Nokia 7610 Supernova Review

Launched by Nokia as the flagship of its Supernova series, the Nokia 7610 Supernova is a little slider targeted for users in need of fashionable phones. I’d say it’s actually targeted to women and girls, but that doesn’t mean men can’t check it out.

Although it’s a flagship product, Nokia 7610 Supernova is not a high-end phone. It’s only a mid-end one, thus its features are accordingly. And speaking of features, I must say the 7610 is not a smartphone, so stuff like GPS or Wi-Fi are not included. The handset runs on an S40 platform and not on the mighty Symbian S60 OS.

The 7610 is rather a multimedia phone.

The handset comes with a Theme Colouriser unique feature (I’ll detail about it later) and two Xpress-On covers in the box. The covers are made out of soft plastic and are easily changeable, allowing you to fit the phone’s look to your mood. Similar covers are offered together with the other Supernova phones (save for the 7210 model), this being one of the things that make them “fashionable”.

Nokia 7610 Supernova design

As I already said, the 7610 is a slider. It has a metallic front case that’s combined with a plastic-made trim. On the back, a 3.2 Megapixel camera proudly presents its dual-LED flash, while a loudspeaker is positioned a bit lower.

The phone’s upper side hosts a charger connector, the power button and a 2.5mm headset jack.

On the right side, we have volume keys, a music player key and a camera key. On the left side there’s only a micro USB connector, hidden under the plastic cover.

When you open the 7610, a standard alphanumeric keypad welcomes you. The keys are not among the largest I’ve seen, so if you have thick thumbs you might not find them too friendly.

Overall, Nokia 7610 Supernova looks nice, but I think the Finnish manufacturer should have added something more spectacular to its design.

Display & interface

The QVGA display of Nokia 7610 Supernova is OK, save for the moments when you’re out in the sun. The screen loses its brightness right away if you take it out on a sunny day. That’s too bad, because it supports up to 16 million colors and it looks really good indoors.

Another complaint is about the display’s size: Nokia should have made it of at least 2.2 inches and not of only 2.0 inches.

I already mentioned that the handset has an S40 interface. It’s a simple and user-friendly interface, as many of you might already know, since it’s embedded in lots and lots of Nokia phones.

The navigation through the S40 menu is generally fast and smooth, so there’s not much more to say here.

A nice thing is the Active Standby mode which, when activated, almost transforms the 7610 into a smartphone. That’s thanks to the fact that it adds, on the “home screen”, a list of features that you use the most, like calendar, messages and so on.

Connectivity, call quality

Nokia 7610 Supernova is not a 3G phone, unfortunately for those in need of high speed data transfers. The device offers quad-band GSM connectivity (850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 MHz) with GPRS and EDGE.

The call quality is good and I think no one will experience problems from this point of view.

The 7610 features Bluetooth with EDR and A2DP, which worked well both when transferring files to another phone and when listening to music via wireless headsets. You can also connect the phone with an external GPS device via Bluetooth.

Music on Nokia 7610 Supernova

The loudspeaker on the back of Nokia 7610 Supernova provides an OK sound quality. Unless you set the volume at its maximum level, when the songs or ringtones will sound a bit noisy. But I don’t see any reason for someone to want the volume at its maximum level, since the speaker is pretty loud without doing that.

I’ve said earlier that the 7610 Supernova has a 2.5mm headset jack and not a 3.5mm standard one. Obviously, Nokia has included a pair of headsets in the package to fit into that 2.5 millimeters jack. The headsets offer a good sound quality (bass included), even when you pump up the volume to the maximum.

Nokia 7610’s music player has various themes and an equalizer. A “stereo widening” feature, effective when you’re listening to music via headsets, will give the sound a deeper stereo effect. If you don’t like that, you can turn the feature off, obviously.

The phone also has FM radio with RDS, but you can only turn it on if you insert a pair of headsets into said 2.5mm jack.

Camera & Theme Colouriser

The 3.2 Megapixel camera of Nokia 7610 lets you take photos at a maximum resolution of 2048 x 1536 pixels. The camera has autofocus and a dual LED flash, as I mentioned earlier. It can offer satisfying results, both outdoor and indoor.

The dual LED flash is also good, and if you want to take pictures of a close object in low-light conditions it does its job well. However, if the object you want to capture is farther than 2-3 meters, the flash won’t help too much.

The camera interface is not at all complicated. You can switch between portrait and landscape mode – whichever suits you best. You can also edit photos, although the editing options are limited, including stuff like cropping, text insertion and adding frames.

Nokia 7610 can also shoot videos – the maximum resolution is VGA (at 15fps) and the image quality is mediocre.

Colourise Theme – this is one of the main attractions of Nokia 7610 Supernova, although some might not see its utility.

The Colourise feature lets you choose a set of colors from any caption that you make with the phone’s camera. These colors can then be used into any of the phone’s themes. The feature also lets you choose colors from an image that’s already stored into the handset.

Basically, the Theme Colouriser allows you to create unique themes for the 7610, and this is something I haven’t seen on any other phone.

Perhaps a negative side of the feature is that, each time you capture a set of colors for a theme, a photo is automatically saved on the memory card the phone comes with. So if you will play around a lot with this feature, don’t forget to frequently delete the resulting images, because you’ll soon wake up with no more space on the memory card.

Web, email, games, others

Nokia 7610 Supernova has Yahoo! Go preinstalled, so you can search the Web, download maps, check weather reports and so on. Opera Mini is also preinstalled, but since the 7610 only provides EDGE connectivity, the browsing speeds may not be as you would wish them to.

The phone provides access to POP3 or IMAP4 e-mail accounts. You first have to set-up an account, obviously, but this is easy.

Other stuff that Nokia 7610 Supernova comes with include: WidSets, to-do list, unit converter, currency converter and so on.

On the fun side, the 7610 has four pre-installed games: Snake 3D, Sudoku, Sea Sweeper and Bounce II.

Memory, battery, SAR value

Nokia 7610 Supernova has 64MB of internal memory and a 512MB card that’s already installed in the phone. To change or remove the card you first have to remove the back cover. You don’t have to turn off the phone, though, as the card can be changed without removing the battery. Just make sure you aren’t running any application from the card the moment you get it out.

The 860 mAh Li-Ion battery of Nokia 7610 Supernova should, officially, last up to 5.4 hours in talk-time mode or up to 300 hours in stand-by mode. The truth is that, if you talk for about 1 hour a day and you also use the phone’s camera and music player a lot, after two days you’ll surely need to recharge the battery. At least that was the case with the unit I reviewed.

For those interested in the 7610 Supernova SAR value, Nokia says: “The highest SAR value reported under this standard during product certification for use at the ear is 0.81 W/kg and when properly worn on the body is 0.65 W/kg.”

Price & availability

Nokia 7610 Supernova has a retail price of around 220 Euro. Perhaps that’s bit too much for what it can do, but, after all, fashionable phones were always a bit more expensive. And there’s no denying in the fact that Nokia 7610 Supernova is a fashionable handset.

Nokia 7610 Supernova is currently available in lots of countries from Europe and Asia. It is also released in North America, where, according to Nokia, users get it with a 2GB card included in the box. 

Conclusion

For a non-smartphone, Nokia 7610 Supernova is a pretty good handset. If you don’t need 3G, Wi-Fi, GPS or a document reader into your phone and are looking for a fashionable device, the 7610 might just be your thing.

If you liked the post, you might find these interesting too:

• Nokia 7100s (Supernova) details emerge
• Nokia 7310 SuperNova gets official
• New colors and better services for Nokia’s Supernova phones
• Nokia 7310 Supernova SSC Napoli Special Edition revealed
• Nokia 7210 Supernova review

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