Nokia 7370, Motorola PEBL and more top rated fashion phones

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	Home / Cell phones

	Nokia 7370, Motorola PEBL and more top rated fashion phones	By Sindre Lia, 11 April 2006

GALLERY

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It's a stylin' showdown as Sindre Lia takes on the latest fashion phones; the oh-so-L'Amour Nokia 7360, 7370 and 7380 trio goes head-to-head with Motorola's Zen-like PEBL and the stainless-steel Nokia 8800.

Nokia 7370

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Trendy colours and a faux leather exterior combine with a solid, compact spinner design to render the Nokia 7370 a stylish contender with classic touches. A crisp and colourful 2-inch QVGA screen ranks as its most impressive feature, contributing to hassle-free navigation throughout Nokia's Series 40 interface courtesy of its high resolution - the latter of which joins EDGE in making WAP browsing a similarly pleasant affair. Keypad and navigation buttons are, for once, first-rate with regard to both looks and usability, proving text input needs not be sacrificed on the altar of style.

A fully adequate 1.3 Megapixel camera with an intuitive interface has also taken up residence within the 7370, adjacent to 10 MB of memory which stores in the range of 50 images at maximum quality. Pictures can be shared via MMS, Bluetooth or be sent to a PC (for which it is necessary to purchase a proprietary Pop-Port to USB cable). In our tests, the 7370 eked out a talk time of 2.5 hours and 6 days of standby.

Price and availability

The Nokia 7370 is available in Europe for approximately €350 EUR without subscription.

Conclusion

Effortlessly balances the aspects of fashion and functionality at an average price as compared to other fashion phones.

Motorola PEBL

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Now available in 10 different colours, the high-style oval design of the Motorola PEBL is a must have this spring. For a bag of peanuts, buyers get a travesty of a 0.3 Megapixel camera which should be used solely for MMS party pics, as well as a decent keypad which stands in stark contrast to the poor usability of the outdated and unintuitive user interface of the handset - a constant source of annoyance. Battery life is also a tad on the short side, with 2 hours of talk time and 4 days of standby.

Price and availability

The Motorola PEBL is available in Europe for approximately €250 EUR without subscription.

Conclusion

Now sporting a selection of 10 colour schemes, the revitalized Motorola PEBL could quickly climb the best-seller charts in spite of its unpolished interface.

Nokia 7360

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As the outsider in Nokia's L'Amour Collection, the fashionable 7360 takes up quite a bit of desk space with its candy bar design. Our particular specimen polished the Warm Amber colour scheme, and proved to offer quite the pleasant surprise in its top-notch keypad - which also proved to have an affinity for collecting smudges and dirt. Its feature set is expectedly mediocre, with a 65K colour screen, 0.3 Megapixel camera, 4 MB of memory and support for SMS, MMS and EDGE among its more notable traits. On the upside, however, 3.5 hours of talk time and a whopping 9 days of standby time is very impressive indeed.

Price and availability

The Nokia 7360 is available in Europe for approximately €250 EUR without subscription.

Conclusion

Squeezing in between its 7370 and 7380 siblings, the 7360 is a safe bet which offers the perfect mix of fashion and functionality at a decent price.

Nokia 8800

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Yet another fashion entry from Nokia, the Nokia 8800 offers a luxurious alternative to ye olde chatterbox. Its stainless steel cover and sliding mechanism ooze of quality and style, with a high-resolution screen topping off an excellent first impression. Its 0.5 Megapixel camera and digital music player are both letdowns, but the inclusion of Bluetooth and EDGE should place the 8800 firmly in the sights of those who fancy exclusivity mixed with good connectivity - and don't mind the so-so battery life. The Nokia 8800 is available in Europe for approximately €650 EUR without subscription. More...

Nokia 7380

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The Nokia 7380 bears no resemblence to an ordinary mobile phone, providing an Apple iPod-style scroll wheel for navigation and text input as opposed to a keypad. On the upside, it's smaller than most phones and also sports a widescreen display, but its mediocre battery life and virtually unusable text input hamper use to the extent that it cannot be recommended as a daily-use handset. Using it to show off, however, is another matter altogether. The Nokia 7380 is available in Europe, selling for €450 EUR without subscription. More...