Oh L'Amour! (Nokia 7360 with Contract)

Member Name: jaggynettles

Product:	Nokia 7360 with Contract
Date:	11/03/06 (2078 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Battery lasts 5 days, Quick access features

Disadvantages: Basic VGA camera, Small memory

I am a total Luddite when it comes to mobile phones, so consequently every one that I have had the misfortune to own, I have held on to until it has literally fallen apart in my hands.

I use my mobile for texting and receiving calls. My 4 year old Nokia 5210 fitted these requirements like a glove - mono display, mono ring tone and monolithic. That was all monomarvellous until it decided to give up the ghost last month.

Every mobile enthusiast loves an upgrade, but I was mortified to discovered my choices were made up of words that stuck in my throat - polyphonic, 16-bit color, tri-band, VGA camera. Ack! I wanted my simple, old phone back.

That all changed though after I saw an advert on television for the new Nokia L’Amour collection. Like Andy in Little Britain, I turned and declared to my husband “I want that one!”.


LOOK and FEEL

Well I’m not entirely sure why it’s called the L’Amour collection - possibly because someone at Nokia thought that’s what girls would like. Who knows. In any case, there are 2 different version of the Nokia 7360. One which has a gold case and orange trim, and the one I have which is a dark brown with turquoise trim. It’s dimensions are 105 x 45 x 18 mm which makes it a teeny ½ cm fatter than the current ladies favourite – the Motorola pink Razr. But where the Nokia 7360 loses out in girth, it makes up for in weight – coming in whopping 3 grams lighter at 92g.

Having owned a brick for the last 4 years, the Nokia 7360 seems positively flimsy but I think this is something I’ll get used to over time. The case is a mixture of brown plastic and shiny silver metal etched trim. It has suffered a series of knocks and bangs this last couple of weeks, none of which I’m please to say have damaged the casing or screen at all.

The screen on the front of the phone is a super size – 40 x 30mm and can display 65,536 colours (128 x 160 pixel). I’m absolutely fascinated by the quality of colour on the display but as I haven’t had a colour screen before I expect this novelty to wear off in time.

There are only two buttons on the side of the phone. The off button at the top lies flush to the casing and the volume switch at the side is far easier to than my old phone.

The key pad itself is brown and the buttons are made of hard plastic rather than soft rubber like some other Nokias. I find navigating menus and texting using the Nokia 7360 keys incredibly easy and the keys are very responsive to a small amount of pressure.



FEATURES

There are two ways to access the functions within the phone. Firstly, by using the top right key you can access the “go to” menu which takes you directly to the ten most popular features on the phone, including as text messages, alarm clock and calculator. This is a great feature. I use my phone as an alarm and each night instead of having to select and scroll various menus to get to the alarm and switch it on, the “goto” menu means I can access and set it quickly.

The other way to access the phones features is through the large turquoise “Select” button. This calls up the Nokia 7360’s ten main feature icons and selecting one of these takes you straight to the options available within it.

- Messages
- Contacts
- Call Register
- Settings
- Gallery
- Media
- Organiser
- Applications
- Web
- OrangePlus


PERSONALISATION

I found that the Nokia 7360 has such a logical menu navigation system that I didn’t have to look to the “user guide” book at all when I was setting up the main features such as the time, date, ringtone and themes.

I had an old-fashioned telephone “ring, ring” tone on my previous phone and was slightly annoyed at the limited range and quality of the tones available on the Nokia 7360. There was not one simple “ring, ring” to be found. The most basic was the standard Nokia ring which I probably would have selected but due it’s unfortunate hijacking by Trigger Happy TV, I can’t stand it these day. All the other ring tones (around ten) sounded liked they’d been compiled by a child on a Casio keyboard.

Now this is where reading the “user guide” comes in handy. I’m an impatient madam so while I was banging away on the handset keys whining about all the rubbish ringtones, my husband had been quietly reading the “user guide” and informed me that one of the nice features of my new phone is that it can handle MP3s. This means I can convert anything in my CD collection into a ringtone (what? Not legal? Pah!) .

There are two ways to transfer an MP3 onto the handset. The first is through using the nifty Infra Red connection (activated from Settings menu) and by holding my phone’s IR connection towards my husband’s (compatible) mobile IR connection he was able to transfer MP3 files to my phone. This can also be done from phone to PC.

The second way is by downloading them directly from the internet. The Nokia 7360 has WAP 2.0 and offers high-speed xHTML mobile browsing. And it is high-speed - quicker than my broadband connection on my PC! Within a matter of seconds I am able to connect to my service provider’s website and download ring tones, wallpaper and screensavers from there. I’ve done this sitting at home and also whilst moving through built up areas on a bus and I haven’t yet received a failed connection attempt. I find this very impressive.

You can also personalise your phone with a series of themes, screensavers and wallpapers. The Nokia 7360 comes with 4 themes and numerous pretty wallpapers… none of them are very manly. This is defiantly a girl’s phone – or for a man in touch with his feminine side!


MESSAGING

This is where the phone almost lost me. I’m used to having one option for texting - SMS, but with the Nokia 7360 you have 4 ways.

1: Basic SMS text messaging – This is my old faithful which has standard functions (inbox, outbox, distribution lists etc).

2: Multimedia messaging – With this you can create, receive and send videos and pictures with AMR voice clips attached. I haven’t really explored this yet.

3: Email – This supports SMTP, POP3 and IMAP4 protocols and can even support attachments such as jpegs, word docs and PDFs. I find this all pretty amazing for such a small phone but I’m happy at the moment accessing my emails from my PC and my texts from my phone. I’m not sure I’d ever use this feature unless I’m on holiday and can’t get near a PC – and even then, on holiday I don’t particularly want to be near a PC since I work with them everyday.

4: Flash messaging: The fourth and final option is sending and receiving Flash messages. Flash messages are short text messages (up to 70 characters) that are instantly displayed on the receiver's phone. This only works on “flash message” compatible phones so how I am supposed to know which of my pals has this option without asking them is impossible, but even so, I find it slightly intrusive and can’t think why anyone would want to use this function.



FUN THINGS

There are a few features on the phone that I think are great. There is an option in Contacts called “my presence” which show others with MP compatible phones your availability, mood, preferred method of communication etc and can be tailored to show different availability to different groups of people. It can also work with your mobile Calendar / TO-Do functions, for example, when a meeting you’ve entered in your Nokia calendar starts, your phone could automatically switch profile and presence info. I found this function very cool!

The stereo FM radio on the phone is brilliant. You can only connect if you have headphones plugged-in to the phone (the Nokia 7360 comes with a set of combined headphones and hands-free kit) but once connected the sound quality is great. When I’ve forgotten my book in the morning, I’ve found this a godsend on the daily commute to work.

Other nice features on the phone include the calendar and to-do list functions as well as the calculator, size / currency converter and national lotto number checker (no I haven’t won, yet!).

The camera on the isn’t that impressive - VGA resolution camera (0.3 megapixels) so it’s no substitute for a proper camera. But that said, it’s definately good enough to take photos for use on the phone - as wallpaper, or as images against user profiles in your contact directory. You can also switch the camera to video recording mode.

If you already have several MP3s and images loaded on to the phone, the Nokia 7360’s small memory (4 Mbytes) means there is only enough space for one or two small video clips. I think the video is more of a gimmick than anything else but it’s nice to have as the option.

If you like your mobile phone games then you’ll be disappointed with this. Tetris and Backgammon are the only two available. The Tetris is fairly basic but the Back Gammon I was I was really looking forward to playing until I discovered it was a multi-player version that required you to connect to either another phone or a pc to play against someone. The all sounded a tad too geeky for me so I left it. Doh! Where’s Pacman when you need him.


OPERATING FREQUENCY

The Nokia 7360 has the standard Tri-band GSM coverage on up to five continents (GSM 900/1800/1900) which means I can pretty much use it every where in the world other than places like Japan and South Korea.


BATTERY

According to Nokia the battery (BL-LB) will last 18 days on standby. I consider myself a light user (60 texts / 60 mins talk time per month) and find the battery will last me 4-5 days (I never let it run completely flat). The AC charger that comes with the phone is tiny compared to my last one too. It’s the size of a standard plug socket (easily transportable in your handbag) and it takes 60 to 80 minutes maximum to fully recharge the battery.


PURCHASING

I got this phone as a free upgrade on my Orange contract, but several mobile phone sites on the net offer it sim-free for £175 including VAT. I personally find this price very expensive for what you get so if you’re on a contract it is worth finding out what sort of deal your service provider can to offer you.

Sales Package Contents
- Nokia 7360 phone
- Nokia Battery BL-5B, 760 mAh
- Nokia Compact Charger AC-3
- Nokia Fashion Headset HS-31
- Strap
- User guide


CONCLUSION

I've given the Nokia 7360 an "3 out of 5" star rating. This phone is great for calls, texting and sending the odd picture but don’t rely on it for any heavy duty multimedia stuff. People who like the Nokia 7360, and indeed the rest of the L'Amour Collection, are not motivated by technical specifications. The Nokia 7360 looks good – it’s as simple as that and if looks appeal then you can’t go far wrong with this. If the Razr is the Kate Moss of phones, then the Nokia 7360 is the JLo – audacious, a whole lot of bling and a sure-fire head-turner.


This phone will do me perfecly for the next 4 years!

Summary: If the Razr is the Kate Moss of mobiles, then the Nokia 7360 is the JLo !