Another Nokia with an unnececerily odd keypad (Nokia 7600)

Member Name: MrMobile

Product:	Nokia 7600
Date:	20/01/05 (394 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good Camera/Video, Bluetooth, MP3 Player

Disadvantages: Odd keypad layout, No removable memory cards

To be honest, the only reason I got this phone is because of the contract deal it is on. I get 500 anytime any network minutes for £25 a month and a free Nokia 3G camera, video phone. Other phones available on the same deal at the time were either twice the size or made by LG who previously had very few phones on the UK market and as I had to have the phone for 12 months I decided on the Nokia as it is a name i know and put a certain amount of trust into.

This doesn't mean I've been disappointed by the handset, though, if anything I've been surprisingly impressed. Apart from the obvious problems I was going to have with the phone such as writing a text and taking peoples numbers with any speed and efficiency due to the utterly daft keypad layout (why oh why did they bother?), this phone does everything I want it to and a tiny bit more.

The camera and video capture can't really be faulted, the photos, when downloaded onto a PC are of good quality and a decent size and although quite basic, there is the ability to edit the photos on the phone although effects such as sepia and black & white cant be applied when taking pictures. The length of the video clips can be set to a maximum of 2 and a half minutes but can be paused whilst filming, which is not only quite fun but avoids those long bits of video where nothing is actually happening. The 30MB memory provides ample space for pictures and videos, after many a drunken Saturday night I’ve woken the next morning where the only clues to what happened after about 9pm are stored safely on my phone to help me try and work out where I went, who I was with and what exactly I did and these clues are still on my phone now, although some cases remain unsolved :(

The problem is, once you've had the phone for a few months, you find your phone getting gradually more and more full of pictures and videos and as I said 30MB is plenty for videos and pictures but what about if you want to make use of the MP3 player? Remembering that as a rough guide MP3s are around 1MB per minute of a song, I wouldn't avoid buying that i-pod you were after because you've spotted this phone has an MP3 player. If you do decide to use the phone to store and listen to MP3s, you should be pleasantly surprised at the ease of putting music on there and the built in loudspeaker is one of the loudest and best quality I have heard built into a mobile.

Other cool things about this phone include the ability to view your pictures one after the other without having to move to the next one every time using the 'view in sequence' function and the ease of sending files via bluetooth/infrared. Organizing files into folders is also pretty easy, although sometimes when browsing pictures, if you try to move between them too quickly the phone will freeze temporarily (although this may only be when the memory is nearly full). The voice command function is also very good, it has worked every time for me, although I don't use it a great deal.

Data transfer is also quite easy, the Nokia data suite is fairly simple and does work most of the time, although when it records CDs for use on the MP3 player, it makes .aac files, not MP3s which can be quite irritating when trying to send music to non nokia phones.

Apart from the awkward keypad, the lack of an FM radio and the absence of removable memory cards (surely a must on any phone where they seriously expect you to use the MP3 player) this phone really is quite good, well I like it anyway. The other final good thing about this phone is that in the UK it is widely available on pay as you talk on one UK network for a ridiculously cheap price, which is not only good in itself but it makes the phone less of an attraction for thieving scallywags.

Spec:
Battery life (approx):
Standby: 213 hrs
Talk time: 157 mins
Weight: 123g
Volume: 103cc
Screen:
Size 40mm x 33mm
65,536 colours
Resolution 128x160 pixels
Memory: 29MB internal memory
Camera: VGA camera

Summary: