It swivels, plays music and shoots 2 Megapixel stills; the Nokia 3250 music smartphone is a jack-of-all-trades - and for once, Jørgen Sundgot thinks the concept might actually work.
Nokia 3250 review summary
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Nokia 3250
Score: 70% When: April 2006 Worth: €450
Read the full article » The embodiment of mediocrity, Nokia’s 3250 isn’t a particularly bad music phone - it’s just not a very good one, either. Mediocre audio quality and music management evoke a feeling of music functionality having been an afterthought, yet the handset surprisingly shines with regard to synchronization. 512 MB of memory is a decent amount at the time of writing, and the stereo FM radio is a nice touch - but nothing to write home about. In fact, the most attractive aspect of the 3250 is its ability to run powerful 3rd party applications and games, as well as its innovative yet bulky design. €350 EUR, available throughout Europe. Read the full article » |
Nokia 3250 hands-on summary
Although not as capable as Nokia's music phone numero uno, the N91, the swiveling 3250 is a good crack at a music phone for the masses with reasonably good audio quality and decent music management. It's ghastly short on storage with only 10 MB onboard, requiring any use at all to be backed up by miniSD cards which currently come in sizes up to 1 GB; also, its lack of a native 3.5 mm earphone jack is disappointing. Still, one does get a full smartphone operating system and a 2 Megapixel camera, resulting in more capable alternative - yet likely also more expensive - alternative to the W810i.
Full preview
It seems to be something of a universal truth; chuck too many functions into a device, and there's a good chance that the implementation of one or more will suffer to the degree that it could just as well have been left out. Not so with the 3250, Nokia's new smartphone - apparently created to offer an alternative to those for whom the superbly capable, hard-drive equipped Nokia
N91 comes across as a bit over the top.
As one of very few black Nokia handsets - and the only smartphone in recent time - the 3250 is surprisingly stylish with its slightly angular design. It's slightly larger than handsets from competing manufacturers which match its feature set, but the added size buys one a full smartphone operating system. The design highlight, of course, is the swiveling keypad; yes, keypad.
The bottom half of the 3250 ingeniously swivels to one of three positions, rendering the device either in standard handset mode, camera mode or music mode at the flick of ones wrist. In either mode, the user interface lends itself well to the task at hand, and the music client appears to be that of the N91; quite a bit improved over that which has been bundled with recent N series phones includig the
N90 and
N70.
Power users will be disappointed to learn that there is no 3G connectivity in the 3250 - but then again, users focusing heavily on music are unlikely to view that as a particular loss; for those who want the full package, there's always the Nokia N91. GSM/GPRS/EDGE 900/1800/1900 MHz remains present, though, as does Bluetooth and a stereo FM radio with support for Nokia's Visual Radio concept - the latter of which is rather useless outside Finland at the moment.
For music, the 3250 appears to be very well equipped although it doesn't support WMA DRM. MP3, standard WMA and eAAC+ formats are on the slate, and a microSD card expansion slot conveniently lets users purchase storage cards of up to 1 GB at sizes so small they're bound to get lost. At least one might argue it's better than the RS-MMC format Nokia has insisted on using thus far.
Then, of course, there's the camera. Although not equipped with Carl Zeiss optics and autofocus like the N90, still shots turned out pretty well - and the camera also shoots video with aplomb although the resolution is a poor CIF; 176 x 144 pixels is nothing to write home about. Its screen, on the other hand, is of the typical superb Nokia variety with a resolution of 176 x 220 pixels; bright and crisp, yet a tad pixelated as compared to the aforementioned N90.
A couple of other things which deserve mention include the bundling of the Nokia Stereo Headset HS-20, which converts the proprietary Pop-port of the 3250 into a use-all 3.5 mm earphone jack, and the apalling limitation of internal memory to 10 MB; ghastly. I just hope it comes bundled with a memory card, otherwise Nokia is in for a good bit of smacking.
Price and availability
Expected to arrive in the first quarter of 2006 the Nokia 3250 bears an estimated retail price of €350 EUR.
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