Nokia 7650

Print

Email

Bookmark

Share

The 7650 is Nokia's breakthrough product--offering an integrated camera, color screen and multimedia messaging service, among other high-end features. With this phone, Nokia is selling more than a handset; it is evangelizing a new way of using mobiles.

Chunky
In Asia, there has been a trend towards miniscule cell phones, culminating in the credit card-sized Ericsson T66 earlier this year. The 154g Nokia 7650, with a considerable girth of 26mm, is therefore a brave departure from the norm.

In this case, though, the 7650's bulk could be forgivable given the amount of real estate devoted to the display. The large 4,096-color screen is bright and sharp, easily displaying 10 lines of text.

A knobbly, mini rubber joystick lies below the screen, allowing for intuitive navigation. There's also a standard numeric keypad, a tray that slides out from the back of the phone. This, of course, adds thickness to the handset. When extended, the length of the 7650 goes from 114mm to about 150mm. For some, this is a phone for the bag, not the pocket.

Nokia is usually adept at touching up its high-end phones cosmetically; note the smooth, sleek finishes of the 8855 and 8910. It thus comes as a surprise that the 7650 sports a dull gray-green paint job that looks slightly plasticky.

New Interface
The 7650 runs on Symbian OS and uses an icon-based menu system similar to that on desktop and handheld computers. The phone doesn't support pen input, so navigation is done with the mini joystick while text is entered using the keypad.

This dual interface may sound complicated but it is evident Nokia has put much thought into making this intuitive. The 7650, with all its functions, can be fully operated using just one hand. Without extending the numeric keypad, it is possible to perform several tasks such as making calls and playing games. You only have to extend the keypad when typing text messages or taking pictures.

The Symbian OS is highly responsive--it takes a second for programs to load. In addition, multi-tasking is supported so various programs can be running at each time. Pressing and holding down the "Menu" key calls up a list of running programs, making it easy to switch from one to the other.

Say Cheese
The most important feature of the 7650 is its digital imaging function. Nokia, living up to its reputation for keeping things simple, has implemented this in a straightforward, three-step process.

In its normal, retracted position, the keypad covers the back of the phone, hiding and protecting the camera eye. So the first step in activating the camera is to fully extend it, exposing the lens.

A single press of a preprogrammed soft key puts the phone in instant camera mode. Here, the display screen becomes the camera's viewfinder, and does a credible enough job. Colors are accurately reproduced onscreen, although dithering can sometimes be detected due to the limitations of the 12-bit screen.

The accurate color reproduction and high-res screen make it easier to frame shots. When you're set to snap, depress the mini joystick and, voila!, you hear a simulated "click" sound and the shot is taken. At a size of 30kb per picture, you can store hundreds of these in the 3.6MB dynamic memory of the 7650.

The handset doesn't offer functions such as zoom or flash, though. But it does provide a picture resolution of up to 640 x 480 pixels and a special mode for low-light photography. Don't expect the image quality to be great. Color tones are reproduced accurately, but photographs tend to look unfocused.

At its heart, the 7650's camera function is largely a party toy. It lacks the same quality or power that dedicated cameras have, with good reason. But for casual, spur-of-the-moment pictures, this is more than adequate.

Dispatching The Pictures
Imaging lies at the heart of the 7650. After taking a photo, there are several things you can do with it. You can choose a photo to use as the background picture of your 7650. Or you can utilize the phone's picture Caller Line Identification (CLI) to attach a person's photo to his entry in the contact list so that his face will appear onscreen each time he calls. Furthermore, a game called Mix Pix can slice your photos into little squares and mix these up so you can piece them back together for fun.

After snapping a picture, you can send this to someone else via Bluetooth, infrared or multimedia messaging service (MMS). MMS is, of course, another of the 7650's touted features. As outlined in a previous story, MMS, like its predecessor SMS, is easy to set up and use.

The MMS story is easy to tell: shoot a picture and send it instantly to your friends or loved ones anywhere. Singapore's mobile operator M1, for instance, talks about sharing "Sunshine Moments". What may be harder to sell is the cost of MMS. At a minimum of S$0.50 per message, MMS could easily burn a big hole in the pockets of users. That said, there will be times when a picture tells far more than 10 SMS messages.

Cutting-Edge Features
The 7650 contains some of Nokia's most advanced features. Apart from the integrated camera and MMS, it also offers Java 2 Micro Edition (J2ME), Bluetooth and polyphonic ringtones.

Nokia is a latecomer to the mobile polyphony scene, but the quality of the 7650's audio can rival most. The speaker is especially impressive. When there's an incoming message, the sound of the alert tone seems to envelope the surroundings. However, the 30 pre-installed ringtones vary in volume, so some of these may be too soft to hear.

The Bluetooth feature in the 7650 also deserves a mention. Sending pictures and information to a Sony Ericsson T68i via Bluetooth is effortless as both phones use the vCard standard. However, as with the 8910, Nokia's implementation of this wireless technology is limited here. The 7650 currently does not support Bluetooth headsets, a move that has displeased some readers.

SAR Rating
According to Nokia's official Web site, the 7650 measures 0.35W/kg on Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) tests. Based on the recommendations of the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP), this is well below the limit of 2.0W/kg. You can find Nokia's documentation here.

Reception, Voice Quality And Battery Life
The reception of the 7650 is average. Like many other phones, it failed to register signals in areas with poor network coverage. The normal voice quality from the phone was good, although the speakerphone function was erratic. Held at half an arm's length, the handset's microphone was sensitive enough to pick up my voice but the speakers did not offer sufficient volume for me to hear the other party well.

The 7650 has a special proximity sensor that automatically turns off the speakerphone mode when it senses something near so you don't accidentally get a blast of sound to your ear. This seems like a nifty feature to have, except it didn't seem to work very well on my set, leaving me rubbing my ear glumly.

According to Nokia, the Lithium-ion 750mAh battery is expected to offer a talktime of up to 4 hours or standby of 150 hours. In our real-world tests, it gave us two to three days, depending on how intensively you use the camera.

Although this is acceptable for a color-screen, full-featured phone, we wonder why Nokia has yet to migrate to higher-capacity Lithium-polymer batteries.

Conclusion
Nokia, not known for leading the technology line, goes out on a limb here with the 7650. Remarkably, it does most things right the first time round. At S$918 (with a two-year-plan), the price is acceptable for such a powerful device. There is much to like about the 7650, but if you don't need to be on the bleeding edge, you may want to wait on the sidelines a little longer. The 7650 is the first in many countries, but it certainly won't be the last. There are some intriguing camera-phone hybrids on the horizon: the 3G-capable Motorola A820; the PDA-phone Sony Ericsson P800; and the Japanese-style Panasonic GD88.