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Handhelds Hardware

Review of Nokia 7250 - Triband GSM w/camera 144

Posted by michael from the things-to-fidget-with dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The new Nokia 7250 is out. Small, very cool looking phone that even has a built-in camera. 3 page review with 6 pages of photos, including a photo gallery of images taken by the 7250 itself - with some human help, of course."
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Review of Nokia 7250 - Triband GSM w/camera More

Review of Nokia 7250 - Triband GSM w/camera

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  • To me, that looks ugly. (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 09, 2003 @03:53PM (#5472382)
    It looks more like a remote control than a phone. I generally don't look at remote controls as cool.
    • And ignore great cdma phones like samsung. Is there a conspiracy amongst the editors? Do they all live in Europe? AFAIK this phone can't be used on sprint or verizon networks in the US. Maybe on AT&T. How about articles about cool non-GSM phones?
      • I don't know what Samsung CDMA phones are like, but Samsung GSM phones look nice but usually miss something like Bluetooth, HSCSD, EMS, a decent phonebook, or maybe even IR out.

        The only CDMA countries are the US, Canada, and South Korea (where Samsung is). The rest of the world is GSM. There's bound to be less choice. And it's probably a conspiracy too.

  • Already down :( (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Maybe they are hosting the site on one of them phones... Sorry couldn't help myself

  • First prime factorization post (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    7250 = 2 * 5^3 * 29
  • now we have visual information overload. no time to deciper the meaning of the data. does that make us less knowledgeable?

  • I'd rather have a pager (Score:4, Funny)

    by tcd004 ( 134130 ) on Sunday March 09, 2003 @04:00PM (#5472411) Homepage
    with a built in phone. I wonder if this phone takes photos. [lostbrain.com]

    Still, I prefer pagers. They don't cause brain cancer. [lostbrain.com]

    tcd004

  • Partial Text; Images (Score:5, Informative)

    by Scoria ( 264473 ) <`slashmail' `at' `initialized.org'> on Sunday March 09, 2003 @04:01PM (#5472414) Homepage
    The Slashdot Effect has already rendered this website inaccessible. Below is page one of the review:

    It is no secret that I was no big fan of the Nokia 7210. The feature set was good, the look was, well, interesting, and it had a lot of things going for it. It just had the world's worst keypad ever. The buttons had a strange shape, were not lined up properly, and the direction buttons were just so poorly designed that I was constantly hitting the wrong one.

    So in spite of a lot of potentially good things about the phone, I couldn't stand to use it.

    Fast forward a bit to the new 7250. It has a shape similar to the 7210. It, too, has very creatively designed keys and buttons. It comes in vivid colors and user changeable covers and has all of the features that the 7210 had. It even has something new, a built-in camera.

    The results of these few seemingly minor changes is astounding. The 7250 is an awesome phone.

    The 7250 has all of the features that you want in a phone, for the most part. It is triband GSM, it has a color display, polyphonic ringtones, Java, and a speakerphone function, too. Sure, it is missing Bluetooth, but I pretty much have given up on Nokia and Bluetooth ever really working well together. For as much as Nokia seems bent on getting others to use their UI standard (Series 60), they sure seem unable to play by somebody elses rules (those of the Bluetooth SIG).

    But outside of Bluetooth, this device has it all.

    Color rules
    Everything about the 7250 revolves around color, it seems. The covers are all very rich looking, with subtle textures looking like brushed metal. The color display is large and very bright, and it shows off the photos taken by the internal camera very well. In fact, I would say that the 7250's display and camera work better together than any pair I have seen on a mobile handset to date. When you take a photo with the internal camera and view it, it looks like how you saw it. Clear, bright, colorful.

    The display is not made of the most modern technology, though. It is a 4096 color passive matrix display, just like the earlier color Nokias. In my mind, 4096 colors is enough for a phone. I don't think you can really appreciate more colors on such a small display. The images are not large enough to be able to appreciate subtle tone changes that higher color depths offer. I do think that a switch to an active matrix display would be worth it, though. But not really for the brighter colors or such, but to avoid display ghosting.

    For the same reason that passive matrix displays were so unpopular on early color laptops, they should not be used here. Passive matrix displays show a lot of image ghosting in situations with high contrast (the calendar numbers on a white background) or fast action (the Bounce game). The ghosting in the 7250 is not as bad as the 7210, in that the calendar looks fine, but Bounce still does not look great. Any kind of scrolling game, like Bounce, demands an active matrix display. Triple Bop, on the other hand, runs and looks just fine as is.

    But outside of Bounce, I think the display and phone are well paired. As I mentioned before, the images from the new internal camera really shine on the phone's display - something that is pretty rare. The image quality from the internal camera is quite decent in general, but it lacks resolution. This is not a problem for use as a wallpaper on the phone, but it is an issue if you want to use the image on your PC. The maximum resolution for a photo is only 352x288, but for such small images they still look nice on a PC. I have included a number of samples in one of the following pages after the end of the review so you can see for yourself.

    The camera has 3 quality settings, Basic, Normal, High. I recommend using High at all times since the images are still very small (12K max, give or take), and the 7250 has so much free memory (5MB out of the box). That's plenty of room. There are two photo sizes, too: Standard and Portrait. Portrait shoots small images suitable for MMS messages. Perhaps the coolest thing the camera has is the Self-Timer function. This causes the phone to wait a few seconds before snapping the photo after you press the button, giving you time, presumably, to get into the photo. The problem with that scenario is that the phone is not very stable when standing on end. But I imagine that this would be useful in some situation, and it surely didn't cost anything to add the feature. So thumbs up.

    Considering the lack of a need for an attachment, the negligible impact on phone size, and the relative good quality of the images, I would have to say this is my favorite camera in a phone. I'd like more resolution, sure, but I prefer image quality to resolution, so this is a winner in my book.

    I've established a complete mirror [initialized.org] of the images referenced by Mobile Burn. Perhaps "The Mysterious Future" was intended to enable the creation of mirrors by subscribers.

    • page two and three (Score:3, Interesting)

      by - rayyyy - ( 637502 )
      here's the rest of the article:
      Great voice sound, only decent ring sound One of the things that really impressed me about the 7250 was the sound quality of the phone calls. Part of this is due to the internal speaker, of course, but I credit most of it to the really strong reception ability of the internal antenna. This handset holds a signal much better than the Sony Ericsson T68i or the Siemens S55, and this means that I get clear voice sound even the radio tower black hole where I am living outside of Philadelphia. Reception is very bad in my apartment, but the Nokia performed better than any phone I have used here - including a few with external an external antenna. The fore mentioned speakerphone function also provides good sound quality. It is decently loud, enough so to be used comfortably in a normal setting. I am not sure how it would function in a crowded board room or a moving automobile, though.

      The other aspect of sound in the 7250 did not leave me as impressed. Like most modern phones today, the 7250 has polyphonic sound. Unlike some other Nokias, though, the 7250's polyphonics are for the most part appropriately loud. And that's great, as it is my most common complaint. What it lacks is musical ability. The ringtones just sound a bit mechanical, especially when compared to last week's test of the Samsung SGH-S300. The sounds just don't match up. They are good, far better than what we first saw from Nokia (the 3510), but they just pale in comparison to some of the Asian handsets I have used. But as I said, they are still good, just not the best.

      Another sound related failing is the lack of voice dialing and voice commands. I really didn't think this was possible, but I have gone through the manual a few times - and I can not find anything regarding voice commands. This is a disappointment since I use that feature quite often. I'm sure many other people will be similarly disappointed. I guess we will have to resort to speed dials.

      The last sound related aspect of the 7250 would be the FM Radio. When attached to the supplied stereo headset, the 7250 can be used as a FM radio. The headset cable is used as the antenna, which is why the radio will not function without it. Even with the headset attached, though, there is no way to use the speakerphone function to listen to the radio. That's a shame, but Nokia does sell a stereo speaker cradle for the 7250 that you can place on your desk. I think that is a bit of overkill, though. In any event, the sound from the radio is good - provided you have a good signal. The auto tuning works pretty well, but seems to ignore a lot of stations that it considers to be weak. As such, a small change in your position can result in certain stations being ignored while new ones will be found by the auto tuning. You always have the ability to manually tune, too. I'm not sure what kind of effect running the radio will have on battery performance. I don't have enough time to let it run down and compare. And in case you were concerned, the radio turns itself off whenever the phone makes a sound or goes into a call state. You won't miss a call because of the radio.

      Sync it While the 7250 comes with no included software, it is compatible with Nokia's PC Suite v5.1. PC Suite is available for download on the Nokia site.

      PC Suite v5.1 has a lot of capabilities, including the ability to Synchronize the 7250's contacts with Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express, Lotus Notes, and Lotus Organizer. Synchronization was fast and simple after I accounted for the different names of the default folders in my German copy of Outlook 2002.

      There is a phone browser app in the suite that will allow you to download the assorted images and sounds from the phone to your PC. The phone browser can be accessed in the main PC Suite application like the rest of the PC Suite features, but best of all, it is integrated directly into the Windows Explorer. Whenever your phone has its IR port on and is lined up with a similar port on your PC, you can just cruise through the 7250's internal file system as if it was a random hard disk on your computer. Works well.

      The Phone Editor application lets you edit a small subset of the 7250's settings from your PC. The Phone Editor also lets you get at SMS messages that are stored on the phone and configure WAP settings and a few other things. Not as robust as some systems I have seen, but adequate.

      There are also a few multimedia related apps in the PC Suite. These include the Sound Converter and Image Converter. You use these apps to format your images and sounds from your PC into a format that the 7250 can use. The Content Copier application then lets you backup your phone to your PC, or to restore everything to your phone.

      All in all, the PC Suite worked well.

      Main Features The 7250 supports all of the main features you would expect. The message system is standard Nokia fare, and works well - even if it does not offer as large a selection of message types as others. The SMS system is everything you would expect from Nokia. Easy to use, fast text input (with T9, of course), and SMS profiles. The MMS editor was a bit on the weak side since it does not allow for the entering of sounds into a message, only text and images. It also does not seem possible to enter pauses and such. What is lacking is real email support. There is no POP/IMAP/SMTP support in the 7250, only a feeble SMS-Email gateway feature that won't be widely used. I wish it had real email support, as it would be nice to be able to send the photos direct to somebody's desk.

      The 7250's phone book is pretty good. It allows multiple numbers per contact, email addresses, street addresses, and note, too. You can tell it which number for each contact is the default number, but you can not set this globally for all contacts. You can define caller groups that the profile system can take advantage of, too. A few things lacking in the system would be T9 input in some fields (like notes) and the lack of picture caller ID. Considering the 7250 has a built-in camera, this seems like a glaring omission to me. The phonebook app also allows you to copy entries to/from the SIM card, and can make use of either the internal list, the SIM list, or both phone number lists when searching for a number.

      The profile system in the 7250 is pretty nice. It allows you to configure the 5 pre-defined profiles decently. You can rename them, change ringtones, enable/disable the vibration alert, etc. That's all par for the course, though. The more important feature for many people will be the ability to use timed profiles. Basically, you can turn a profile, such as meeting, and have the 7250 automatically rever back to the general profile at some pre-determined time when the meeting will be over. No more missing calls due to a muted phone. The profiles can also be configured to allow/disallow certain predefined caller groups, too. These same caller groups can have ringtones that override the default profile ringtone. In short, the 7250's profile system is really ready for business.

      The 7250's call register is top-notch. Not only can you track missed/received/dialed phone numbers, but you can also track GPRS usage. The GPRS counters separately track both data in and out, plus connection time. This will allow you to track your costs on most any of the current mobile networks. Easy to use, easy to reset. Nothing glamourous, but it does its job.

      The settings section of the phone will be nothing new to anybody that has used a Nokia phone in the past couple of years. Sure, there are some new things like the Memory Status feature, and a screen-saver timeout that can be set to virtually any length, but for the most part it is all something we have seen before. Except for one noteable exception. The first option deals with the settings of the right softkey. By default the right softkey looks up names, just as it has in virtually every other Nokia phone made in the past 5 years. But now it can do more. Working much like Sony Ericsson's Shortcuts or the Siemens My Favorites list, you can now pick and choose the features that will be selected when you press the right softkey from the standby display. This will give you much faster access to commonly used features. For some reason, perhaps historical, you can not remove Names from that list, so it is not possible to make that right softkey act as a one-touch access to a feature other than Names. But you will want to put a list of features in there anyway, so that is not a problem.

      Standard fare for a high-end phone these days is an assortment of PIM features. The 7250 covers this, too. The calendar app is useable, even if it is missing a weekly view. The To-Do list is simple, supporting just a short description and a priority, but makes up for that by allowing list entries to be saved to specific dates on the calendar. There is also an alarm clock thrown in to round things out. The Extras section of the 7250 offers up a few more related features, like a calculator, countdown timer, stopwatch, and wallet function.

      There are a few applications included in the 7250 right out of the box. Two games, Bounce and Triple Pop, and one utility - Converter II. Other Java based games and apps can be easily downloaded using the 7250's WAP browser. GPRS setup for WAP browsing was pretty painless, and the system worked well. I downloaded a few sample images and ringtones from the Club Nokia website without a hitch.

      Good to go That is pretty much everything. The 7250 has a lot of features, most of which that work really well. The new keypad layout is as usable as it is trendy looking, unlike that of the 7210. It has a great display, good audio capabilities, and a very usable internal camera. I only long for Bluetooth - proper Bluetooth that supported all manufacturers headsets and PC cards.

      But in the end, I have to highly recommend this phone. I like the 6100 a lot, I like the 7250 a lot more. Ignoring Bluetooth, this is my favorite candybar shaped phone on the market. You will love it.

      A ton of high-res photos are available on the following pages, including a small gallery of photos taken with the 7250's camera.
    • a ha!

      since I subscribe, I got to read the article in the mysterious future when it wasn't slashdotted! Some subscribers should make a mirror of the site when it's actually in the mysterious future....
      • Actually, I am considering the prospect of developing a web application that attempts to create mirrors of websites referenced by these Slashdot articles. This was my attempt to determine the amount of requisite bandwidth. ;)
      • Some subscribers should make a mirror of the site when it's actually in the mysterious future....
        Whenever I see an article from TMF, I do so. Of course, I only post the mirror if the site is hurting from /.'ing, since I've gotten flak over hosting mirrors for /.'d sites before.

        Curiously, though, I haven't gotten any hate mail for hosting mirrors ever since the dot-com collapse threw ad revenues into a tailspin. Odd, eh? You'd almost think that it must be a causal relationship.

        Jouster

  • But can it... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Quaoar ( 614366 ) on Sunday March 09, 2003 @04:01PM (#5472417)
    ...be set to stun mode?

  • I dunno.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Nogami_Saeko ( 466595 ) on Sunday March 09, 2003 @04:02PM (#5472423)
    It doesn't look all that great to me when compared with the SE P800...

    The server has already pretty-much melted down, but it's another Nokia phone - all of the cells that I've had in the last few years have been GSM Nokias - they perform pretty decently, are easy to navigate around, but there's nothing ever really revolutionary...

    I think my next phone will be the P800 - once the price drops a bit...

    N.

    • Re:I dunno.... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by 10Ghz ( 453478 ) on Sunday March 09, 2003 @04:15PM (#5472468)
      It doesn't look all that great to me when compared with the SE P800...


      Yeah, and my desktop is faster than top-of-the line PDA's, so why would anyone want a PDA? Seriously, you are comparing apples to oranges. 7250 is a phone with a camera. P800 is a phone/PDA-hybrid (like Nokia 9210), and it costs "a bit" more if I'm not mistaken. They are meant for entirely different markets.
    • I really like the features of the P800. The price is a bit shocking. But the kicker is that the P800 looks so... ugly. I think that the SonyEricsson designers need to go back to school. Nokia and Motorola make much prettier phones.
    • If you want something cutting edge, the P800 is well out of date already, Ericsson have missed their original release date by six months while sorting out the software.

  • If its anything like the Nokia 7650... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Chicane-UK ( 455253 ) <chicane-uk@@@ntlworld...com> on Sunday March 09, 2003 @04:05PM (#5472434) Homepage
    ..then it would be hard not to reccomend this phone.

    I bought myself the Ericsson T68i a few months ago which I thought was pretty good, but then borrowed a friends Nokia 7650 - despite the fact its a load bigger and heavier, the phone is a million times better than the T68i.

    Massive amounts of storage, the camera can take pictures of surprising quality, and a PDA like interface which is slick & colourful.

    This new Nokia can only be better! Wouldn't mind checking one out! :)
    • The 7650 is a totally different beast - Nokia should really do something about their numbering scheme, it sucks. The 7650 runs Series 60 on Symbian 6.0, the 7250 uses a closed (from an application developers point of view) custom OS.

  • ¨The colour balance of the camera (Score:5, Informative)

    by abhikhurana ( 325468 ) on Sunday March 09, 2003 @04:10PM (#5472454)
    The colour balance of the camera of 7250 is not good, too much red tinge in the pics. Overall I don0t like quality of photos taken by the internal camera. I like photography and atleast for me, small size of the lens is not an excuse for bad picture quality. Infact a I happened to use a prototype phone made by samsung as a friend of mine was working on that product, and the image quality was really good, 1024x768. In fact the picture quality of even Sony Ericsson P800 is much better than 7250. But I do like the fact that the reception of 7250 is better than T68i because that sucks sometimes.
    • That doesn't sound like something Photoshop can't fix. It's a phone which happens to have a built-in webcam--there's only so much picture quality you can expect.

      Incidentally, resolution is directly proportional to the focal ratio of a lens, i.e. for a given focal length a smaller-diameter lens will take worse pictures than a larger-diameter lens, so a small lens is actually a good excuse for bad picture quality. Of course the resolution of digital cameras is primarily limited by the size of the pixels on the array, so the lenses in these cameras are probably pretty bad since there's no point in wasting money on a good lens when all that resolution is going to be wasted on a crappy CCD or CMOS array.

  • Bluetooth missing is a show stopper (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Olentangy ( 118364 ) on Sunday March 09, 2003 @04:14PM (#5472465)
    I just don't see myself buying a new phone that doesn't have Bluetooth included.

    I have a Nokia phone that has served me well, but I am looking to trade up to a new phone this year. Without Bluetooth, this phone won't be on my list of possiblities.
    • Amen. What does Nokia have against Bluetooth? Do they realize the number of customers they're losing over this?

      • What do they have against it? They can't get it to work. The first camera phone doesn't work with bluetooth headsets, they never talk to any bluetooth PC device that isn't a Nokia, which makes backing the phones up painful and each phone, with each ROM revision messes up something else, so the phones don't talk to each other.

        I've given up on Nokias now because of this. Next time, I may end up with a Sony.

        • What a nonsense. My 7650 talks to every PC device i've come across to. For myself i use a el-cheepo ETiX USB-Bluetooth-Adapter without any pain, another example is the built-in bluetooth from a think pad, which worked like a charm too. And connections to Siemens S55 and Nokia 6310 were without problems too. So the only valid point (and this is a real problem) is the missing support for headsets/audio devices.

          But in total i like my 7650. It works nice and stable. No problems so far (with the second one, the first one was kind of DOA, but this can happen, doesn't mean anything).
        • I switched to Sony and have not looked back. Things are a bit different and take a bit of getting used to but once I got there I found the Sony system a lot better. I cannot see how people think having to buy an adapter for Bluetooth even counts seeing as it is so important.
    • exactly, especially with the camera and 3rd party fun.

      sure this is a sweetie for those telecoms that wan't you to use their 'cheap' services for getting the pictures out of the phone into the web 'easier'.

      (ir sucks.)
    • I cannot understand how a company can bring out a phone so packed with tech and not include what is probably the most important item. I do not send pictures although I am not against the idea. I only use text and voice. So the extras are just candy as far as I am concerned. Bluetooth on the other hand, is the only way to attach the hands free so I cannot use voice in the car without it. Going back to wires dangling all over the place as I drive is not going to entice me to buy this little baby.

  • Nokia Sync Soft (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Sinus0idal ( 546109 ) on Sunday March 09, 2003 @04:17PM (#5472479)
    Shame, last time I checked Nokia still insisted on producing their phone synchronisation software for windows.

    Anyone know of an open alternative? I guess it would need a depth of knowledge about the phone hardware which would be hard without Nokia support...
  • Can it be anything other than a sign of desperation when tech-gadget companies begin throwing together as many vaguely-related features as possible in the hope that some pocket-sized combination of dissimilar appliances will fire the imagination of the buying public and drive sales for a financial quarter or two? That said, does anyone make a good portable label maker with a built-in PDA?

  • I dont know why.... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by dracken ( 453199 ) on Sunday March 09, 2003 @04:20PM (#5472491) Homepage
    A Nokia color phone should get so much mention at slashdot. Samsung S105 [amazon.com] with color screen (65k colors) has been around for sometime, with polyphonic ringtones, java et. al. And Sonyericcson t68i [amazon.com] has bluetooth on top of color screen. Motorola T720i [amazon.com] has all these + a color cam. Put simply - nokia isnt the first with color screen. Nokia isnt the first with java or cam. There are phones with all these features + bluetooth out there (for a long time now). Why mention Nokia on slashdot ?

    Standard disclaimer - I am not trolling nor do I work for any cell phone company.

    • Re:I dont know why.... (Score:4, Informative)

      by Masque ( 20587 ) on Sunday March 09, 2003 @05:03PM (#5472635)
      Why mention this Nokia versus the others you mentioned? Glad to assist you in understanding.

      First, the Samsung S105. It's a Samsung. Decent phone, but nowhere near the following that Nokia has. Nokia has a better UI, a better reputation for quality and several other minor advantages. This essentially could be answered by saying, "For the same reason a new Compaq notebook doesn't get mentioned on Slashdot whereas the Apples do."

      The t68i was mentioned very recently [slashdot.org] here on Slashdot, in fact it was its replacement (and several sister models) that were featured in the story, so your objection here makes little sense.

      The T720i? It doesn't "have a cam", it has an attachable camera. Yuck. Secondly, this phone has also been mentioned on Slashdot, in fact in an article far more apropos for Slashdot's (claimed) theme: An article on developing applications for the T720 [slashdot.org].

      What exactly was your objection again?
      • The t39m is a better phone anyway. It's small, functional, and has real battery life. It does GPRS and Bluetooth well, and doesn't glob on a lame ass low quality camera. :)
    • actually the S105 only has a 12 bit screen which in case you didn't know is 4096 colors. the V205 is the one with the 16-bit screen.
    • Not to mention having been commonplace in Japan for over 2 years. I can't agree more with this dracken.

      When I read this I thought "wait a minute ... video phones have been out here in Japan for almost 12 months, yet we're still talking about phones with still cameras in them ? Did I end up in the Internet Archive [archive.org] site by mistake ?"
    • Why mention Nokia on slashdot ?

      Because Nokia is from Finland and so is Linus Torvalds.

      :-)

    • Nokia has forty percent of the market, and was first to market with a useable implementation of MIDP (WTF prevented MIDP 1.0 from including arbitrary waveform support!?), among other things.

      Jouster

  • Spycam (Score:5, Interesting)

    by weiyuent ( 257436 ) on Sunday March 09, 2003 @04:22PM (#5472500) Journal
    Hmmm...

    The way the camera is situated on the back of the phone makes it very easy to surreptitiously take photos. You would merely appear to be dialing a number on your phone.

    I'll bet this phone will become the next journalist's, spy's, and uber-geek's must-have toy. I can also envision many socially compromising situations when these covertly taken photos are eventually discovered, especially since the amalgamation of technologies encourages for these photos to be spread on the net.

    "What??? I didn't know you were taking my picture! I thought you were just calling someone! Did I give you permission to take my picture and publish it? Get out of my bed, NOW!!"

    • Re:Spycam (Score:2, Interesting)

      by MoTec ( 23112 )
      Actually, I read somewhere that in Japan new phone/cams have to make a sound like the shutter click on a film camera. It's to let people around know that a picture is being taken.

    • They make a very loud clicking, slutter like sound. Hard to hide.
    • Or just to fool yourself. What if you mom calls while you're getting it on and you accidentally hit the "photo" button while reaching for the off switch.

      That or if your girlfriend calls, and asks you to prove you're really at XX location by taking a picture.

      My cellphone often serves as a tracking device, call display helps but it's still annoying. Cameras have a potential to be evil!

  • Keys, keys, keys!! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Wills ( 242929 ) on Sunday March 09, 2003 @04:29PM (#5472519)

    For me, there is only one feature on a phone that really counts: the keys.

    The best keypad I've used was on the Nokia 8310/8210 handsets: tough, precise, no wobble, consistent springiness, rectangular keytops.

    The Sony Ericsson T65i has a really unpleasant set of wobbly keys, with inconsistently stiff springs. Similarly the latest Nokia handsets all have horrid keys.

    • come on you actually dial numbers ?

      I have not used the keypad in a while, my T68i joystick is great if anyone here has used the SPV from Microsoft will know that a good joystick is a must have

      I write my SMS's on my mac alot of the time and use bluetooth but hey I am a geek yes keys are nice but they can often be not needed depending on who you target it at

      Nokia release phones with SyncML but you need to use a cable ?? No Bluetooth thats plain stupid they seem to be going for the girls with this phone nokia has always targeted segments very well but they might just lose the market if they dont start putting bluetooth in asap and get a sync actually Works and go back to clip on covers

      I saw a girl in the bar writeing out all her contacts onto paper I asked what phone she was getting next and she said any one that could back up all her numbers !

      carriers are missing a BIG revenue stream here offer a backup sync server service with all your numbers and you get customers locked in and if you use SyncML you get to use any modern phone why dont they do this ?

      regards

      John Jones

      p.s. phones should have all have a IPv6 address IMHO

      • Surely, you're kidding? All Nokia phones can backup your contacts/addresses to another handset wirelessly using IR -- no cable required. Any good retailer with Nokia stock will offer to do this for their customers when they buy a new handset. Anyway, I don't need Bluetooth; for me it's a waste of time and battery power, so I turn it off.

        mac/laptop/pda: In many urban areas of the world, to use a mobile phone handset in public is to risk inviting a street robbery. In my capital city (not an atypical city), only a fool would also carry a laptop/PDA in public because that amplifies the robbery risk. If you don't believe that, check out the police robbery statistics (sometimes broken down into a category for theft of phone handsets) for major cities in most of the G8 countries. Anyway, not many people I know like carrying more than one gadget at a time.

        Yes, the T68i's joystick is fun and sometimes even useful but the joystick is almost useless for writing text. I also find predictive text input on all phones to be very ineffective. The other real problem with every Sony/Ericsson T68i/T68/T9000/T(any model you like) handset is that they have slowWWWW responses compared to Nokias -- every menu, every keypress, every joystick movement gives a lagged response. I don't think a 250+msecs lag is acceptable. The Nokia 8210/8310 handsets have delightfully quick responses.

  • If this sort of technology is available to the everyday consumer, what sorts of gizmos do you think our governments are using for the counter-terrorist effort?

  • Nokia 7250 (Score:2, Funny)

    by dnaumov ( 453672 )
    Does it also run the webserver that is hosting that review ? ;)

  • Business users and nerds steer clear. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by wackybrit ( 321117 ) on Sunday March 09, 2003 @04:33PM (#5472533) Homepage Journal
    Remember just two days ago when we were discussing the negative social effects of cellphones? [slashdot.org] Yet when something with all these flashy features comes out, everyone is *drool* *drool* *drool* :-)

    This is undoubtedly a cool phone, and adds a bit of flair to Nokia's now-tired cellphone design (we've had to put with it for about 6 years here in Europe) but relating this to our previous discussion, are these features actually any use to business users?

    I'm undecided. Stereo sound is pretty useless, color screens are pretty useless, FM radio is useless, and multiple color schemes? Please. Business users don't need that crap.

    It seems like this phone has been decided to be the 'latest trendy thing' rather than something a nerd could have any real use for.

    Having a tiny digital camera on hand is a great idea, to take pictures of number plates, crooks, and what not.. but it's not good enough res to be used professionally.

    Tri-band is useful for the international traveller.. but where's the 3G? 3G is going live in the UK as we speak, and it's a waste of money buying a phone that can't deal with it.

    Yup, this is just a phone for the socialites.

    (P.S. Did you realise there's a $10,000 Nokia cellphone made in gold with encrusted diamonds.. not bullshitting, seen a number of stories about celebrities buying them. Anyone know what they're called?)

    • Re:Business users and nerds steer clear. (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      (P.S. Did you realise there's a $10,000 Nokia cellphone made in gold with encrusted diamonds.. not bullshitting, seen a number of stories about celebrities buying them. Anyone know what they're called?)

      You want to look at vertu [vertu.com] They are enormous. If you live in London, you can see them for sale at Selfridges.

      It seems a great deal of money for something that you can easily leave in a cab.

      • It seems a great deal of money for something that you can easily leave in a cab.

        People who can afford to drop that kind of coin on a frickin' mobile phone do not take cabs very often, more like limos.

        I'd be more worried about dropping the thing. For $10000, it had better detect sudden acceleration due to gravity and trigger an onboard anti-gravity field generator to stop the fall.

        ~Philly
        • I dont know about the newer Nokia phones, but I did drop my Nokia 5510 while I was in a vehicle moving at around 40mph. The case came open, battery fell out, but then you put it back together and it actually worked! All it had was a scratch.
          I also know of somebody who dropped his 3210 from the fourth floor of a building and still had it working.
          But then both of these are of the "bigger" kind , wonder how a 7210 behaves.
    • (P.S. Did you realise there's a $10,000 Nokia cellphone made in gold with encrusted diamonds.. not bullshitting, seen a number of stories about celebrities buying them. Anyone know what they're called?)

      Vertu [vertu.com]. I believe it is Latin for "person with too much money." I mean, that is like Krusty the Clown-level conspicuous consumption.

      ~Philly
    • At the risk of losing my karma, due to saying anything slightly anti-USA:

      Another post typical of American arrogance. You are so ignorant of the fact that when it comes to mobile phones it is a completely different culture in other regions of the world - UK, Asia, Australia.

      As for your 3G comment, you clearly have no idea. 3G (3GSM/UMTS) networks are going live, in current GSM-Phase2+ countries, but GSM-Phase2+ is going to be around for a very long time. In fact 3GSM is just another evolution really on top of EDGE, which in turn was an evolution upon GPRS. Most newer handsets supporting UMTS can transparently roam GSM/GPRS/EGPRS networks and even hand over whilst in a CSD connection.

      It will be a significant amount of time before the UMTS networks will have a coverage footprint even on the same scale as GSM.
    • You're right. What use is a socialite phone to a nerd with no life?

      But seriously, its pretty obvious that this is not a business phone. With sound, color and a camera, its mostly for personal, non-business use. Why not evaluate it on its <i>intended</i> purpose instead of evaluating it on some other completely different purpose and then loudly complain that it doesn't fit?

      The camera is not good enough to be used professionally! What an amazing observation. No, I think this is a great phone for its intended purpose. I don't think its revolutionary enough to talk about on /. though.
    • 3G? Balls. Big clunky phones, and no service provider support yet. It'll be good in a year or so, *maybe* but at the moment other than paying through the nose to download clips of Manchester United I can't see the point. Give it a few months and UK phone companies will be *giving them away* with a new contract.

  • No Bluetooth == Useless.... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by otis wildflower ( 4889 ) on Sunday March 09, 2003 @04:41PM (#5472552) Homepage
    But outside of Bluetooth, this device has it all.

    When will Nokia get on the ball? Bluetooth is too fun for stuff like phonelist/addressbook syncing, remote-controlling your Mac (cheap slideshow clcker, iTunes controller), doing GPRS dialup, wireless headset, wireless carphone, etc.

    Now that I'm one of a handful of techies who just landed a job in NYC (thank you, thank you ;) I am actually gonna be putting a wireless carphone rig in my car (at the same time as getting the Becker TrafficPro, new amps and new speakers), so any phone I get to replace my slow-interface T68m MUST have Bluetooth.

    And yes, I would LOVE LOVE LOVE a PDA with a thin HDD that had bluetooth, gps, gsm, a mic and camera, et al. Even if you could only use the phone functionality with a bluetooth headset. Maybe it could come with a stereo wireless headset with noise cancellation, bluetooth enabled so you could listen to music and it would pause when you place/receive a call...

    • Stop whining, there are Nokias coming out with Bluetooth. The 3650's Bluetooth implementation has worked just fine for me when I tested it. In fact, it was great fun to stand outside the Apple store in the Cambridge galleria and send pics to whatever new Apple laptop was listening for the signal, surprising the people trying them out.

      Available at T-Mobile soon, I believe. The thing's shipping.

  • More info & pics (Score:4, Informative)

    by K3lvin ( 624437 ) on Sunday March 09, 2003 @04:44PM (#5472564)
    There's more info:
    http://www.mobile-review.com/review/nokia-7 250-en. shtml

    Pics taken with it:
    http://tude.tripod.com/temp.html
    http://www. mantere.sjr.fi/7250/
  • I just don't understand it. You know what I want? I want a phone that stores numbers, and when I call people it sounds crystal clear and I never get a "signal faded" notice and get cut off. That's it. No more, no less. Make the damn thing work like a phone and make it work well.

    Nowadays it's all about how big the screen is and games and camera abilities and bluetooth and all sorts of irrelevant crap. Make the damn phone work so it sounds good when I'm talking to people!!

    Besides, I can get a digital camera that will produce nice 6X8 pictures for about $150, so why pay $400 for a phone that has all sorts of bells and whistles, will take small crappy pictures, and sound like crap when I'm talking to someone? I just don't get it.
    • Great, why don't you buy a phone that's just a phone then. Me, I can hardly wait for a convergence devices that reuses a screen, battery, communications capability, memory and processor effectively for anything I might want to carry a gizmo around for. I might even buy one of these short term solutions towards that goal.

    • I couldn't agree more. That's why I still keep my 4.5 years old Nokia 3110.

      I just have to find a new battery since the current one is beginning to show its age.
    • I was about to post the same thing. I have had my cell phone for a while now and I have no desire at all to replace it. I have my phone for talking to others when and whereever I need to. And my PDA for playing games, taking down notes, and doing all that other stuff. If I wanted a digital camera, I would want it on my phone, not my PDA. And dont give me integrated PDA/phone crap. The interfaces for the two are so different that I dont want them to be combined. I dont want a keypad on my PDA, and I dont want a touch screen on my cell phone. Even in Star Trek the two devices are seperate! They have a communicator badge, AND a tricorder.

    • I used to agree. Then I happened to be around several girls at a time when everyone else was pulling out cameras. I suddenly realised that I rarely take pictures so I don't have a camera. If it was in the phone it would be there. Better yet, it would be there not just when I expect to want a picture and so brought along my camera (which would be better quality if I had one), but also those time when I didn't expect to want to, so I reduced bulk by not carring it.

      After that I suddenly realised that I use the calculator on my phone almost as much as I use the voice features! I wish I had scientific functions, because I've wanted them. Sure I could carry a full calculator, but often I don't need one.

      PDAs are better than the PIM in cell phones, but then you have to carry it with you. I've already suggested above that gagets are a pain to carry around. With a cell phone that does everyone, I have all the gagets I need. If I'm the type of person uses a PDA all the time I'll carry both, but I rarely need a PDA (a couple times a month!), so I don't have one, so the cell phone compromise is good enough.

      And don't forget that if the gaget breaks, you still have a cell phone backup to get you by. (Unless it is the cell phone that breaks, I'm not sure what you do there)

      In conclusion, a cell phone may be the worst of all other worlds, but it is still good enough.

    • I agree that it's pointless to have a phone that can do scientific calculations, keep your calendar, etc. Those are PDA functions and not communications functions. A phone is a communication device. But pictures are a form of communication. I'm talking to somebody, and I say, "I'm standing here, looking at this huge, purple, ... wait, let me send you a picture", point, click, and send ... That's exactly what a phone is for! Sending data in real time to another person. Voice or pictures, same thing!

    • I agree with you on almost all points, except for the Bluetooth: that is actually useful for easy synchronizing of phone numbers with your computer/PDA.

      JP

  • Bluetooth is cool and all, just be aware that bluetooth have basically no security at all, AFAIK

    • "AFAIK", in this case, means "I don't know sh*t" - apparently.


      There's nothing wrong with the security of bluetooth. Frequency-hopping and encrypted, just as a start.

      • This from the latest Bruce Schneier cryptogram:

        Last year I had a conversation with an engineer involved with security for the Bluetooth wireless protocol. I told him that Bluetooth has only privacy and not per-packet authentication. He responded with the prototypical lame responses: 1) pseudorandom frequency hopping makes it "nearly impossible" for an attacker to get in, and 2) the range is only 8 feet, so the attacks are naturally limited.

        I tried to argue the point, but eventually gave up. Then I said something like: "I can hardly wait for Bluetooth to become universal, because I really want a wireless keyboard and mouse with the "base station" built into my computer." He said: "Yes, but you really probably don't want to use Bluetooth for that, because then somebody could stuff keystrokes or mouse clicks into your system." I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Talk about not getting it.

      • Yes, I should have been more specific in my previous post, sorry.

        Next, you're wrong. Read the reply from spinlocked. Also, I've just watched (real stream) a lecture from PHK (FreeBSD kernel developer, http://people.freebsd.org/~phk/ - basically, he knows what he's talking about...), I could give you a link, but it's in Danish so you will not understand it. However, in this lecture (presenting FreeBSD 5.0), he also talks about Bluetooth and he is certainly not impressed. Some guy had tried to walk around at a conference somewhere to see what he was able to connect to. Among other things he catched two guys standing next to each other, talking (not over the phone, of course) and they apparently both had Bluetooth enabled phones. He made the one phone call the other one :)
        Is that your idea of good security? ;)

        According to him, firewire also have a big security hole. You apparently get read and write access to the memory of a machine when you connect with firewire. Quite sad actually because other than that, Firewire is actually a quite cool technology.

        • Please give me the link - I'm Swedish and have no problems understanding written Danish.


          I'm also seriously doubting the story about placing a phonecall via external connection over bluetooth.

          /me - Software Engineer, having worked on bluetooth support in a cellphone operating system ..

  • Am I the only one left who wants a decent keypad on my cell phone ?

    Either the key pad is usually too small, bunched up, or really really hard to push. And on some really annoying phones, a combination of all three!

    I honestly don't care about cameras that will only invade my privacy some more. I just want a decent keypad.

    Sunny Dubey

  • I want a small phone, that could do ssh in rare pinch (maybe once every two years) when I can't get to a proper computer to fix a server.

    I know the keypay would be less than optimalk, but i don't want a huge phone.

    Maybe a ssh via a Java program on this phone?

    • Re:Does it do SSH? (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I know the keypay would be less than optimalk, but i don't want a huge phone.

      Given you're having problems with a conventional keyboard (as far as I know) perhaps you're being over optimistic.

  • Please, people! (Score:3, Funny)

    by x136 ( 513282 ) on Sunday March 09, 2003 @07:10PM (#5473255) Homepage
    Whoever it is out there that keeps saying "Could Nokia phones get any uglier?", PLEASE STOP! You see what happens? We get monstrosities like the 5100 [nokia.com], the 3650 [nokia.com], and now the 7250 [nokia.com]! Please, stop speculating about how bad it can get! Won't someone please think of the children?!
  • I know there is a general trend in electronics towards smaller devices being "better", but aren't mobile phones small enough already?

    I have thick fingers (comes with being 6'3"), and I find that the buttons on my Nokia 3310 are only just big enough to be useable.

    Button size is a very important factor for me, not just for entering phone numbers but for entering SMS messages (I SMS very frequently).

    Woman with long finger nails might have the same problem too.

    • simpsons (Score:4, Funny)

      by TummyX ( 84871 ) on Sunday March 09, 2003 @08:25PM (#5473593)
      Homer: I gotta call the plant and warn them!

      BeeBleep! BurpBleep Bleep!

      Operator: The fingers you have used to dial are too fat. To obtain a special dialing wand, please mash the keypad with your palm ... now. ;)
  • Why is it true that the aesthetic value of new cell phones is inversely proportional to the number of features. T68i UGLY, Nokia 7250 FUGLY.
  • I just got myself a Nokia 6100, so no point in reading stuff about new phones for a while... :)
    But did anyone else browse around burn.com and find the news of the new Matrix phone? http://mobile.burn.com/news.jsp?Id=245 [burn.com]
    I must say it's dissapointing, downright ugly. They should have sticked to Nokia...

    My 6100 replaced my good, old 7110 - which I got after watching the Matrix - don't know of any other phones with a spring-loaded key-cover.

    (btw, by activating a secret menu in the 7110, you can get access to a counter (in hex) that counts the number of times you have opened the cover. Mine was about 5000 or so, and still worked perfectly when in died mysteriously.)

  • Interesting article on how the clarity on new cellphones is a lot worse than the older ones. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/10/technology/10PHO N.html (Free registration etc...)
  • Next time I see a 'downloadable ring tones' - poly*something* - as a 'feature', I am going to ____

    here is my list
    - GSM (triband is nice)
    - SMALL..please, I have a Kyocera 6035 and it is a brick..
    - integrated PIM (so I can download my Evolution address/calender)
    - decent screen
    - flip design, So I don't have to worry about phone + keys in the same pocket
    - make entering Text easier (either by a virtual keyboard / good grafiti / what ever). Grow up from those T9 'predictive' input crap. That is so 90s. And it is a pain in the ___ to use.

    make one and and price it below $300, and watch it while people sweep them from shelves.

    I am still waiting for one (Sony-Eric, Nokia , Motorola..etc)

  • I've always been uncomfortable with how the telephone pipes audio into only one ear/brain lobe at a time.

    Back when we had landline phones, I once soldered a pair of headphones into one to get sound into both ears and the resulting experience was quite different. The sound of the speaker at the other end immerses you, as the sound seems to originate from within your head. To get the idea, just try listening to music with one ear first, then both.

    Of course, current phones won't likely have faked 3D spatialization, or other DSP, but that could be a fun business. I call you up, pay .05 extra for a cathedral ambience and reverb to add some atmosphere to our conversation.

    Or I could order up some background Barry White for those Phonecalls of Love.

    Or fake being somewhere using a suitable ambience.

    Or, whatever :p

    J
  • One question I have: Is the battery replacable? For a lot of mobile phones you have buy a new one once the battery goes. This is normally no big deal because they are so cheap, but type of phone doesn't come cheap.
  • If it's as shaky as the 7650 and the 7210 (kept crashing, UK operators asked shops to stop selling them until a new batch of phones with better software became available), then they'd better not let it out to the market, considering that SonyEricsson has released some high quality phones lately... Heck, even the Siemens ones are kicking Nokia's arse lately.

  • I tried to look around for more infor on the GPS features. Had anyone been able to get some additional data on that feature? What I am looking for a GPS feature that will allow, the user of the phone, to be pinpointed VIA online, or some software. By online I mean, to see where the user is located in real-time. And when I say some software... some sort of feature that will allow you to download the cordinates from the phone, into a computer to be analized by software of a road trip.

    Yes I knwo alot of people will say.. use a GPS navation.. but I want this feature to be in a phone. Any inputer or perhaps on others phones avaialbe on the market? Thanks

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