Looks good... fails to deliver
Written: Mar 27 '03
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Pros: Looks, Desirability, Screen
Cons: Radio, Camera, Slow menus, Headset design, Build quality
The Bottom Line: Buy it if you've got money to burn. If not, resist the good looks and wait for something better.
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| gjscott75's Full Review: Nokia 7250 |
I've owned this handset for a fortnight now. Perhaps unwisely, I imported it from Hong Kong without having seen anything more than a few online pictures of it, never mind had a chance to play with it. But it looked so good on Nokia's website... I had to have it.
The pro's.
- It looks great. It's possibly the best looking handset Nokia have ever made. I bought it in grey which is, as far as I'm concerned, the only colour to have it in from the four initial 'out of box' choices.
- Perhaps only because it's so new, it's desirability factor is very high. Everyone who's seen it is impressed. And why not, it's a handsome looking beast, after all!
- The screen is bright and the colours vivid. Top marks.
The cons.
- I've come from owning a Nokia 8310 previously. The radio on it was quite good. It managed pretty good reception almost anywhere that a normal radio would have good reception. The 7250's radio performance, however, is completely dismal. I struggle to get a clear signal almost anywhere I go (which isn't any different that the places I used the 8310 radio). Whether this is down to the electronics in the handset or the arial (i.e. the headphones), I'm not sure. It's almost laughable that it's capable of playing FM in stereo, when it barely manages static free mono! In any case, it's far from impressive. If this were a radio, and not a phone with a built in radio, I'd take it back for a refund!
- Now, you could argue that it's a phone first, and that the radio and camera are added bonuses. Well, yes, that's true to an extent. But when you're paying way over the odds for these bonuses (as you currently have to do with the 7250), then you want them to be fully functioning and high quality. The camera, in this incarnation, is pretty much a gimmick. The max resolution (at 352 * 288) is a too low for anything useful, and the absence of a flash makes it no good for dark/night shots. You're certainly not going to throw out your 4MP digital camera in favour if this, and never were you meant to... it'll be a long time before that day arrives, but it doesn't mean you should be happy with ultra low res images from a camera phone either. On the plus side, at such low resolution there's room for about 250 snaps before you'll run out of that 5Mb space.
- In comparison with my old 8310, menu navigation seems sluggish. Not unusable by any means, just slower that I'm used to and slower than I'd like.
- The headset design has to be some sort of joke. With the old 8310 headset, it had a sturdily built clip which housed the mic and you'd attach it to your collar or something. It was simple and it worked. The new headset is just terrible though. The distance between the headphones and the mic is about 60cm. If you put the headphones your ears, the mic sits round about your waist!!! The alternative is to create a loop around your neck to use up some of that length, hold it in place with the little snap-together clip, and drag the mic back up to something approaching mouth level. But, doing that means that there's barely enough length in the wire to have your phone sit in your coat pocket!!! I don't know what Nokia were thinking, but it's bad design. Very, very bad design. The same can be said for the connector. It reminds me of the multi-pin Ericsson GA628 I had years ago. Repeated insertion and removal over two weeks have rendered it loose and it's not so unusual for it to now pop out of the phone while in my pocket.
- Finally, the build quality. It's not bad, but it's not what I'd expect for the money. The scroll buttons squeak and creak when pressed and it just doesn't exude the build quality I'd expect from a phone costing this much money.
Other minor quibbles include not being able to assign a photo to a number in the phonebook so that it shows when that person rings, although this may (or may not) be addressed with a future firmware upgrade.
All in all, it's not a BAD phone. It's just less than I'd expect from Nokia, and much less than I'd expect for the price.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 500
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Epinions.com ID:
gjscott75
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Reviews written: 1
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