Nokia Surge 6790- Great For Social Networking And Music
Sum and Substance:
Thumbs Up:
Good HTML browser which has Flash Lite support, good options for social networking and great music quality. It has 3G and GPS.
Thumbs Down:
You have to slide out the QWERTY keyboard to dial numbers, no 3.5 mm phone jack, bad build quality.
Inside the Trunk:
Technology: WCDMA (UMTS) / GSM
Band: WCDMA (UMTS) / GSM 850/900/1800/1900
Phone design: Slider
Caller ID: Yes
Other features: GPS, Bluetooth 2.0 EDR
The Whiz Kid Speaks:
The 2.4 inch display of the phone gives a resolution of 320 x 240 pixels and has 24-bit, 16.7 million colors. The phone has a full size QWERTY keyboard on the left side.
The music player can play formats of – MP3, WAV, WMA 9, AAC+v1, AAC and AAC+v2.The phone comes with a 2.5 mm phone jack. The Surge has 2 MP camera at the back which is capable of 1600X1200 pixel resolution of photos and 640 x 480 (VGA) pixels video recorder resolutions. The camera has features like resolution and quality settings, standard options, white balance settings, number of capture modes, self timer, etc
Surge has 128 MB internal memory and is expandable to 8 GB through microSD card. 1500 mAh battery has talk time of 240 minutes and 400 hours of standby time.
Razzle Dazzle:
Nokia Surge 6790 is nothing like previous handsets from Nokia and they have gambled a bit to try to give an out of the box design. The gamble doesn’t pay off and we weren’t that comfortable with the new looks. The phone has a cheap plasticky feel to it which didn’t feel comfortable when we held it on to our hands. The phone is 2.2 inches wide, 3.8 inches tall and 0.6 inch thick and weighs 4.3 ounces.
Inside Dope:
Nokia’s handsets mostly come unlocked here and hence they are quite pricey. Nokia is the biggest handset maker in the world but doesn’t have a good hold here in the US. But they continue to offer us masterpieces one after the other and we are still drooling on the power full N97.
Nokia Surge 6790 is 2.4 inch QVGA display, it gives 16 million colors output and has a resolution of 320X240 pixels. The screen is good and text is easily readable but we have seen better screen smart phones in the market. Videos didn’t seem that lively on the screen, plus the screen attracts a lot of smudges and fingerprints.
The Surge has a built in accelerometer which changes the display from portrait to landscape mode when you turn the phone around. We found the accelerometer quick to switch modes. The landscape mode is preferable when watching videos since you get a bigger screen.
The Surge has a few physical buttons below the display such as two soft keys, end and talk buttons and four way navigation pad with OK button in the center. There is a bulge in the left side which is house for shortcut buttons for the browser, messages and main menu. The bulge in the side makes the phone a bit big and we could have done without these buttons.
QWERTY slide out keyboard in the left is one of the best for typing. The sliding is smooth, the buttons are large and typing is comfortable. We must say that this is the best keyboards in smart phones we have come across in a long time. You will have to slide this keyboard out if you want a call a number that isn’t on your phone book.
On the sides of the Surge there is a 2.5 mm jack for putting the bundled headphones (we would have liked a 3.5 mm phone jack) and the AC adapter port. There is also microUSB port, camera key and volume rocker. The microUSB port and adapter jack comes with a cover attached.
The Surge comes with reference manual and power adapter but no USB cord.
The Surge has Symbian’s S60 platform which is quite outdated when compared with the OS that smart phones are known to have today. But it still has the features that you need in a smart phone like Microsoft Exchange synchronization and has support for Gmail, Yahoo and Windows Live e-mail accounts. There is also QuickOffice suite for Word, Excel and PowerPoint files. Other than this, there is PDF reader, calendar and voice recorder.
The Surge is aimed at younger generation rather than business users and to reiterate this point, Nokia has put in an application called JuiceCaster which lets you post videos, messages, videos and updates on your social networking sites like Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, etc.
For storing videos and images, the phone comes with 120 MB of internal memory which is certainly not enough so you can put up to 8 GB cards in the microSD card slot of the phone. We were disappointed to find an obsolete 2 MP camera instead of 3.2 MP rated one.
Camera settings include resolution and quality settings, standard options, white balance settings, number of capture modes, self timer, etc. The picture quality was not very good but you can’t expect 2 MP camera photos to blow you off your feet. The camera also lets you record videos which have some blur.
Other features on the Surge include three way calling, speed dialing, speaker phone, quad band world roaming, voice commands, conference calling and multimedia and text messaging. Bluetooth 2.0 has features like hands-free kits, stereo and mono Bluetooth headsets, dial-up networking, object push profile, AV remote, etc.
There is no limit for storing numbers in your phone book and you can store multiple numbers, job title, e-mail addresses, etc. in a single entry. You can pair up a photo with a contact for photo caller ID and you can give custom ring tone to a contact or a group.
In spite of being an entry-level smart phone, Surge has a good browser for surfing the web and the great keyboard further provides icing to the cake. The browser also has support for Flash Lite which lets you watch YouTube videos on the handset. We played a few videos from YouTube and really enjoyed watching them but we hated when the buffer showed up occasionally.
Nokia’s N series phones have delivered one of the best music player and it has been well appreciated by us. Maybe Nokia has put in the same player in Surge because it sounds really great. The player supports file formats of MP3, WAV, WMA 9, AAC+v1, AAC and AAC+v2. Other than this there is FM radio but you will have to use the wired headset for that.
Nokia has GPS/A-GPS, support courtesy of AT&T Navigator. You get voice-guided directions, data, real-time tracking and other tools for navigation. It comes with a trial of 30 days after which you will have to pay $9.99 every month for the service.
The Surge performed poorly in our call quality tests. We had to ask our friends to repeat what they said because we couldn’t understand them. Our friends reported crackling of noises and some said they too couldn’t hear us properly. Speaker phone calls were bit better, there was plenty of volume and we could talk with no problems. Pairing Bluetooth devices with this phone was quick and the voice was clear this time.
Nitty Gritty:
Nokia Surge 6790 is directed more towards youth and students rather than business men. In spite of some drawbacks we feel this is a good buy owing to the features of social networking and great music quality. Business users stay away, though.
