An afternoon with Nokia
Nokia was in town yesterday and invited us by to check out a few of their new fashion phones which should be out here early next month, and of course we took tons of pics (above, from left to right, the 7280, the 7270, and the 7610).
Ok, we?ll admit that we were super skeptical about the 7280, which ditches the keypad entirely and has more of a pen-shaped design, but after playing around with it for a few minutes we decided it wasn?t so bad. It has this scroll wheel-type controller called the NaviSpinner which you have to use to navigate the user interface, and the idea is that you keep your just transfer over you contacts from your old phone along with your SIM card and then use the NaviSpinner to quickly find and select the person you want to call (and it actually works). You can still dial manually by entering other numbers by rotating the NaviSpinner and selecting the number you want, though it is more hassle than it?d be with a regular keypad. The big surprise was how easy it was to write a text message. We figured it?d be a serious pain in the ass, but Nokia tossed in this special predictive text software that unlike T9 doesn?t try to guess what word you?re trying to write out. Instead when you select a letter it automatically puts the letters that are most likely to follow the one you just choose (like if you?ve selected the letter ?T? to start a word the odds are good that the next letter is either ?a?, ?h?, ?e?, etc) and using the scroll wheel to pound out messages this way didn?t take very long at all. Not saying we?d toss aside the Treo for this thing, but the 7280 definitely has its appeal. Should also mention that it has a built-in digital camera (VGA quality only), Bluetooth, and the resolution of the screen is 208x104. A version with EDGE should be out here in the States early next year.
The one megapixel 7610 will probably be the first of the bunch to be released here. Note the Zac Posen charm attached to it. You can see it better in the following pic.
The 7610 from the back.
Their new 9300 Communicator doesn?t have WiFi or a built-in digital camera, but it does unfold to reveal a decently-sized QWERTY keyboard and an amazingly nice color LCD screen. Didn?t care much for the keyboard itself?it was big and all, but the keys themselves were a little too flat and we found our fingers constantly pressing the wrong keys. To be fair, this could just be one of those things you have to get used to. Did we mention that we liked the screen?
And of course, our trusty Treo had to make an appearance. For comparison purposes, of course.
