Nokia 7310 Supernova raises the style stakes!

Starting way back when with the Nokia 7200 which featured textured panels and the 7280 lipstick phone, the Nokia 7 series have always been the phone of choice for those with an eye for fashion. Continuing in this rich vein of fashionable form, Nokia present the world with theNokia 7310 Supernova.

The 7310 holds style at its very core with Xpress-on covers making a welcome return. Want to stand out? Want to personalise your phone to match your personality? Then snap on the matching cove and away you go. The Nokia 7310 Supernova is set to ship with the standard blue face as well as an additional candy pink cover with Nokia planning on releasing more designs in the coming months.

The phone itself takes on a candy bar form factor and sports a 2 inch display which doubles as a mirror when not in use. Even more pleasing is the numeric keypad which also moonlights as a mirror effectively turning the entire front of the phone into one big mirrored surface. Away from the design, the 7310 Supernova features a 2.0 Megapixel camera with video capture, TV output, Bluetooth v2.0, a built in MP3 and MPEG4 movie player plus expandable memory for stacks of storage.

Nokia 6720 Classic unveiled

February has been the month of the classic as far as Nokia are concerned. Earlier in the month Nokia were proudly showing off a trio of new Classic (which basically refers to the candy bar form factor) mobile phones in the shape of the 2700, 6303 and 6700 Classic. Now, the trio has become a quartet with the announcement of the Nokia 6720 Classic. The successor to 6220 Classic, the 6720 has a spec list that would be more at home on an Nseries mobile phone.

The 6720 Classic features a 5.0 Megapixel camera with a Carl Zeiss lens, usually reserved for Nseries phones, with Autofocus, a powerful flash, digital zoom and video capture at 15 frames per second. Despite the impressive camera credentials the 6720 classic still sports pocket friendly dimensions measuring in at just 110 x 45mm, 14mm thick and just 110 g in weight. With theses miniature measurements, you’d be forgiven for thinking the 6720 Classic might be a slouch in other departments. Not a chance though, the 6720 Classic is much more than just a camera phone.HSDPA connectivity gives you high speed web browsing and downloads, the built in GPS receiver features support for Assisted GPS which uses a network connection to get a satellite lock even quicker, Nokia Maps 3.0 offers an excellent SatNav experience and all run incredibly smoothly on the Symbian operating system.

Don’t worry though, the 6720 isn’t all work and no play; an MP3 player with support for a wealth of video and audio formats, 3.5 mm audio output jack, FM radio, Bluetooth v2.0 and TV output are all included to help make the 6720 Classic a capable multimedia phone.

Nokia 6720 Classic unveiled

February has been the month of the classic as far as Nokia are concerned. Earlier in the month Nokia were proudly showing off a trio of new Classic (which basically refers to the candy bar form factor) mobile phones in the shape of the 2700, 6303 and 6700 Classic. Now, the trio has become a quartet with the announcement of the Nokia 6720 Classic. The successor to 6220 Classic, the 6720 has a spec list that would be more at home on an Nseries mobile phone.

The 6720 Classic features a 5.0 Megapixel camera with a Carl Zeiss lens, usually reserved for Nseries phones, with Autofocus, a powerful flash, digital zoom and video capture at 15 frames per second. Despite the impressive camera credentials the 6720 classic still sports pocket friendly dimensions measuring in at just 110 x 45mm, 14mm thick and just 110 g in weight. With theses miniature measurements, you’d be forgiven for thinking the 6720 Classic might be a slouch in other departments. Not a chance though, the 6720 Classic is much more than just a camera phone.HSDPA connectivity gives you high speed web browsing and downloads, the built in GPS receiver features support for Assisted GPS which uses a network connection to get a satellite lock even quicker, Nokia Maps 3.0 offers an excellent SatNav experience and all run incredibly smoothly on the Symbian operating system.

Don’t worry though, the 6720 isn’t all work and no play; an MP3 player with support for a wealth of video and audio formats, 3.5 mm audio output jack, FM radio, Bluetooth v2.0 and TV output are all included to help make the 6720 Classic a capable multimedia phone.

Nokia announce new Eseries: Nokia E55 and E75

Business men and women across the globe rejoice!Nokia have fleshed out their Eseries business range with the announcement of two new phones ate Mobile World Congress; the much talked about Nokia E75 and it’s smaller sibling the Nokia E55. A firm favourite with professionals and companies alike, the Eseries gained popularity thanks to excellent reliability, excellent build quality, high end features and classy design. And the two newest additions to the range don’t buck the trend.

The Nokia E55 sports a candybar form factor with a semi QWERTY keyboard; an extra row on the keypad means that each button has twoletters on it for, what Nokia claim, a faster to learn and quicker to use interface than a standard alpha numeric keypad. Messaging is at the forefront of the E55; Email is easy to read, manage and send directly from the phone without the need to connect to your home or office PC. The E55 also features extensive calendar and task management functionality meaning you can organise your personal and profesional life all in one pocketable device. Running Symbian series 60 means you can customise, install third party applications and make the E55 your own.

The E55 includes HSDPA and Wi-Fi connectivity giving you the fastest connection possible for web browsing and downloads with a fully functional web browser just a few clicks away. GPS with A-GPS support is also included. In terms of multimedia, the E55 has most bases covered with an MP3 player and video player plus expandable memory for extra storage, stereo Bluetooth to stream music to a compatible headset and a 3.2 Megapixel camera (which is nice as cameras aren’t always a given on Eseries mobile phones). One final feature that will really appeal to the business user is the battery life; Nokia reckon you’ll get up to 28 day standby time out of the E55 which sounds nothing short of incredible.

The Nokia E75 offers a slightly different proposition to the E55. From the front the E75 looks like a fairly standard candybar phone but nudge the slide mechanism and you’ll find a full QWERTY keyboard lurking within. As if the keyboard didn’t give it away, the E75 is all about messaging. The E75 offers an email experience like that found on a desktop PC or Laptop with the ability to sort emails by size, date and sender. On top of email, the E75 also offers improved calendar capability, as well as contacts and task management making it clear why this has been tipped as a successor to the E90. The E75 puts your office in your pocket so your never out of contact.

Like the E55, the E75 also benefits from HSDPA mobile broadband connectivity and Wi-Fi for when you’re in a hotspot area or accessing your wireless network at home or in the office. GPS and A-GPS is complimented by Nokia Maps and as the E75 also runs on the Symbian operating system, there are a wealth of location based applications ready to download and install. An MP3 player is joined by a 3.5mm audio jack meaning you can use your own headphones and expandable memory (up to 16GB) means you can store 1000’s of music tracks and hours of video. A 3.2 Megapixel camera with Autofocus rounds off an impressive spec list.

Nokia gets in the mood for love!

Nokia have shown a softer, gentler side compared to the macho Symbian front that usually represents the Finnish manufacturer. To coincide with Valentines day Nokiahave decided to play Cupid, launching a website that gives you the chance to send a text to the one you love completely free. Too shy to announce your undying love for that special someone? Fear not, the mobile phonetext service is completely anonymous so you can text your beloved without worry.

How does it work? Well, visitors to the site are presented with a selection of pre-set messages ranging from short and sweet sentiments to famous quotes and poetry. Simply select the message that’s right for the man or woman of your dreams, fill in a few details about yourself and the name and number of the one you admire and bingo. Job done. And don’t worry, Nokia won’t jump the gun and spill the beans before the big day; all messages created prior to the 14th will be saved and then sent out on Valentines day. Who knew Nokia was such a romantic? No i’m not crying, i’ve just got something in my eye. Now if you’ll excuse me, i’ve got some messages to send. Ahem

Nokia 5800 : Nokia’s first full touchscreen mobile phone!

Just in case the title didn’t give it away, the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, Nokia’s eagerly awaited first full touchscreen phone, has been launched. The 5800, formerly known as the Tube, was first spotted early last year and even made a cameo in the recent Batman film The Dark Knight before it had even been officially announced which surely got people chomping at the bit to get their hands on it. But why should you care? What’s so special about the 5800? Well it does feel like it’s been in production for an eternity so lets refresh our memories and remind ourselves why the Nokia 5800 is such an exciting newphone.

The Nokia 5800 is Nokia’s first full touchscreen mobile phone (yes we do know they make touchscreen internet tablets and no we don’t count them as proper phones). As such, there was a lot riding on the user experience of the 3.2 inch TFT touchscreen but thankfully it exceeds expectations. The touchscreen is responsive and tactile enough to keep up with even the fastest of fingers but forgiving enough for those who are taking their first steps into the touchscreen world. Of course in 2009, a phone has to try a little harder to get our attention and luckily the 5800 has enough under its bonnet to mix it with the big boys.

The 5800 XpressMusic takes itself seriously as an internet device (possibly drawing from the internet tablet heritage) thanks toHSDPA and Wi-Fi connectivity putting high speed web browsing at your finger tips. Couple this with an impressive web browser and the excellent display (with built in accelerometer for rotating the screen) and you’ve got yourself one powerful internet device. Elsewhere, the 5800 supports numerous music and video file formats and comes bundled with an 8GB memory card giving you somewhere to store 1000’s of tracks and hours of video. And if photography is your thing, the 5800 features a 3.2 Megapixel camera with a Carl Zeiss lens, Autofocus and digital zoom plus video capture at 30 frames per second. And finally for those of you who like to get out and about, the 5800 has a built in GPSreceiver with Nokia Maps pre-installed.

Have i forgotten anything? Probably. The 5800 is packed full of top of the range features which firmly cement it as one of the phones of 2009 and definite contender for best touchscreen mobile phone. 

Nokia’s Latest Little Gizmo: The Locate Sensor

At CES (the worlds largest consumer electronics tradeshow) 2009 which took place on Jan 12th, Nokia announced a new project cooked up by the Nokia Research Centre, the ‘Nokia Locate Sensor’. A prototype service designed to help ensure you never lose anything. You simply attach a physical wireless location tag (the little green gizmo pictured to the right) to stuff such as your keys or wallet,and if you drop anything or it gets nicked from your pocket the accompanying Nokia Locate Sensor application on yourphone points you in the direction of the item and even tells you how far away it is.

The tiny Locate Sensor tag can be attached and modified to be fixed to any sort of item you can think of and because of its size it can go pretty much unnoticed. The phone application itself will support up to 100 items so you would never be able to use the excuse “sorry I’m late, I couldn’t find my….” ever again.

If you drop something the phone application is designed to automatically alert you and help you hone in on the object within a distance of up to 100 metres. So, how does it work? Well, It transmits a simple signal and doesn’t use GPS to locate the misplaced items we know that much, so it can be used inside and isn’t a battery killer. The actual technology Nokia use is still not mentioned but if we had to guess we’d have to bank on Bluetooth.

Another smart use for Nokia Locate Sensor is that it can be tweaked to work the opposite way round, so if you have a tag on your person you can set it so that if your phone is lost or goes further than say 3 metres away from you, it immediately disables the handset and re-enables it when it re-enters your selected vicinity.

Nokia say it can operate flawlessly up to 18 months before you need to recharge it, but if the tag is made bigger it could theoretically accommodate a bigger battery and longer life. It’s such a simple idea, and innovative to the mobile market. The application looks as if it works brilliantly, if we can believe the news coming out of the tradeshow. It’s definitely the smartest little gadget to make an appearance so far this year… that’s probably not giving it enough credit, as we haven’t even made it to February, however I think you get the point… it’s a great little device to start the year with.

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic review: has Nokia kicked its rivals in to touch?

After much speculation and excitement surrounding Nokia’s first mainstream attempt at a touchscreen mobile phone, here atMobiles.co.uk we’ve managed to get our hands on the finished article; the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. So to put the 5800 through its paces and tell you what to expect of the first big phone of 2009, read on for our full review and the answers to all those burning questions. The first thing I’d like to point out is that this particular 5800 is the full retail unit and not a potentially buggy test sample or pre-release model. Not only does this mean that my experience will be the same as that of anyone who takes the plunge in late January when it launches, it also means the phone comes fully boxed with all the accessories and extras that will ship with the phone.

First impressions of the phone formerly known as Tube are overwhelmingly positive. Picking up the phone, the 5800 XpressMusic fits like a glove; the smooth rounded edges make it comfortable in hand, the soft touch plastic on the back gives a classy yet subtle effect and the highly polished material found on the front helps to emphasize the huge touchscreen display. Buttons are fairly minimal due to the aforementioned display. Below the screen we find the call answer, end and menu keys, on the right hand side we have the camera capture and zoom keys along with a sliding key lock button and finally on the top of the phone we have the power button. Also on the top of the phone we have the 3.5mm audio jack and USB port and on the left side is the memory card slot and, oddly enough, sim card slot. Why Nokia saw fit to include a hot swap sim card slot that doesn’t let you remove the sim once it’s in there is slightly baffling i must admit but, apart from that, the 5800 gets off to an impressive start.

Next to go under the microscope is unsurprisingly the 5800’s most publicised feature; the touchscreen display. The Nokia 5800 features a 3.2 inch TFT screen capable of displaying up to 16 million colours. The home screen presents you with a shortcut for the address book and your contacts and a second which brings up the numeric keypad for making calls. Opening the menu presents you with the familiar sight on most Nokia phones of the various icons, only this time simply tapping on an icon opens the desired application. The display is very responsive and thanks to the size of the screen doesn’t ask you to be too accurate. The 5800 is all about choice and this is certainly true when it comes to thetouchscreen. The 5800 lets you navigate with your fingers, the stylus that slides nicely in to the back of the phone or, for those who want to look a bit flash, a stylus shaped like a guitar pick/ plectrum that you can attach via the lanyard strap. Personally I found the stylus best for texting and emailing and used my finger tips for everything else but the beauty of the 5800 is everyone one will find a way to use it that suits them best. As a touchscreen phone the 5800 XpressMusic scores a direct hit; navigation is simple, fast, and responsive, haptic feedback (vibration on the screen confirming your actions) helps to keep you involved, the size makes everything clear and legible and the accelerometer lets you switch from portrait to landscape with no delay.

The 5800 is a powerful smartphone running on the Symbian operating system. Symbian has always been a popular and reliable operating system and when coupled with a fully touchscreen interface, comes into its own. The phone is quick and responsive when navigating through menus and opening and running multiple applications. As a smart phone, the 5800 will let you install 3rd party applications (such as the software used to take the screenshots found in this review). Doing so is easy; simply download the application on to a PC and drag and drop to the phone when connected via USB or download directly on the phone (but beware of data costs), install and away you go. The phone runs on Symbian Series 60 v9.4 meaning there are already a wealth of compatible applications available. Also expect a whole host of new games, downloads and applications that will utilise the touchscreen. The other benefit with running on the Symbian operating system comes from customisation. The phone will allow you to move the locations of folders and applications so you can put your favourite or most frequently used items in the main menu rather than hiding them away in a sub menu. The opposite can be done to things you don’t use.

The Nokia 5800 is simply begging to be taken online thanks to HSDPA and Wi-Fi connectivity offering high speed browsing and downloads. Once you’ve got there you’ll be pleased to find that the 5800 has a web browser that is more than capable of meeting your needs. The screen can be turned to landscape to give you a nice wide point of view, scrolling down web pages is done by simply dragging your finger along the scroll bar and you can fit it to fill the whole screen or have a condensed version with a tool bar. In the options menu you’ll find features such as zoom, bookmark, homepage settings and much more that you’d more expect to find on your laptop or PC rather than your phone. I found the web browser a joy to use but once again the 5800’s personalisation options come in to play because if you don’t like the web browser, you can download and install a new one!

As if the XpressMusic name doesn’t give it away, the 5800 takes music very seriously. The phone has 80MB of onboard memory which doesn’t sound particularly impressive next to the iPhone’sand i8510’s of the mobile phone world but thankfully the phone comes with an 8GB memory card included in the box. For those who crave more memory the 5800 will support a 16GB memory card opening up the possibility of space for thousands of music tracks. In terms of the music player interface, it’s very much business as usual. You can browse the music library by artist, album, genre and so on giving you a music experience to rival the best of the music phone world. The phone will support a wealth of file formats from AAC to MP3 and beyond plus the finished product will ship with some excellent stereo in ear headphones complete with a remote adaptor to control the music player when the phone is tucked away in your pocket. Best of all, the phone features a 3.5mm audio output jack so you can bring your own headphones to the party. But to describe the 5800 as a music phone is selling it short; the phone can handle video with equal finesse. The phone earns its codename the Tube thanks to support for MPEG4, WMV and 3gp video playback covering pretty much all the major file formats. The 5800 is a formidable multi media phone and to cement this, Nokia have generously included a video stand that the phone sits in giving you the perfect viewing position for long train or car journeys (though perhaps not if you’re driving). XpressMedia is a name that was kicking around before the 5800 was officially announced and it seems this would have been a far more appropriate moniker.

The camera found on the 5800 is a 3.2 Megapixel shooter which may sound slightly underpowered in the wake of the recent 8.0 Megapixel camera phone wave but thanks to a Carl Zeiss lens and autofocus, it still manages to deliver the goods. Dedicated camera buttons for capture and zoom are found on the right side of the phone and holding the phone in landscape with the excellent 3.2 inch display makes for the perfect viewfinder. Other features include a powerful flash, 3x digital zoom and a range of capture and scene settings such as night mode. The 5800 also captures video at 30 frames per second removing any undesired choppy or jumpy frames in the video and making for a smooth enjoyable viewing experience.

The phone also has a GPS receiver with A-GPS support and includes Nokia maps. The standard Nokia maps is ideal for on foot navigation, route planning and finding addresses. Paying a subscription based fee will also add voice guided navigation and unlock the 5800’s true SatNav potential. In terms of what’s in the box, Nokia certainly have gone all out to impress. In the finished article you can expect to find a rubberised case, mains charger, USB cable, TV out lead, spare stylus, plectrum stylus and lanyard, headphones, video stand, software CD, 8GB memory card and of course, the phone itself. Not what you would call stingy, something we hope other manufacturers will sit up and take note of.

So what of Nokia’s first entrant into the mainstream touchscreen market? Well in my two weeks using the phone, I was quite simply bowled over. The 5800 is jam packed full of great features, some of which will blow you away and others that you wont really notice until they’re gone (I want a plectrum stylus!). I just didn’t want to give it back. The combination of the Symbian Nokia interface (that we know and love) with an exciting and intuitive control method thanks to the touchscreen make for a winning partnership and what is sure to be the first major success story of 2009.