Sexy & Intelligent...Nokia 7610 (Nokia 7610)

Member Name: wellyboot

Product:	Nokia 7610
Date:	27/09/04 (3079 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Looks good, Brilliant quality camera, Good video capture

Disadvantages: Terrible .amr and .mp3 sound quality, Keypad can be fiddly

The Nokia 7610 sure looks good. Sexy styling is all well and good but I tend to like a few brains to back up mere looks....

When upgrading my handset a few weeks ago I came up with a long list of requirements and the new 7610 seemed like the only (Nokia) handset to meet them all. My list went something like this....Funky looks, tri-band, good quality digital camera and video capture facilities, multi-media messaging & Mp3 ring tones.

I’m not going to bore you with the technical details of what it can and can’t do or how much it weighs - you can visit the Nokia website or pretty much any mobile phone retailer’s site for all that sort of information, I just want to tell you about it from a users perspective.

The first thing I noticed upon arrival of my new handset was that it did not have an input for my existing wired Nokia handsfree set, meaning that I had to immediately buy a blue tooth handsfree set. Not too bad, any excuse to buy new gadgets is alright with me, but it still meant an additional expenditure that I had not factored in (a basic Bluetooth head set can be brought for around £30). The only other thing I have really noticed is there are no games on the phone. Not even the most basic ‘snakes’ is included which I thought was a bit tight, meaning again, you have to fork out more money to download games yourself.

The 7610 handset comes complete with a CD-rom, a leather carry strap, charger and an additional USB cable. I hooked up the cable to my PC and my phone and set about installing the software required to achieve my first objective – to get an Mp3 off my computer onto my phone and set it up as my ringtone. Although I am computer literate and actually work IT my first few attempts to get my phone to talk to the computer were unsuccessful and I had to remove and then re-install before it would finally work and even now it remains temperamental – though I concede this could be something to do with my PC rather than the software.

So with 3 Mp3’s finally transferred to my phone I set about listening to them and all the other ringtones on the handset. All the midi ringtones sound loud and clear but with .amr and Mp3 ringtones they are either very quiet or loud but with a high amount of noise distortion, i’ve basically deleted all the .amr ringtones as they are useless. After taking a few movie clips and playing them back I found that this lack of aural clarity on playback affected this application too.

The volume of Mp3 ringtones is so low that even inside the house, with no external noises you can barely hear the phone ring! The same is true of the alarm clock function which for some really odd reason is very quiet and would definitely not wake up a heavy sleeper! I have tried for 3 days to find a way of changing the alarm to make it louder but there is no volume control for the alarm specifically and thus far I have failed.

This brings me to the only real gripe I have about this phone. The sound quality is appalling. The speaker volume and sound clarity during telephone conversations is great, crystal clear, but the sound quality for Video playback, ringtones (other than standard and midi tones) & Mp3’s is really is dreadful and really does let this great little phone down.

On the up side, the best thing about this phone has to be the 1 mpx integrated camera which is fantastic. For a phone, the pictures are really excellent quality and there is a fairly decent night time mode allowing you to take pretty clear pictures at night indoors. There is some fun video editing software on there and you can apply styles to movies you create which is certainly fun.

If I had known the sound quality would be this poor I definitely would NOT have chosen this handset, which is a shame because once again Nokia have come up with something that is not only intelligent and intuitive to use but looks pretty sexy too. If Mp3 or real tone ringtones are not for you then I would urge you to go for this phone, however, if you like many thousands are keen to have the latest chart ringtones or hope to show your individuality with your funky or obscure choice of Mp3 ringtone then stay away as this phone’s audio/ringtone quality will only disappoint.

Summary: