Sarah Louise goes back to Nokia.... (Nokia 7250i)

Member Name: Sarah_Louise

Product:	Nokia 7250i
Date:	21/07/05 (334 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Nice looking phone, easy to use, good functions, its got a camera with nightmode

Disadvantages: I suppose its not "top of the range" any more....

(Here goes, my first review after deciding to give Dooyoo another go....)

Well, following my last mobile phone review dated September 9th 2003, I titled that “Sarah_Louise turns her back on Nokia!!”. I had just bought a Sagem MYX5 – my first colour mobile phone. I thought it was the bee’s knee’s and gave it 5 stars. That soon changed though. Shortly after I bought this mobile, camera mobiles became the new “in” thing. The were out when I bought the Sagem MYX5 but they were pretty new and were hence VERY expensive. I didn’t need one. I had a digital camera. None of my friends had one either so who would I send the pictures to? And of course it costs quite a bit to send photo messages. All of these points meant that I really didn’t WANT a camera phone.

Now camera phones are all over the place, wherever you look, there’s someone taking a photo with their phone! And now of course there is also video phones too.

It was time to upgrade. I can never afford to buy a “top of the range” mobile and I am never too bothered about this either. So long as my mobiles do their job and look relatively stylish then I’m happy!

So, Sarah_Louise decided it was time to revert back to Nokia. Having started with a Nokia many years ago (a 5110), I must admit, I’d missed being a non-Nokia girl! I started shopping around for a Nokia (within my budget (£100 was my absolute maximum)) that had everything I currently wanted from a phone. For a start, my new phone HAD to have a camera. It also HAD to be able to play the radio. After my sister upgraded to the Nokia 8310 with a radio function shortly after I’d got my Sagem I must admit, I was mightily impressed with the quality of it! She was on contract though so she got it for free! So, I had quite a small list of “must have’s” really. However, not all that many phones have a radio function so this limited my choice somewhat considering I was on a limited budget.

I finally decided that a Nokia 7250i was the way to go. They were selling fairly cheaply (£89.99) in Currys/Dixons/etc. now so I thought I’d give it a go. I actually ended up buying one off eBay (it was a bargain at £80 on Buy it Now basis!) but that’s besides the point.



= = = Why did I want a new mobile? = = =

Well although I didn’t NEED a camera phone. You know how it is. You can’t afford to stay TOO far behind in technological terms – you have to keep at least relatively up to date with these things. As I mentioned earlier, of course video phones are now out and will soon be as common as muck but for the time being, a mere camera phone will be sufficient for me.

I have a digital camera anyway so I knew I would never NEED to use the camera on my phone but I did like the idea of always having it with me. You never know when you might want to take a photo!

Also, as mentioned earlier, I quite fancied the idea of a phone that you could play the radio on. Having listened to my sisters’ old phone, I was confident that I’d be happy with the radio function on the 7250i.


= = = Why choose a Nokia 7250i? = = =

Well as previously mentioned, I was on a budget to buy a phone for under £100. Yet I still wanted snazzy features, namely the camera and radio. If you check out the Nokia range (or indeed any make) you’ll find that phones that have a radio function aren’t actually all that common. Indeed, there weren’t any other mobiles under £100 that had this function AND a camera.

Basically, I wanted a light phone, good looking, possibility to change the front and back covers, decent polyphonic ring tone selection, a game or two for extra boring train journeys up and down the country, a camera (and obviously colour screen) and of course the radio function. All for under £100.

The Nokia 7250i fitted all of the above specifications perfectly. They were in the region of around £250 when they first hit the shops and were pretty much picked up by those on contract deals at the time. So I thought that they must be pretty good phones to have ever been worth that amount of money.



= = = What’s the Nokia 7250i got to offer then? = = =

Well of course, being originally worth £250, these phones do have quite a lot to offer. (Certainly a LOT to offer for when they first came out anyway!) For those in a hurry, firstly I’ll just list them, I’ll then go into a little more detail for those of you who are actually interested in buying this phone.


~ Features and Specifications ~

· XHTML Browser (over WAP Stack)
· Integrated digital camera
· MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service)
· Tri-band phone works in three networks on five continents (will work in the USA)
· Downloadable personal applications via Java™ technology
· GPRS (General Packet Radio Service)
· HSCSD (High-Speed Circuit-Switched Data)
· Image Uploader
· Wallet over XHTML
· Stereo FM radio
· Handsfree speaker
· Customizable and timed profiles
· Polyphonic ringing tones
· Wallpaper: Full screen colour image
· Changeable colour schemes
· Screen saver: Digital clock
· Clock, alarm clock
· Calculator, currency converter
· Stopwatch, countdown timer
· Connectivity options: IR and cable

1 - Messages
Within this menu, you can create a message using the original text typing or use the text predictor (T9 dictionary). I personally have never ‘got on’ with any kind of predictive text system and find it much quicker to just type out the message without this function turned on. One great thing about the 7250i when compared with my old Sagem phone is that it remembers your setting. I.e. when I go to compose a message now it remembers that I didn’t use the predictive text system last time and hence doesn’t come on automatically now. Whereas each time I went to compose a message on my old phone it always started up in dictionary mode so I had to manually turn off the T9 dictionary each time.
With the 7250i, you can send texts as emails too should you desire. I can’t comment on how good this is as I’ve never done it. I’ll have to try it sometime and let you know!

Obviously the other menus within the Messages menu is that of Inbox, Archive (you can save unsent messages in here) and you also have a Sent folder (comes in quite handy sometimes!)

You can store up to 150 normal text messages in your Inbox or up to 50 picture messages. This should be ample for everyone – anyone who needs more space than this has FAR too many friends! :-P


2 - Call Register
As with other Nokia’s and indeed all other mobiles I’ve ever used, this is fairly standard and it just keeps a record of missed calls, received calls and dialled calls as well as recording the length of your last calls and calculating the total length of all calls, received calls and dialled calls. If you’re on PAYG, you can also have it show you how much the cost of your last call cost too.

3 - Contacts
I’m not sure how this compares with other Nokia’s as my first Nokia didn’t have this menu option at all (well before its time!) However, basically the proviso over this menu is that you can put the people in your phone book into contact groups, e.g. friends, family, colleagues, etc. You can create and/or rename any caller groups and assign pictures or even photos to them so you can ‘see’ who’s calling you. Very good idea in principle but I really can’t be bothered assigning photos to everyone in my phonebook, especially given that I very rarely see half of the people in there in order to get a photo of them anyway!

4 - Profiles
My last Nokia had this menu so I’m assuming its been around for quite some time. In case any of you don’t really know what it is/does, basically it just allows you to have different usage settings for your phone. E.g. which ringtone you want and at what volume for certain circumstances. E.g. “normal”, “meeting”, “outside”, etc. You can customize it to suit and its very easy to switch between different modes. E.g. I just put it onto Silent mode when I’m in work, have it on General mode for every other time and would occasionally have it on Loud mode when I’m outside and somewhere busy/noisy where I need the volume turned up. All pretty self explanatory really.

5 - Settings
You can change the wallpaper, colour schemes and whatnot in this menu. Again, I can’t compare this to other Nokia’s but my Sagem had very similar functions, just with less choice of wallpapers. There’s quite a high choice of wallpapers but I can’t tell you exactly how many you get on as standard as I bought this phone second hand so some of the ones I have access to may well have been downloaded from elsewhere.

6 - Radio
Yes, one of the main reasons for me buying this one! There are 20 programmable slots so you can pick your favourite stations and then when reception goes funny on one, quickly flick to the next.
The handsfree set included with the phone works as your headphones for the radio. Without these plugged into your phone, you will not be able to turn the radio on. Once you’ve got the radio turned on however, you can switch to loudspeaker mode and hence you don’t have to actually wear the headphones. If you have the genuine Nokia headset then theres a very handy little button which you can press on the headset itself that switches between radio stations. I didn’t realise this until I accidentally pressed it and wondered what sort of damage I’d done only to be pleasantly surprised to find that I’d just switched stations!!
One thing to note here is that the phone still works perfectly normally while you’re listening to the radio. I must admit, I did wonder whether you could still receive/send calls and messages while in this mode. I assumed you would be able to do but I really wasn’t sure. I can now assure you that this is possible and very easy. The radio turns itself off automatically when you make/receive a call and it also is interrupted by the message tone you set when you receive a message.

P.S. you can even set the radio to go off as your alarm - just remember to have your hands free plugged into the phone!

7 - Camera
Apparently, this is (or certainly was) one of Nokia’s best cameras with very high resolution. Once the picture has been taken, you can rename it, zoom in and move around the picture or set it as your wallpaper.
One thing you should be aware of here is that when you see the phone being marketed as having a zoom function. Don’t be fooled into thinking that this is for actually taking the photos themselves. This is NOT the case. What it means by this is just that you can zoom in on the photo once you’ve taken it. A little pointless really but I suppose some people may find a use for it!
Now, another reason why I chose this phone over other mobiles with camera functions is that the 7250i is one of the very few phones (and certainly the only one under £100) that has “night mode”. As a “ghost hunter” its absolutely essential that I have a camera that works in low-light conditions! ;-) I am of course just joking here, I don’t use my phone whilst on investigations as the quality simply isn’t good enough for that purpose but I must admit, I have tested out this night mode function just out of interest. Its good but not great. I took three photos. One with the lights on, one with the lights off and camera in normal mode and then one with the lights off with the camera switched onto night mode. Although the quality wasn’t overly great with the one taken in the low-light conditions with the night mode on, it was quite clear that the night mode had definitely kicked in when I compared it to the other one. Another thing to note here though is that the camera does NOT have a flash so you won’t see a thing if it is very dark. You do need at least some ambient light.

8 - Gallery
This is where your photos are stored. There are 3 folders within this section:

~Photos~
Self explanatory really! You can view, zoom in, edit, rename, etc. your photos in this section.

~Graphics~
There are a number of pre-loaded images but they’re not overly exciting. More can be downloaded if you so desire.

~Tones~
Here you’ll find the larger ringtones and those that you’ve downloaded/been sent. There is a large selection of tones to choose from but I must say, none are exactly thrilling so I would recommend you either download some or get yourself a data cable. (More on this later).

9 - Organiser
This menu houses your alarm clock, calendar and to-do list. I use the alarm clock and calendar and they're very useful. The calendar is great (especially when you save someone's birthday-you can enter their year of birth and it tells you how old they'll be on that birthday) I was also surprised and pleased that old dates can be viewed too and reminders and notes are also saved once the day has passed. Although not used a great deal, I can certainly see me using this in future. (I’m very forgetful!) ;o)
One slight niggle here is that you have to turn the alarm clock on each time you wish to use it. Although it does remember what time you last had it set for. However, my old mobile remembered the time AND that I had the alarm turned on for that time each day. Granted, I had to turn it off each time I didn’t use it and it did prove annoying on the occasions that I forgot to turn it off and was hence woken up by it. But I still think this is better than having to turn the alarm on each day. I use the alarm clock function daily so I have to remember to turn it on again each night. I forgot completely on one of the first days that I had this new phone as I was so used to my old phone remembering that I wanted the alarm to go off in the morning. Thankfully my mum gets up early so she was up in time to wake me up for work that morning!

The alarm works even if you turn the phone off overnight (very handy!) and it also still works when you have your phone in Silent mode. There is also the good-old Snooze function (very useful indeed!)

10 - Games
On this phone, you'll find two games preloaded:

~Bounce~
This is a maze type game where you direct a ball over and under walls, past spiky obstacles, spikes, etc. Its very logical and not overly easy to start with. Although granted, I have only played this for a few minutes. I kept dying! I’m sure it’ll come with practise though.

~Triple Pop~
This is quite a good game, I can’t remember the name of what it reminds me of but it is VERY similar to a PlayStation game that my sister has. If you like strategy games then you’ll enjoy this. Basically you have a small circle onto which colourful balls are fired from the sides of the screen. You have to rotate the circle to join the balls of the same colour. Join three and they evaporate. Vaguely reminiscent of Tetris I suppose, just working in a circular motion as opposed to a vertical one!

11 - Applications
The only application I have is converter (called Converter II so I don’t know whether this is an upgraded version?) I suppose it might come in handy occasionally but I’ve yet to use it. It does have a quite wide selection of possible conversions, including currency, temperatures, length, area, volume and weight.

12 - Extras
Here you have your calculator, countdown timer, stopwatch, wallet (it took me a while to learn what exactly the point in this was. Basically it’s a place to store your credit card numbers and other personal details. It is password protected function obviously and enables you to make payments with your phone. I haven’t used this and won’t be doing either. It doesn’t sound overly sensible to me! There is also something called Synchronisation in this menu. I’m not entirely sure what this does though to be honest. I can tell you it has something to do with the Internet though as it mentions a few things in the Settings part of this section. As I don’t use the Internet on my phone, I won’t be needing it. I’m sure its very useful for those who do and for those who can figure out what it is though!

13 - Connectivity
Here you can activate your Infra-red and GPRS connections. It’s easy to turn either of them on but I’ve never used either so I can’t comment on how good they are. My PC doesn’t have an infra-red port so I shall be using the data cable instead. (Again, more on this later).

14 - Services
Again, this is to do with using the Internet where you can set things like your Bookmarks and Homepage and whatnot. I’ve never tried using the Internet on my phone though.

15 - Go To
This menu's quite useful as it has shortcuts you'll often need to use. These are:

Contacts
Radio
Multimedia Inbox
Create MMS (a multimedia message)
Inbox

It also enables you to switch between the 2 main profiles:
General
Silent


= = = Ease of Use = = =

The phone is very easy to use. I must admit though, although I never thought I’d forget how to use a Nokia (i.e. just the menu buttons and remembering that the left hand menu button means “Select” while the right means “Exit” (generally) but in comparison to the Sagem which is pretty much the exact opposite, I must admit that when I first got the 7250i, I was exiting and selecting things I didn’t mean to do! Incidentally, I have now well and truly got the hang of it again though. I’ve recently sold my old Sagem on eBay and I was just deleting the messages I’d stored in the phone memory before I post the phone off to the highest bidders and I was getting in a real muddle again because I was exiting things I meant to be selecting! It subsequently took me a LONG time because I’ve never been very good at keeping on top of my messages, I let them build up for months!


= = = Reception Quality = = =

A friend of mine phoned me a few days after I’d got my new phone, which was handy because I rarely use my mobile to actually make calls (far too expensive usually!) The reception seemed about normal to me to be honest. As I’ve only spoken on it the one time its difficult to judge it properly. It certainly wasn’t bad quality by any stretch of the imagination. The reception in the room I took the call in was pretty much perfect!

As with 99% of mobiles these days, the aerial is an internal one so it doesn’t get in the way!


= = = Battery Life = = =

So far, so good! I’ve only charged my phone 3 times and I’ve had it a number of weeks now. And one of those times wasn’t really necessary, I just charged it to make sure it was brimming over with fresh charge as I knew I may well need to call on the battery power to the full extreme – in other words I was heading for a loooong car journey up to Newcastle so I thought I’d need to keep myself entertained by playing the games! As it happened, we drained another one of the Committee members’ phones instead as we decided to play a game of Monopoly on her phone (4 player!) lol.


= = = Connectability = = =

(For some reason or another, MS Word is telling me that the word “Connectability” doesn’t exist, but I assure you, it DOES exist in Sarah_Louise language!) :-)

For the first time in my mobile usage history, I’ve actually purchased a method of connecting my phone to the PC. I bought a data cable (also off eBay) seeing as my computer doesn’t have an infra red port. I also bought an extra Nokia customisation CD ROM off eBay which has loads of wallpapers, tones, games, etc. It works out MUCH cheaper doing this than downloading them conventionally off the Internet or indeed phoning or texting those premium rate numbers.

You can also view the photo’s you took using the data cable and PC suites. I have only downloaded the trial version of the software I use though so I haven’t been able to download the photos I’ve taken onto the PC as yet.


= = = Good points = = =

What I like about this phone, apart from its ease of use, small compact size, lightweight and generally good looking is the fact its so easy to personalise and individualise it. Not only can you change the front and back covers but you can change the screen savers, logos, ring tones, etc, etc. There’s so many different things which you can set to personalise it you’re unlikely to run into another Nokia phone with exactly the same settings as yours (and, given that there are a LOT of other Nokia phones out there, this is quite impressive!)

Facia’s are cheap and relatively easy to pick up. Check out eBay. I’ve just bought a few on there which have all been under £5. (Genuine Nokia ones tend to be anywhere between £10 and £20 though).

Naturally I have to rate the radio function highly on this phone, the quality is VERY good. Well, it is when you have good reception anyway of course. National stations such as Radio 1 I find are generally excellent quality in most places, however, not all. I currently walk someones dog for them at lunchtimes, they live on the West shore of Llandudno so I take the dog for an hours walk along the beach and up along the sand dunes. Its hardly out “in the sticks” in comparison to many areas of North Wales but it just will not pick up Radio 1 here. It does however pick up the local radio station perfectly.

The camera can be both deemed “great” and “cr*p” at the same time. It depends what you’re comparing it to. By todays terms, I guess the camera is far from great. The Sagem MYX7 (about 4 phones up in the line from my old Sagem) for example has a camera with a 1.3 mega pixel display. This is extremely high quality.

I must admit, I was a little disappointed when I first took a photo with my 7250i but I was pleasantly surprised when I viewed the photos on the PC. They are actually a lot better quality than they appeared on the phone. Overall I’d give the camera a thumbs up.


= = = Bad Points = = =

As previously mentioned, the fact that you have to turn the alarm clock on every time you wish to use it can be problematical for forgetful people like me! But then on the same hand, I suppose it means you don’t get woken up when you don’t need to be! I got grumbled at just a few months back when we were down in Cardiff conducting an investigation in a private house that we’d been called to. We had a TV Producer with us on the investigation to ‘shadow’ us to see exactly what we do as he’s hoping to be making a series about the paranormal shortly. Conveniently he lived in Cardiff and lived in a huge house so as a ‘thank you’ for letting him attend, he let us all crash at his house for a few hours (and provided a very nice brekkie for when we got up too might I add!) But anyway, so there was the Committee all crashing in this one (rather large!) bedroom. We’d got back to his house at about 6am and I’d got up at about 7:30am the morning prior so of course my alarm woke everyone up at that time when we’d been up all night. Oops!!

There is just one other thing I've noticed about this phone that I've never had with any previous phone. That is that when I drop the phone (not from any great height, but you know how it is, sometimes they get knocked off the desk or something, don't they?) Well, this phone tells me that the SIM is not inserted. I have to switch the phone off and then back on again to correct this problem. No big deal as that is all I have to do. I don't have to actually fiddle around with the SIM itself but none of my other phones have said that, despite facing much larger drops!

Other than that, I really don’t have any gripes with the 7250i to be honest. Not yet anyway!


= = = Conclusion = = =

All in all, this phone gets top marks from me!

As I said, I got this phone off eBay for £80. You can probably pick up some other bargains on there if you so desired, I just went through a Buy it Now to save me faffing around with bidding on this occasion.

I’d give the phone a 9/10 rating. Or a 4/5 rating if we’re going off Dooyoo terms!

= = = Links = = =

For full specifications and information about the phone please see the official Nokia website here:
http://www.nokia.com/nokia/0,8764,27399,00.html
(That page will take you straight to the Nokia 7250i pages).

Summary: Easy to use, nice looking phone, camera with nightmode and radio

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