Nokia 7250 Review

Overall Rating

Enough memory, Java support, High resolution screen, Good signal strength.

Low resolution photo, No picutre-phone book association.

In general, I liked 7250. All the good things do not come in one box. Either you compromise on the size or on the features. It cost me around 440 USD SIM free. In this price, I could have bought a professional digital camera; but the focus of this gadget is phone, not camera. Hence, camera is an additional feature that comes for free. I had not expected the quality of caputred pictures would come at all close to those taken from digital cameras; and I was not heart broken when I found them just usable. First, the captured images are only 352 by 288 pixels. Second, the images are not sharp even when captured at high quality. Frankly, the captured images do not meet standard to be placed even in a normal not-so-serious web site.



I bought this set after careful study and considerations. The first thing that worred me was the color screen. I had regretted when I switched from Nokia 8310 to color screen SE (Sony Ericsson) T68i. The color screens in mobiles in inactive mode are as good as turned off computer monitors. That's how these devices save battery life. In this inactive mode, almost all mobiles have got into habit of displaying a large digital clock. The problem is, the screen is so dark you cannot read the time unless you tilt it or press any key to bring background lights on. SE T68i's screen saver digital clock was so dim, it had got into my nerves. Thank God Nokia 7250 don't have this problem. But be warned, you still have to tilt a little bit now and then to read it.



The 128 by 128 pixel on a square 1.06 inch screen for a mobile set should be considered high resolution. The background light is very bright. Only in the direct sunlight, the screen look bit dim. At night, the brightness is such that you wish you had a sun glass on. 4096 colors are enough for an inch square screen.



The camera : The shutter speed as compared to manual camera is quite slow. This captures motion and pictures are blurred even when hand is move slightly at the time of click. Forget taking moving objects unless you have good skill of centering the object to be captured fixed, relative to camera. The 'click' sound and actual internal click are not synchronized. First you hear camera 'click' sound and around 500 msec later, the actual picture is taken. I have got into habit of placing the camera still for a second after the click sound. Pictures taken in mercury tube lightning look normal in the mobile screen, they look awfully blue tinted when transferred to PC. There are three image modes - Basic, Normal and High. At high resolution, pictures are from 15 to 25 kbytes. And there are two modes - Standard Photo and Portrait Photo. Standard Photo takes at 352 x 288 resolution. Considering worst case image size with High resolution Standard Photo, around 200 pictures fit in 5 MB memory. This is lot of pictures. Practically, people won't have this number of entries in their phone book. So, don't you think Nokia missed one thing? Yes!! Picture - Contact association. Instead of name being displayed when someone from the phone book call, there should have been option to display associated picture.



Calendar view is superb. The organizing features are just suffient for me. The context sensitive options for every type of calendar note is well thought of. For example, if it is a birthday, you enter birth year, remind time and Nokia will remember it for next year too; if it a call reminder you enter number, time etc. I had a hopeless experience with SE T68i. SE T68i didn't have context sensitive options and it asked for start time and end time even for annaversary calendar note. The only thing it doesn't have are week view and daily basis time slot allotment view.



Polyphonic ringtones sound good though it only supports 4 simultaneous notes. Practically, it wouldn't have mattered me even if my phone just beeped. I almost always have only vibrating alert on. But, there is one irritating bug in the Gallery. There are folders like Graphics, Photos and Tones. All the polyphonic files are stored in Tones folder. When you play them, the phone vibrates and there is no option just to play without vibrating. I have to plug in the charger to browse through ringtones (as when charger is plugged, no matter what, phone will never vibrate).



Signal strength is too high in this phone. I never thought hands-free feature was necessary in a mobile phone. But it proved wrong when I was able to talk hands-free without taking off my bike helmet in the busy road. You must have figured - the hands-free speaker volume is loud and this is the fact. There is one compromise though. The incoming voice is not as charming as it was on 8310. There is slight increase in treble (the high frequency part of the sound). This might have been done to make hands-free more crisp and loud.



One of the reason why I selected this phone is its Java support. Nokia is very thoughtful and clever in releasing Mobile Application Development Kit all for free which is full documented and full of sample codes. As a programmer by profession, I played custome built java codes on a computer 7210 phone simulator (you can download all programming goodies from http://forum.nokia.com). Nokia's DirectGraphics, FullCanvas, DirectUtils Interface classes let you get lower level control over your phone. You can progamatically control lights, vibration and full screen access to build your own applications. They certainly go beyond MIDP specification specified maneuverability. The Wallet feature which came along 7250 is not sufficient for my daily usage as it doesn't have search feature. I loved building my own version of Wallet which stores my office Server name and their login passwords, my email name and my passwords. The FullCanvas Interface saved me hard toil in building cool application. My Nokia 7250 has been such personalized that I cannot think of living without it.



Of course, I wouldn't have bought 7250 if it were as big as Elephant 7650 or Dinosaur 3650. 7250 is just about 1 cm longer than 8310. And, it got all exchangable skin. So, you don't need to worry if body gets scratched. The uncovered camera lens is part of the skin too and hence you don't need to worry if camera lens gets scratched.



Different keys have different key pressure in my set. Down arrow and numeric 2 are most hard to press and they make bigger sound when pressed than level 3 keypad tone. After several removal of frontal cover, the lower part of front cover has started to make tweaking sound. Nokia should have made covers like those of 8310 where back cover hold front cover tight and in position.



Nokia has great sense of internationalization. The sticker at the back of the phone visible after removing battery says - Made in Hungary. Nokia BLD-3 battery is printed at the bottom - Made in Czech Republic. Adapter and head set are written - Made in China. Truely, this is a world class phone!!



(Try this : Press Menu soft key, the right top corner of the screen displays three dots (...). As soon as it changes to 1, press down arrow on the phone. In my set, it directly scrolls to third menu skipping menu number 2. My phone details are - Software Version 3.12; Date of release - 14-02-03; Phone type - NHL-4J)