Nokia 7710

If you thought the line between handhelds and handphones was blur, this new design from Nokia will definitely confuse you further. Banking on the rising trend of handphones multitasking as media centers and mobile offices, the 7710 shakes off its identity crisis and emerges a jack-of-all-trades.

Design
The first wow factor of the 7710 is the wide-format, 640 x 320-pixel touch screen. Using the Series 90 platform, the Nokia 7710 can be set to display six large menu icons at a time so no squinting is necessary. However, the 65K-color display, though sufficiently bright, isn't outstandingly vivid when compared with excellent TFTs of other Samsung and Mitsubishi models.

Build-wise, the phone is a sturdy number but hefty at 189g. The default silver cover is a definite improvement over the black, now retracted Nokia 7700. However, when compared with rival portable media phones on the market such as Motorola's E680, the 7710's considerable size may be a turnoff to some.

Although the stylus acts as the primary input method, the phone does feature a collection of nine quick access buttons and a four-way direction pad. However, we find ourselves using the stylus most of the time as operation is faster.

The handwriting recognition system of the 7710 allows you to scribble letters as you normally would on pen and paper. There's room for improvement, though, as writing the character "T" often churns out a space and the letter "I" instead. The virtual QWERTY keyboard is amply spaced-out and allows for speedier usage. Chinese text input isn't supported, though.

The supplied carrying case doesn't have a belt clip and muffles the poorly positioned speaker, while the lack of any external volume controls makes matters worse. To its credit, the leather flap protects the screen and users don't have to remove the whole casing to use the phone.

Features
The 7710’s strengths lie in its audio and visual media features. These include: Video-capable 1-megapixel camera with 2x digital zoom; video playback in popular formats like MPEG-4 and Real Video 8; WAV and MP3 music support; and image viewing of JPEGs and even animated GIFs. Being able to record up to 1 hour of video should easily suffice most users. However, there is a 1-second shutter lag and practically no imaging tweaks. Browsing stored images isn't the smoothest of experience with sluggish load times.

Sound quality of the music playback is excellent and the 7710 is capable of strong bass, something often bereft in other phones currently available. The supplied earpieces, though stereo-enabled, aren't particularly comfortable. Besides handling FM radio with excellent reception, Nokia's Visual Radio program allows you to purchase and download songs as you listen to them on the radio. However, this feature is still pending the installation of required infrastructure by local broadcast stations.

With a generous 90MB of RAM and supplied 128MB MMC card with support for up to 512MB, the 7710 has ample memory to store all your files. However, pushing its capabilities to the limit isn't recommended as we occasionally encountered prompts of insufficient memory when opening applications on our test unit.

Apart from the usual PIM features, the 7710 can also handle Microsoft documents, do voice recordings and even some basic image editing with the preinstalled Sketch software. Web surfing on the same Opera browser that the Nokia 9500 uses is a pleasant experience with the display's horizontal orientation. This is further enhanced by the browser's ability to display Web sites using Flash 6. The phone is also EDGE-enabled but the technology is currently unavailable in Singapore.

In terms of connectivity, the lack of infrared is offset by the inclusion of a data cable. Otherwise, Bluetooth works well without a hitch. The flight mode, designed specially for the frequent flyer, turns off all radio features that will affect airplanes.

Although the design of the phone also brings to mind the Nokia N-Gage QD, no games are preloaded in the 7710. However, the horizontal screen makes for a great experience when playing your favorite Java game.

Reception, Battery Life And SAR
During our testing, we didn't fancy using the phone like a normal candy-bar handset due to its size and speaker location. However, we had no problems with either reception or voice quality when using either the headset or speakerphone function.

Despite having a replaceable, high-capacity 1,300mAh Lithium-ion battery, the phone was good for only about one-and-a-half days on moderate usage. On the other hand, the 7710 delivered over 15 hours of continuous music playback, much longer that the 7 hours managed by the E680.

The highest SAR value for this handset is 0.53W/kg, which meets international guidelines for exposure to radio waves.

Conclusion
The 7710 isn't the smallest, most user-friendly phone around. Nor is it a Wi-Fi-toting, work-heavy mobile like the Nokia 9500. However, this latest Nokia offering has a long list of cool features which should appeal to anyone eager for entertainment and work on-the-go.