Reviewing Nokia's 7280 fashion handset, Sindre Lia fights an inexplicable urge to consistently refer to the petite black slider by its well-earned pet name: the Nokia Bimbo.
Review summary of the Nokia 7280:
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 The Nokia 7280 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. Being quite thin, it also sports a widescreen display. With its poor battery life and next to unusable text input, however, the Nokia 7280 does not come recommended as a daily-use mobile phone but rather as what it really is: a show-off piece of gadgetry. Release: December 2004. Price: $295.
Pros: Small and light, novel design
Cons: Poor battery life, text input virtually unusable
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Full review of the Nokia 7280:
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The 7280 fashion phone is the third phone in a row from Nokia, borrowing design hints from the lavish 1920s. More radically, however, the 7280 replaces the keypad with an Apple iPod-style scroll wheel navigation in yet another attempt of navigation novelty from the Finnish manufacturer; let's find out whether it sinks or swims.
The tri-band GSM 900/1800/1900 MHz Nokia 7280 weighs 84 g and measures 115 x 32 x 19 mm, making it one of the smallest and lightest mobile phones around. As a result, it sports a somewhat cramped 16-bit widescreen display with a resolution of 104 x 208 pixels as well as a scroll wheel for navigation and text input. Also being a slider phone, a 0.3 megapixel digital camera is revealed when the 7280 is in open mode.
Using the scroll wheel for navigation in the Series 40 menu gave us no trouble, however, using it for text input is an entirely different matter altogether. Despite guessing letter by letter fairly well when writing SMS messages in English, composing longer messages proved to be an excercise in patience. In fact, we found ourselves calling people more often than usual during the test period, as opposed to replying by SMS; choosing the path of least resistance, so to speak.
On the other hand, the Nokia 7280 offers a good display, an FM radio and connectivity options such as GPRS, EDGE and Bluetooth. Unfortunately, a rather poor display with regard to battery life makes it impossible to recommend the 7280 as a phone for everyday use.
The reception and voice quality of the Nokia 7280 are excellent, while the phone offered approximately 1 hour of talk time and 2 days of standby time during our test period as opposed to Nokia's claim of 3 hours and 10 days, respectively.
Availability
The Nokia 7280 is at the time of writing available in Europe and North America for approximately 375 EUR and 450 USD respectively without subscription.
Price and availability
The Nokia 7280 will start selling for $295 to $390 () in December 2004.
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