Mere days prior to it showing up on shelves, Jørgen Sundgot previews Nokia's 7710 communicator at the 3GSM World Congress in Cannes.
It's been over six months since Nokia confirmed that it was putting its first Series 90 device, the oddly-shaped 7700, on ice. In Cannes this week, the handset maker was showing a commercial version of its successor, the 7710, which is to become the very first touch-screen communicator device from Nokia. The obvious question? How it stacks up to devices based on the UIQ and Windows Mobile for Pocket PC platforms, both of which have been perfecting the touch screen experience for years.
 | | Nokia 7710 |
The initial impression of the 7710 is far better than that of the 7700 as it feels incredibly solid and well-built. No dud in the design department, it looks absolutely stunning next to the 9300 and 9500 communicators, and the ergonomics are utterly superb. As if that wasn't enough, the 640 x 320 pixel screen is not only of good quality, but in my personal opinion also a far better choice of format than the 640 x 200 pixel one found in the Nokia Communicator series.
Chock full of features, the 7710 offers up to 90 MB of memory and comes bundled with a 128 MB MMC card for added storage. A wide range of connectivity options are present, including tri-band GSM 900/1800/1900 MHz and HSCSD/GPRS/EDGE, as well as Bluetooth. A Megapixel camera is also present, as is an integrated FM radio and support for Nokia's Visual Radio concept which lets users interact with radio stations.
Moving on to the software part of the 7710, Nokia have done an excellent job with creating an attractive interface which ensures rapid access to frequently used functionality. The configuration aspect is just as confusing as that of other Nokia platforms, however - but thankfully, the 7710 fully supports auto-provisioning which should help alleviate configuration woes to an extent.
 | | Nokia 7710 |
Another disappointment is the overall speed of the device, as response times for common tasks are beat by a number of recent Windows Mobile and UIQ devices. The 7710 is by no means slow, but just as with other recent Symbian OS based devices from Nokia, it would benefit from a speed upgrade.
Despite the speed bumps, however, software is plentiful on the 7710. A full PIM suite is in place, as is software for handling Office file formats and a full compliment of messaging support including SMS, MMS and POP3/IMAP4 e-mail. Also demonstrated in Cannes was a live TV feed, and support for multimedia is courtesy of the usual suspects: MP3, AAC, MPEG4, H.263 and Real formats.
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