keys, but it does not orient back to portrait mode automatically. It is quite annoying that you have to slide up the screen and down back for the same. On the down side, the N96’s performance is a bit sluggish and it froze occasionally.

Like other N-series smartphone, the Nokia N79 definitely has excellent and advanced multimedia features including 5-megapixel camera with dual LED flash. It uses the Symbian operating system and offers complete wireless options, nice email feature and productivity suite. The N79 comes unlocked and available for $429 from the Nokia store and online retailers. The smartphone ships with three XpressOn covers (back plates) in red, white and brown colors. This gives freedom to personalize the N79’s overall look. However, the Nokia N79 suffers with some drawbacks including non-touch display, cramped dial-pad and navigation controls. It is important to mention here that the both N79 and the N96 shares most of the features. If you can work without a touch-screen, then the N79 is a good smartphone to buy. 2.4 inches display of the Nokia N79 has 320×240 pixels resolution that supports 16 million colors. It features inbuilt accelerometer to rotate the display on tilting the phone. The navigation  [...]

The Nokia 7705 Twist has a strange swivel design. The Sony Ericsson W600i also had swivel design that remained fine for some time and then flew apart after continuous usage in one month. However, Nokia had improved the design for its 7705 Twist handset. You can open and close it using one hand and move it from center to a corner.  This mechanism feels sturdy, but the long-term durability is on doubt. The Twist has minimalist and clean profile, but is a bit new wave. It will get appearance on the streets. The 7705 Twist offers comfortable keyboard and a good range of features. You can buy it for $99.99 with Verizon Wireless agreement after a $50 mail-in-rebate. However, the volume remains low during call and the captured photo quality is poor. The overall design looks polarizing with small display and 2.5mm headset jack. We will prefer the Nokia to include a 3.5mm headset jack and universal standard charger jack in further models. The new addition is contact ring on the pivot point that  [...]

Nokia is launching a few Symbian smartphones in past years, especially the E series remains quite. The E50 series smartphones are more attractive and business-centric than others. Now, the company has launched its flagship smartphone – Nokia E55 that has both multimedia and productive features. Its productive feature set includes PC-sync, 3G support, Wi-Fi, Nokia Ovi Maps with GPS and all email capabilities. Moreover, the multimedia features are 3.5mm headset jack, music player and 3.2-megapixel camera with video recording. Nokia E55 was debuted in Mobile World Congress at Barcelona. The company has announced that the E55 is the thinnest smartphone in the world till now. Its unlocked version has a price tag of $339. Its hybrid keyboard and especially superslim profile is the biggest appeal. It also offers great call quality. The only one drawback is that its keyboard has a bit squishier keys. If you need the thinnest smartphone with good feature set, 3.2-megapixel camera and excellent  [...]

Nokia N86 was firstly brought to us in the GSMA 2009 and it is on of the best camera phones amongst N-series with its 8-megapixel camera. The company has worked hard to replace point-and-shoot camera with the N86. We are not sure if the attempt is success full, but this camera is better than other cameras that you will find in phones. Quality is better both in video and photo. Nokia had also upgraded the phone design. It is not the only phone that offers 8-megapixel camera. Sony Ericsson Cyber-shot C905 offers 8.1-megapixel camera, whereas Samsung Memoir offers 8-megapixel camera. Unlocked Nokia N86 costs around $500, but continues to have Symbian operating system, outdated software and low resolution display. If you aren’t a shutter bug freak then we will recommend you to go for Palm Pre or Apple iPhone 3GS. Both of them offers better features, high-resolution touch screen and advanced operating system in less price. However, if you need a complete camera phone then you can buy Nokia  [...]

Nokia has given us good music phones, basic handsets and offbeat square models. Now, the manufacturer has launched the new Nokia Mural 6750 phone. Shiny and the slim handset is equipped with 3G support and PTT (Push-To-Talk). It feels solid in hand with the metal skin. The Nokia 6750 Mural phone comes with two-year AT&T service has a price of $49.99, which includes $50 for (mail-in) rebate. The Mural 6750 has inbuilt AT&T Navigator and a Where application for local search, which are based on integrated Assisted-GPS. Nokia representatives told us that the handset is made from 80 percent recycled plastic. The box packing has 25 percent recycled material and the user manual has 10 percent recycled paper. The handset is free from materials like CFCs, benzene and asbestos. Slim design of the Nokia Mural 6750 phone gives a bit of a dated look to the product. This is not a familiar territory for Nokia, its handset have been bulky in the past but were not much of a problem while carrying  [...]

Nokia phones are not that much of a hot property when it comes to smartphones in the US. The company launched Nokia Twist last month, which did not do too well. The new Nokia 2705 shade is the same handset that centrally features on basic communication and it supports the CDMA2000 1X 1900/800 band. The Shade is a folder type phone and costs around $29.99 with service. The performance is satisfactory and Shade 2705 has a thin design that does not draw attention. It feels a bit too fragile in our hands. You can change the covers; you get options of blue, red and green colors. The Shade is portable and gives a wispy almost toy like feel in the hand. You have to be careful with this phone as the plastic skin may not stand much of rough treatment. It has a 1.3 mega pixel digital camera. Keyboard buttons are more spacious and the navigation is easy. We really like the simple design of the Nokia 2705. It does not try to do anything wild out of the box. Call quality is very important in a cell  [...]

Nokia E72 is based on WCDMA (UMTS)/GSM. It has a candy bar design and supports the band: WCDMA (UMTS)/GSM 850/900/1800/1900. The basic features include vibrating alert, polyphonic ringer, speed dial, voice dialing, call timer, voice recorder and speakerphone. Nokia E72 offers conference calling up to six participants, quad-band world roaming and VoIP calls. Nokia E72 is powered by 600MHz processor and inbuilt 250 MB memory. The operating system is Symbian OS 9.3 Series 60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2. The phone offers synchronization with PC through MS Outlook and SyncML. The phone has a microSD card slot that supports up to 16GB. 2.36-inch LCD display has 320×240 pixels resolution that supports 24-bit (16.7 million) colors. Nokia E72 also has multi-language menu. The smartphone supports the wireless interface of IEEE 802.11 b/g and Bluetooth 2.0 EDR. The speech codecs are FF, HR, EFR and AMR. 5-mega pixel built-in camera has a 5x digital zoom and focal length of 4.7 mm. The camera’s  [...]