Nokia 7610 Supernova Cell Phone Review – Great Music Phone

Sum and Substance:

Thumbs Up:

Good music quality, inexpensive.

Thumbs Down:

Keypad takes a bit of time to get used to, low volume level.

Inside the Trunk:

Technology: GSM
Band: GSM 850/900/1800/1900 (Quadband)
Phone design: Slider
Caller ID: Yes
Other features: Radio Data Service (RDS), TV Link, Camera, Music Player.

The Whiz Kid Speaks:

The display of the Nokia 7610 Supernova is 2 inch big, 240X320 resolutions, TFT LCD display and 24-bit (16.7 million colors). Supported audio formats are AAC, WMA, MP3, etc. The Nokia 7610 Supernova comes with 64 MB internal memory, 512 MB bundled memory and the maximum the phone can take is 2 GB. 860 mAh- Lithium ion gives talk time about 540 min and standby time of about 300 hours.

The 3.2 mega pixel of the Nokia 7610 Supernova can take maximum resolution of 2048 x 1536. Photos are stored in JPEG format. For video, the resolution is 640 x 480 (VGA). The camera has 8x digital zoom. The phone has TV out for connectivity. For messaging there is a XHTML Browser.

Razzle Dazzle:

We will say that the Nokia 7610 Supernova is OK in looks department. The hidden keypad behind the phone adds to the sleek format but it adds to the bulk. It is a bit thick. The phone is slider mechanism and it is smooth. The phone clicks when you reach the end of the slider. You get a choice of colors for this phone so make sure you go through the whole the lot and buy the one which matches your personality.

The phone is a bit glossy and attracts finger prints quite easily. This will not go down well with hygiene freaks and maybe they will be cleaning it all the time.

Inside Dope:

Nokia came out with 7610 couple of years ago and we thought this was the same model with some hard ware upgrade. But it looks nothing like it and the features inside too are quite different. We don’t know why Nokia has repeated a model number maybe it is because 7610 was a hot property in those days and Nokia wants to recreate the magic again.

The display of the Nokia 7610 Supernova is two inch big and gives a resolution of 320×240 pixels. Two inch display is definitely small and icons and picture look small. But they are bright and clear. The big resolution also makes up for the small display. The display has 16.7 million colors. A 2.5 inch display would have been better for this phone since there is a WAP browser and browsing is better on a bigger screen.

You can change the color and the font size in the display of the Nokia 7610 Supernova. You can also change the wallpaper, screen savers, animations and message tones.

The Nokia 7610 Supernova is slider based which means the numeric keypad is hidden behind the phone and there is no clutter of buttons on the front. The few buttons on the front display are the two soft touch buttons and a four way navigation bar. There is also a call and call end key.

The keypad of the Nokia 7610 Supernova is spacious and the keys are separated from each other. This gives you a good ergonomics and mishits are avoided on the phone. But the keys are a bit flat on the surface and you will have to push some quite a bit in to the phone. We too had to do this initially but we got used to it in time.

There is a 2.5 mm jack on the top of the Nokia 7610 Supernova, which means you can’t use your own head phones or you will have to use one with an adapter. The adapter might struggle when you put the device in your pocket. Other than the head phone jack there is a volume rocker, camera button and music player short cut.

On the top of the Nokia 7610 Supernova there is a power button and charger port. microSD card slot is behind battery cover so it cannot be accessed easily. But this is preferable to other phones where the card sat beneath the battery so you had to go digging inside.

Like all standard Nokia phones, the Nokia 7610 Supernova has a 1000 memory storing contacts and you will never run out of them. A single entry can take e-mail address, company name, nickname, birthday, five phone numbers, URL, job title, postal address and notes. Your SIM card can store 250 more contacts. You can attach a unique ring tone to a contact so that you know who is calling just by the ring. There are 20 polyphonic ring tones in the device. You can also pair up a contact with a photo.

Other features which are worth mentioning are text and multimedia messaging, calendar, vibrate mode, world clock, alarm clock, voice recorder, notepad, calculator, countdown timer, stopwatch and speakerphone.

We were surprised to find a 3.2 mega pixel camera on the back of the Nokia 7610 Supernova. This phone looks quite basic on features and we expected a 2.0 mega pixel camera. But we are glad because we can click better pictures. There are three quality settings for a camera. The highest resolution is 2048×1536 pixels and the minimum is 160×120 pixels. Camera comes with a flash so you will not get dark photos when you shoot in low light conditions. Editing options on the Nokia 7610 Supernova include white balance controls, self-timer, brightness, digital zoom and three color effects. The LED flash is quite bright but we missed the portrait mirror.

The photo quality is good for a 3.2 mega pixel standards but the flash makes things too bright sometimes. But this will be a boon when shooting in night. There is a little image noise though.

The camera of the Nokia 7610 Supernova can record video at four resolutions. The camera shoots at 15 frames/second. For MMS you cannot record for more than 14 seconds for MMS but you can shoot longer if you intend to store the video in the phone. You can also connect the phone to a TV to watch video on TV but we don’t know why you would want to watch a VGA quality video on a bigger screen.

There is GPS in the Nokia 7610 Supernova which has Nokia Maps support. Other features include clothing size converter, Yahoo Go applications, currency converter, Nokia Sensor, PC syncing, Nokia Maps, Flickr and unit converter. Nokia comes with Opera for browsing on the internet and access to Nokia.mobi.

Nokia and Sony Ericsson have always made great music phones and Nokia too leaves no stone unturned for music quality in here. Even basic Nokia phones have great music quality.

The supported files for the music player on this phone are MP4, WMA, AAC, MP3 and AAC+. You can stick up a picture of album art to the tracks so it will show when it is playing. For storing music on the player there is Bluetooth or USB transfer. Music player features include shuffle and repeats modes, equalizer, airplane mode and stereo widening. You can also use the tracks in the player as ring tones and you can create play lists. The phone has built in radio, just like most Nokia phones which you can hear with using the headset. Headset quality is better than speaker when listening to music.

For storing your music, the Nokia 7610 Supernova comes with 64 MB of internal memory which is expandable to 2 GB. The device comes bundled with a 512 MB card.

For gamming enthusiasts Nokia supports light gamming like Seaweeper, Sudoku, Snake II and Golf Tour. All four are Java based games. But this tiny screen doesn’t make a great gaming phone.

We tested the Nokia 7610 Supernova for call quality and even though it was not the best, the calls were pretty good. Our friends said that they could hear our voice clearly and we could hear them too. There was no distortion but we would have appreciated if the phone had more volume. You might struggle talking in environments where there is a lot of noise.

Speaker phone quality drops but that is maybe because the speakerphone attracts a lot of noise from the background. But we were able to hear what our friends were saying and vice versa. Bluetooth calls too lived up to the expectations.

Nitty Gritty:

The Nokia 7610 Supernova has great music quality and good camera for a basic phone. Buy it if you are short on cash and want a substitute for iPod. We found the phone delivered quite well for the features that it promised.