Playing host to a brand new Symbian OS based platform, Nokia's multi-tasking 7700 wunderkind certainly stands out in a crowd; Jørgen Sundgot got to spend hands-on time with it.
Oh my, what a long way we've come in two years. It's now 2004, and Nokia is on the verge of bringing its first 'media phone' to market - a potentially revolutionary product for the consumer space. What few pause to consider, however, is that it's only been two years since the Finnish manufacturer's first line of devices more advanced than traditional handsets (no, we're not counting the 9100 series) hit shelves in shape of the 9200 Communicator series.
To be spoiled with features such as GPRS, a VGA digital camera capable of shooting both stills and video, music playback and a feature Nokia has dubbed 'Visual Radio', future Nokia 7700 owners will find themselves in posession of one of the most advanced devices in the world at the time of introduction. That includes a large, 3.8" colour display capable of showing up to 65,536 colours in a landscape orentation - all tucked into a design possibly best described as funky.
Despite its odd appearances, however, the Nokia 7700 is quite comfortable in use, navigated by means of a few hardware buttons and a stylus. The prototype we were able to lay our mittens on contained a reasonably responsive and bright touch screen, although left us wanting in the area of screen clarity. Also, the hardware buttons could do with a bit of spit and polish: the navigational pad required a bit too much force to register presses, while buttons on the left side of its arch frankly came off as a bit cheap.
One thing Nokia will not be able to correct, sadly, is the fact that the Nokia 7700 suffers from sidetalking - a phenomenon first popularized by the Nokia N-Gage gaming deck. Fortunately, Bluetooth and speakerphone capabilities both count as mitigating factors, but despite Nokia will hopefully realize why a "feature" that has entire web sites dedicated to its ridicule should be reconsidered.
 | Nokia 7700 (Photo: Jørgen Sundgot)
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Software performance was overall good despite still not having been finalized, and the Nokia 7700 contains a broad range of applications comparable to the 9200 series of communicators. All of these make good use of the comfortable amount of screen estate, although on average offer a rather basic feature set. One entirely new application is called Visual Radio, in which Nokia is placing quite a bit of faith (and hype): simply put, this provides radio listeners with a visual interface to the channel they're currently listening in to, complete with interaction in a web-like manner. It does indeed look interesting, but at this stage it success seems likely to depend on the prowess with which radio stations create and deliver content. Pop-up ad mania on my mobile device while listening to radio? No thanks.
Then there's the VGA digital camera, which delivered results fully on par with recent Nokia smartphones, which have a reputation for offering some of the best quality pictures out there. Its frame rate was disappointing compared with said smartphones, however, but this is likely to change by the time it hits shelves. In general, navigating the 7700 is simple and straightforward due to its Palm OS-like launcher system in where an icon based interface allows users to categorize applications into groups, and which can be called up at any point in time either by an icon on the touch screen or a hardware button. Also, there is a very handy, omni-present favourites bar at the bottom of the screen which users can tweak to their preference.
Other positive impressions include a snappy imaging application for picture management, along with support for different playlists in the music player and - finally - the ability to hot-swap MMC cards without requiring a full disassembly of the device as is the case with smartphones such as Nokia's 3650 and 6600.
Finally, it's worth noting that there may be changes in software performance before the Nokia 7700 is brought to market, although there is little room for alterations to the hardware and general design considering it being scheduled for launch in the second quarter. And, of course, we'll be back with a full review when that time comes.
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