Nokia 701: Last Gasp Of Symbian?

Nokia 701: Last Gasp Of Symbian?

          If we talk about buying a Smartphone the first brand we eliminate from our mind is Nokia but this new phone of Nokia may change that mindset. Nokia’s new 701 is a impressive phone with the same old Symbian but with a new update and perhaps with a new look. Can this phone bring back life in Nokia? Read more to find out…..

• Body & Screen: Nokia 701 has a sleek metallic finish which looks fairly impressive. Nokia 701 has the same curvy, round edgy design similar to most of the Nokia phones. The metal used in the finishing is also quite charming. Although using metal in finishing the phone only weighs 131 gram, also a rather different feature is that there is a voice command key placed right in between the volume keys. The ClearBlack 3.5” nHD 16M colour screen of Nokia 701 having screen resolution of 640×320 is also pretty nice as it is based on the IPS LCD technology which has amazing brightness(worlds brightest!) and 160 degree viewing angle. The screen has a 210 ppi of pixel density which is very close to the Samsung Galaxy S II’s 217 ppi.  The screen is also protected by a Gorilla Glass so you don’t have to worry about scratches. Also the contrast ratio of this phone is phenomenal. The only problem with design was that the menu button is very close to actual screen so many times you end up touching screen along with it.

• OS & Apps: The new Symbian Belle OS looks quite good and responsive. Nokia has really worked hard to make it right but still many of the features in Symbian Belle are very Androidish. I have always criticized Symbian OS for its unresponsiveness and lagging as compared to iOS or Android but in the Belle update Nokia has made significant changes to make the device smooth and sleek which seems to work so far. The new Belle OS has maximum 6 homescreen having an option of setting the different wallpapers for each. The widgets in the Symbian^3 were pretty immature but all the Cons in the widgets are pretty much nullified. Widgets in Symbian Belle are resizable also you can add shortcuts directly by dragging the icons from menu on to the homescreen which again is very Androidish. In bottom of the screen there are three buttons Dialer, Menu and homescreen settings because of which Nokia could have gone with the new trend by keeping no physical button, hope to see this in the coming Symbian Belle phones. Again another big addition (so called inspired from Android) is the pull down menu which is quiet helpful in quickly toggling Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, mobile data and Silent mode. But the only problem with this drop down menu is that third party applications are not given access to it. The new menu is also changed besides changing the icons in earlier update(Symbian Anna), the menu is now pretty flat as it does not scroll up and down(if you don’t make any subfolder or anything). The task manager in the OS is not so useful, as you can just terminate a particular app and nothing else. The new OS is pretty responsive and fast mostly because of the new more powerful hardware. The most impressive pre-installed app is the Vlingo you can just hit the voice command button to directly use it. It is preinstalled with Shazam, Nat-Geo app and CNN video app. Also it is packed with quick office which is only a trial version so you have to pay and buy full version to read your document.

• Hardware & Camera: The hardware of the new Nokia 701 is pretty impressive as compared to the earlier Nokia phones. The Nokia 701 is packed with 1GHz processor which works superb for the new OS as Symbian Belle requires very less resources than Android or iOS. It has a 2D as well as 3D graphic Hardware accelerator and OpenGL ES 2.0 which ensures smooth gameplay on high end 3D games. Nokia 701 is packed with 512MB RAM & 1GB ROM which is more than enough for heavy multitasking. When we talk about the phone’s connectivity Nokia 701 has almost everything. The Nokia 701 is 3G & Wi-Fi, enabled also it has Bluetooth 3.0 with A2DP. Similar to most of the Smartphones Nokia 701 is also NFC enabled and comes with a very interesting manual of this new technology. Nokia 701 has a magnetometer along with a TV output which is pretty cool. The only Con is that the phone does not have a HDMI output! The Nokia 701 comes with a 8GB onboard memory and 32Gb expandable memory.  Rest all the features like Proximity Sensor, Accelerometer with auto rotate, active noise cancellation with dedicated mic are pretty standard. The 8MP dual LED flash camera has a very big disadvantage is that it is fixed focused. Although being fixed focus the camera performance of the Nokia 701 is quite satisfying while taking pictures from some distance but close up pictures come very blurry.  The 8 MP camera clicks picture at 3264×2448 pixels, a good feature of the camera is the face detection also the camera capable of taking at 720p@30fps. Also the Nokia 701 is packed with a secondary front VGA camera for video calling which is quite average.

            The Nokia 701 ships in Steel Dark, Silver Light, Amethyst Violet and White colours which gives customers fairly good options. The 1300mAh lithium ion battery of the Nokia 701 gives 17 and 6 hours talktime, 504 and 554 hours on 2G and 3G networks respectively. The lowest price I could find on internet is Rs.16,595 which is great for a Smartphone having this much features. If you don’t like Android or can’t afford iPhone and have trust in Nokia (Nokia ka Bharosa), then you should definitely go with Nokia 701.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oay4yqRQuVE

Conclusion:Though there has been a lot of Buzz about the Nokia Lumia 800,Nokia’s 1st Windows Phone..but Nokia 701 is also not far Behind!!!!