Jørgen Sundgot reviews Nokia's new 7610, and finds a bee's knees smartphone toting a megapixel camera, bogs of software and funky keypad design which actually works.
Having been in the smartphone game for a while now, it's no wonder Nokia has picked up on the golden rule: 'if it's not broken, don't fix it'. That doesn't mean you can't add more ingredients to a recipe that's already a best seller, however - which is just what the Nokia 7610 does with its 1.2 Megapixel camera, RS-MMC expansion card and funky keypad layout (which, for once, actually works).
 | If imaging is your thing, you can't find anything better than the Nokia 7610 - for now
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Design
Looks can be deceiving: although the Nokia 7610 looks smaller and sleeker than the Nokia 6600, it is in fact not at 10.9 x 5.3 x 1.9 cm and 118 g. What causes this is quite simply the design of the phone, which although a bit out of the ordinary, is peculiarly comfortable to hold and use. It's a bit more flashy than the sobre 6600, but then again this matches the advanced functionality of the phone.
Having had a go at odd keypad form factors before, Nokia has learned from its mistakes - and remains keen to play. The new, curved keypad of the 7610 not only looks good (albeit confusing), but also offers very good tactile and audible feedback - and a soft blue backlight. Despite its appearances, it is very easy to adjust to, even with key spacing at a minimum.
To top off a good impression, Nokia has included an excellent five-way navigational pad which is far more comfortable than the joystick found in the 6600. Worse is it then, that the power on/off button is far too hard to press; Nokia owners used to rapidly changing profiles by means of this button will find themselves annoyed - unless they rely on voice commands for profile switching.
Moving on, the display of the 7610, placed far up on the front as always, is of the kind that deserves praise: not only is it very bright, it's also crisp and an overall plasure to behold. Just above this, we find the loudspeaker, which performs very well both in normal and handsfree mode. Granted, a 2.5 mm handsfree kit jack would have been preferred over Nokia's proprietary Pop-Port interface, although the proliferation of Bluetooth headsets makes this less of an issue than it would otherwise have been. Overall voice and audio quality is, as could be expected, excellent.
Lastly, the centerpiece of the handset - its 1 Megapixel camera - is located far up on the back, above a mirror integrated into back cover. Unfortunately, there is no protective lens cover in place, which in the case of a megapixel camera is a major oversight.
Connectivity
Still lacking industry-standard support for input/output accessories, Nokia's 7610 is one of the very first handsets to implement the new RS-MMC standard for memory expansion, which is essentially half-sized MMC cards. As poorly implemented as ever, users must power down the device and remove its battery to access the card, and RS-MMC is of course even less commonly supported than MMC. This is one department where Nokia isn't learning from previous mistakes.
Unlike other recent Nokia smartphones, the 7610 comes with a USB cable to allow for synchronization and file transfer - however users who have come to prefer wireless also has the option of excellent Bluetooth support for this purpose, complete with most common profiles. On the WAN side of things, the 7610 is a good all-rounder with its GSM 900/1800/1900 MHz support, GPRS Class 10, HSCSD and fax modem capabilities. To top it all off, the handset also includes utterly impressive signal reception capabilities.
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