Weird / Trashy / Odd / Uncomfortable.....these are the few compliments this phone gets from everyone......
Well! you might be thinking I’m crazy writing this review defending a phone which is probably been the most unacceptable Nokia apart from 3650/3660...probably I am......but I just thought....let me put my views as a user of this phone for the past 6 months to everyone here at MS.
Here we go.....
Lets first talk about why Nokia built this phone. Nokia has always been a company which experiments with form factors. Take for example the round dialed 3650 or the flip out keypad of the 6800 or the game centric N-Gage. The 7600 when it was launched last year was positioned as an Imaging phone. What the heck is an Imaging phone? Well...this phone was built to be like a camera, hence the odd shape. You can hold it just like a normal camera while you take out snaps. Nokia got this phone out for people who were fashion conscious (that’s why it’s in the 7xxx series which Nokia labels as Fashion series), and needed an easy to use imaging phone. Not an easy to use texting phone. For that you have the 6800. So I think it’s fair enough to judge this phone based on the reason it was built and not just by its shape or for a reason it was not built for.
Now let’s talk about the features.....
As a phone - It’s probably got all the usual features you expect out of a modern phone. It’s got 65, 536 colors TFT Screen, 30MB memory, large Phone Book, SMS/MMS Messaging, Built-in Handsfree for speech, music, and polyphonic ringing tones, Picture ID, 24 Chord Polyphonic Ringtones, IR/Bluetooth/USB connectivity, Voice Dialing, Voice Recorder, Java Games/Apps, Built-in Modem, GPRS, WAP etc....for more just check out the Nokia site https://nokia.com/nokia/0, , 43867, 00.html.
Holding the thing to your ear isn’t as weird as you might at first think, and it feels comfortable enough in the hand.
As a digital camera - This is where the phone really scores. The 7600 has a VGA camera with 640x480 resolution, 65K TFT Screen which is very bright & clear. Its got Stabdard, Potrait, Night & self timer mode to take out snaps. The camera button is nicely placed for one-handed shot taking. It can record Videos (which was a USP of this phone when it was released; no other S40 phone had this capability...now we have more like 6230). The Pics are stored in JPEG & the Videos in 3GP. Nice Pics/Videos
As a music player - Hmm...My favorite area....the 7600 has a built in music player and you can play MP3 or AAC files in it. You can transfer the files easily using the PC Suite App. It plays Stereo when the Headset (very unique piece) is attached and mono on the Loudspeaker. You can record in AMR format using the voice recorder and the best part of all, use any of these formats as ringtones....:-D
As a PDA - Just the basic stuff, but you can use this phone to browse the internet from your laptop/PC, browse it on the phone, got a basic PIM app which has calendar, notes and stuff and its got a nice built in email client.
This phone has some great features, but it’s not perfect. As you might already know, it’s a phone which people who Text hate. Not a very good phone to Text. So if anyone Texts a lot….keep away from this phone. Another major problem is the limited memory. 30MB was gr8 when it was released but is inadequate for using it as a music player :-(….Apart from this; I have never faced any major issues with this one. Finally to conclude, this phone was very successful in the UK in the 3G segment since it was the best featured 3G phone before 6630 came in.....so I don’t think the shape is any factor in deciding whether a phone is successful or not………..the features are……
I had bought this phone when my son was born and I wanted to capture his every moment in life. I could not afford a good phone and a good digital camera separately. That’s when I came across 7600 and went for it. I’m very happy I went for it…….
Cheers!!! To that……………….:-)