Best phone on the market (Nokia 7110)

Member Name: GAThrawn1

Product:	Nokia 7110
Date:	08/11/00 (133 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Active slide, Navi roller, big screen , infrared modem, etc.

Disadvantages: Comparatively big, no voice dialling, external aerial

The Nokia 7110 is possibly one of the best known phones on the market, it ws the first phone to use WAP (well the s25 was but only 1.0, as opposed to 1.1) and also features the killer slide as seen in the Matrix.

To me the three main features are the slide, the navi-roller and the massive screen. I have wanted a phone with an active flip or slide for a while so I was very pleased that the 7110 came with one. Pressing a button on the back makes it slide down to answer calls and pushing it back up hangs up the calls. On this only the slide is very cool, I love answering calls now! However, the slide is weel integrated into the phone software. When the slide goes down it automatically unlocks the phone. When you push it back up it automatically goes back to teh standby screen, wherever you are in the menu system which I found very handy. It also gives you the option to lock the keypad by pressing the left softkey within three seconds of closing the cover. I don't know how necessary this but I always lock it to make sure. At first the button for the slide seems to be in an awkward place, presumably to prevent it accidentally being opened. However, I quickly got used to and find it no problem now.

The navi roller is excellent, I had heard people how good it was but you can't truly appreciate it until you use it. Rolling it up or down flicks up and down the menu and then pressing it selects the correct menu. This is much faster than on a 3210 for example, where you have to keep pressing the arrows and then press the navi button, it can all be done on the 7110 without barely moving your thumb. The screen is another feature you don't appreciate until you actually use it, it really is massive. Whenever I use my 3210 the screen seems tiny!

Another feature of the 7110 is the ability it has to hold 3000 phone numbers, plus whatever the SIM card can hold. With the 7110 you can assign 3 numbers and a text field per name, or mo
re if the phone book is relatively empty. This means you can assign a home number, a mobile number a fax number and e-mail address to one name. This can be quite handy although it the person you have assigned all the numbers to phones you a lot from separate numbers the phone will simply say the name when the person calls, regardless of whether it is from home or mobile. I found it easier to assign the numbers separately.

The 7110 comes with the predictive text input which I find invaluable. It also features caller groups which you can assign people in your phone book to. This mean when your phone rings and the person is in your 'friends' group it will ring a certain way and display a certain graphic. I have to admit thought I preferred being able to assign each phonebook entry a different ringing tone as on the 3210. The phone also features profiles, which are similar to the options that you get when you press the power button on a 5110 or 3210 except they are more explicit on the 7110. With the profiles you can rename them and personalise more than on the 3210 amd 5110.

The 7110 comes with an almost entirely new set of games that take advantage of the bigger screen, the only game seen before os rotation which I have to say I don't like very much. Snake has been replaced by Snake 2, no longer do you control a line that absorbs dots! The snake looks like a snake and even eats the dots now. The arena is rectangular but no longer simply go up and down across the screen as it has been divided up. I am a great fan of snake (1372 was my best on the 3210)and snake 2 is certainly just as good to play. The other two games are essentially tennis and othello which are ok.

Onto the more practical side, the 7110 offers everything you would expect; alarm clock, date, call logs etc. A new feature (to me anyway) is the calendor function which lest you use the phone as a scheduler. You can set important dates which the phone wil
l alert you of when the times comes. The only problem is that the phone must be switched on for it to alert you. The 7110 also comes with a built-in infra red modem which is very useful for sychronising with PDAs or PC's. If you are considering buying PDA in the future it is well worth buying this phone, on a phone like the Ericsson T28 you have to pay an extra £100 to give it an infra red modem. The 7110 has a vibrate alert which is very handy, it doesn't vibrate much but even when it is in its case in my pocket I can still tell when someone is calling when I am in a noisy environment.

Battery life is excellent, the battery is lithium ion and I find I only have to charge the phone up once, even when I am making long calls on it.

What about WAP then? I didn't actually buy this phone for its WAP capabilities, it is an excellent phone ignoring WAP. I have noticed a lot of people saying how poor WAP is but I was actually quite impressed. It's handy for checking prices on sites like shopsmart or looking through auctions on Yahoo.

The downsides? Well, the 7110 is quite big compared to an 8210 or a T28 but I find it a good siz to hold in my hand, plus it is lighter than a 3210 so it doesn't feel at all heavy. I think the slide makes partly up for this as it adds to the phone's 'coolness'. The 7110 doesn't have vioce dialling which I am not bothered about, I find it is faster simply to press the speed dial key. Also it has an external aerial, but I have been told this is better for hanging onto calls and I can't disagree, my 3210 used to drop calls quite often but my 7110 (on Vodafone) has yet to even lose the network. For this I think it is worth having the aerial although given the choice I would go for an internal aerial.

Overall though this phone is excellent, whatever you want to do with it. With its cool slide and fun games it is a good phone for a casual mobile phone user. Ho
wever with it's built in infrared modem it is also just as good for a business user.

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