Great phone for a low budget (Nokia 7250i)

Member Name: jord121290

Product:	Nokia 7250i
Date:	17/10/05 (424 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Lightweight, colour screen, radio

Disadvantages: Camera not very good

I recently bought this phone from eBay, my previous phone was a very old Nokia 3410. I have had fairly good experiences with Nokia in my history of mobile phones, so I decided to stick with them on the purchase of my 3rd mobile phone.
I got the phone second hand on eBay for £30, but searching around on the internet I found a few sites that were still selling it, and their prices were around £60-£70, which is very good for a phone these days.

I have been very pleased with the 7250i, having owned it for around a week now, I have got used to all it's features and I am now very comfortable using it. Learning about the functions of the phone is very easy, in fact I hardly ever had to refer to the manual; if you are a previous Nokia user the menu and button configurations will be very familiar to you, as not much has changed from previous Nokias.

The best way to describe the various functions and features of the phone is to go through the menu:

Messages - The Nokia 7250i allows you to send simple text messages or multimedia messages, you can use the predictive typing method or the original typing method to create messages depending on which you prefer.
There are also chat and voice messaging functions available, but I have not used these much so I wouldn't be able to comment on what they are like.

Call Register - Allows you to view all sorts of information on your usage of the phone, inlcuding various measurements of your calls, both made and recieved, and measurements of the amount of data you have sent via GPRS.

Phone Book - Does pretty much what the name suggests. Here you can store all your contacts' phone numbers for easy access, you can add speed dials to numbers as well as many more options to make it easier to call frequently used numbers. You can use the phone book while sending text messages so you don't have to type the number, just select the contact from your address book.

Profiles - This allows you to set many types of profiles which mainly relate to volume and vibration functions. You can put your phone on various profile settings: General, silent, meeting, outdoor and pager settings mean no embarrising moments like your phone ringing half way through a meeting or at the cinema.

Settings - This allows you to customize and adjust all of the features of your phone, including call settings, tone settings and display options, which allows you to add different wallpapers to your phone including photos you have taken with the intergrated camera.

Radio - This is my favourite feature of the phone, you can listen to the radio on your phone using either the earphones (supplied with the phone) or the phone's loudspeaker, unfortuntaley, you still need the earphones plugged in to be able to put the radio on loudspeaker mode. The earphones that are supplied are really good, they have fairly good sound quality and are supplied with some cushioning things you can attach to the ear peices to prevent the plastic hurting your ears after a while. There is also a button about half way up the wire which allows you to change radio station without even touching the phone! I didn't even realise it was a button until about 4 days of having the phone when I was bored and mindlessly pressed it, it was a pleasent surprise!

Camera - The intergrated camera is a good feature, but it's really nothing to write home about. There are 3 quality modes: basic, medium and high, but really none of them are anywhere near as good as a digital camera and with no zoom functions or a flash, it really does have limited functionality. The camera does have a night mode which brighten up dark lit pictures, but with no flash, it's no real improvement on what the pictures would look like without night mode.

Gallery - This allows you to manage your graphics (the phone comes with a few which are good for wallpapers), your photos that you have taken with the camera, and your tones; there are a few basic tones on the phone, but if you want to be 'cool' with your phone you'll have to pay for some decent ones.

Organiser - This features an alarm clock, calendar and to-do list, which give the phone the added functionality of a personal organiser. You can use this to store birthdays, and other reminders. The phone will display messages as it gets close to the dates you have entered the reminder in.

Games - The 7250i comes with two games. There is one called bounce which is a kind of platform game where you have to guide a bouncing ball around a series of increasingly difficult levels.
The second game is called Triple Pop, but I haven't had a go of playing this yet, so I have no idea about what it is about. I will update this part of the review as soon as I've had a chance to play it.

Applications - The 7250i has one application already on it called Converter II, it allows you to convert alsorts of different measurements from imperial to metric and vise versa. It also works as quite a good currency converter.

Extras - Amongst the extras on the 7250i are a countdown timer, calculator, stopwatch and wallet, which lets you store credit card info for payments via your phone.

Connectivity - There are two connectivity options on the 7250i, the first is GPRS (General Packet Radio Service). You can also use Infrared for communicating with other devices like PDAs, computers and other mobile phones. Infrared has only got a 1m range though, and the beam is easily disprupted. Via Infrared you can transfer items like phone book details, which I found a particulary good function when used with Palm PDAs.

Services - This allows you to browse mobile internet sources via GPRS, this is a charged service however and its costs depend on the tarrifs set out by your service provider.

There may also be other menu options added to your phone for extra functionality, like t-zones for T-Mobile customers.

The phone's keypad is very well laid out and despite having relatively small buttons, they feel very easy to use. As well as the basic number pad, there is a call answer button and a call end button, left and right slection buttons and a four way directional pad. On the side of the phone there is a volume button and the on/off button is located on the top of the phone. The 7250i has a Nokia pop-port at the bottom for connecting earphones, data cables and other peripherals, the power slot for charging the battery is also loctaed at the bottom of the phone. The infrared reciever/transmitter is loacted at the top of the phone and the camera is on the back.

The 7250i, comes boxed with earphones, a charger, battery, and an instruction manual. Depending on your package, there may also be a SIM card included from your service provider.

The cover on the phone can easily be changed using a wide variety of Nokia X-Press On covers available, some official from Nokia and some unbranded.

The 7250i is quite lightweight and is small enough to be carried around discreetly, although a lot of weight is added if you connect any cables or peripherals via the pop-port socket.

All in all, the 7250i is a good camera with a nice colour screen and plenty of features to keep you hapy. It lacks some of the very newest mobile phone features and it's camera is not very good. For the price though, it is a great phone and very good for people looking for a low price phone that still has a wide range of features.

Summary: Good for the price, however lacking the newest features.

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