Introduction
Nokia launches a series of handsets for women from time to time (we could say yearly). The success of the L’Amour models have been pretty impressive as it seems, since they have kept their (Good? Bad?) habit and they have launched a similar wave of phones under a different name.
This is Supernova.
I had a mountain bike back in ’95 of the same name, it has been one of the cheapest models available, it was made in the Czech Republic but of course I have tried to forget this experience when I got 7610 for testing.
When picking up the package at XXL GSM, my colleague Bocha has also been there and so there were three of us looking at the box, remembering the original 7610 with its strange keyboard and trying to figure out how did a once premium category Symbian smartphone became such a toy with mirrors. The four digit numbers have come to and end, so now the guys at Nokia randomly place names like Classic, Slide, Supernova, Fold, Navigator after the classic numbers, completely disregarding the original models, thus stabbing a dagger in the hearts of those who have once owned one of these phones.
So it’s Supernova. It’s made for women.
Hirdetés
Exterior
What’s not inside a women’s phone’s box? Yes, a USB cable. And what’s there instead? A bonus back cover, yeah. A blue like the classic 3310’s original cover and a red like the N73’s back. Nokia colors, they are both probably patented.
Since the front cover cannot be swapped, there is no problem with assembly quality. Even more, Bocha has remarked that this gadget looks really high-quality at first, the cover slides perfectly; it’s a pity that it has some play when opened. Still, 7610 Supernova is finely assembled.
The cover has a mirror on it. It’s a large, shiny surface with a stripe on the bottom. This has the navigation controls inside, including a large, five-way D-pad and four keys characteristic of the manufacturer. Handling is great; these are soft buttons with a proper backlight.
The numeric keys that appear after sliding the phone look like as if they haven’t been designed for a Nokia. Any Samsung could have such a silvery keypad, these keys, shining in white, are quite strange for the Finnish manufacturer. Still, there is no problem with quality, text input is magically easy.
On the left of the 7610 Supernova there is a small door awaiting the USB cable. MicroUSB. You can’t find one of these in all households, although Nokia didn’t include even a CD. The right side of the handset is much more exciting. We can observe a small, round key on the bottom, with a label describing its function; it is used to control the autofocus. We should think of any big deal, this is just the camera’s exposure key that starts to focus when half-pressed and takes the picture when fully pressed. There is a large button in the center with a sound note on it: this can launch the radio or the music player, the choice is up to the user. On the top we can see the usual volume control keys.
On top of the handset we can observe a 2.5 mm jack connector and the characteristic Finnish power/profile chooser button is also here. The bottom of the handset could be flat, but we can take of the back by pressing the designated wide surface. We should do this, as this is how we can access the memory card slot on the side, the one included in the base package being a 512 MB card. The 3.2 megapixel camera is on the back along with a double-flash.
Menu, basic functions
After turning the phone on, a part of the mirror cover becomes the display, at a resolution of 320 x 240 pixels with a diagonal of 2”. From here we can see the usual Series40 platform, until we get to see the label „Colourise”, which can be accessed with the hotkey on the right, but this can be reconfigured.
But what is this? I think almost all of our readers know Nokia’s platform for non-smartphones quite well, we have even published a nice little guide to it. It has icons or list view, as usual; there is a great active standby screen, menu items with nice animations, so the handset has the usual stuff at first glance. The design can be changed with themes, as this is where the new stuff comes in.
When turning on “colorization”, the camera is turned on and we can look around for stuff with colors that match our mood and then direct the phone at them. There is a half-circle color scale displayed continuously on-screen, and this analyses the picture from the camera and draws colors for us, based on this information. When we have the appropriate mix the analyzing procedure starts at the press of a button and we can choose from three patterns made from the colors. As a bonus the navigation key’s backlight is also changed, I have seen purple, dark purple, light blue and white during my experiments.
The phonebook has the usual structure, one contact can have many information like a picture, ringtone, email address… it’s extremely east to use. We can set the font size in the address book and messaging in three steps on 7610 Supernova. We can display the SIM contacts too on the list, but of course extra fields are available only in case of the contacts on the phone.
We practically have everything at messaging. SMS, MMS, email client and we can even compose flash messages. These are instantly displayed on the addressee’s display, so we can have some fun with it. The editor is common for SMS and MMS messages, so if we don’t attach an image, sound or video, the message is sent as an SMS, but if we’d like to use these multimedia features we can create messages of up to 300 KB in size. Typing messages is simple, thanks to the great keypad, and T9 can help us in text entry, although less and less people require this. The email client is the usual one, based on Java, it takes some time to launch, but in turn it supports authenticated SMTP servers and attachments too.
Organizer functions, applications
The calendar with a month and week view supports six kinds of entries. Reminder, meeting, call, birthday, anniversary and note are the topics, each of them having the appropriate information. The alarm clock is advanced: it has only one time point, but that can repeat on any day of the week. We can set snooze time, the maximum is one hour, which is quite long.
The list of other small things includes a to-do list, a scientific calculator, a countdown timer and a stopwatch, along with a “dumber” version of Nokia Maps, which is simply called Maps. The handset has no GPS receiver, so the software requires an external one, connected via Bluetooth. There are barely any maps on the memory card, so we’ll require an active internet connection too if we want to use the program. This looks quite like a must-be-there solution, but at least they have tried.
We have been happy to see Opera Mini again in the list, there is a dedicated measure- and cloth size-converter too. There is a world clock too and this is where we can find Sensor too, which is Nokia’s partner-finding software that works on Bluetooth, made for geeks ladies and gentleman. We can also find the Widsets web-app package, this provides us news, weather and other similar information – this also needs an internet connection.
In the games section we can see the good old ones (Sudoku, Golf Tour, Snake III) and one new, called Seasweeper. I had great expectations of it, but it turned out that it’s a simple minesweeper. Still, it’s good fun.
Multimedia
The camera on the back has a resolution of 3.2 megapixels, it has autofocus (you couldn’t miss this one, as the designers have written it near the button too), double-flash and a software that works in landscape mode. There is nothing extra in the settings, but the most important things (image quality, size, white balance, effects, self-timer) can be changed. Camera sounds can be turned off and we can take portrait pictures too, if we want to.
Pressing the button on the right halfway down starts focusing and fully depressing it takes a picture. The images (you can have a look at them below) are surprisingly good, I think these are great pictures for a phone of this category, of course one can find problems but that would only be nit-picking. Videos can be recorded at VGA resolution, but only at a speed of 15 fps.
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Not much bad to say about the musical part either, the headset’s medium quality and the not-so standard 2.5 mm jack connector are the only negative things. The software part, however, is okay, the player with a new interface displays album covers and the tracks are grouped by ID3 tags. There is an equalizer, we can create our own presets, there is stereo Bluetooth support and it of course runs in the background too.
As a funny thing, videos are also played back with the Music Player, but fortunately there is fullscreen mode too. The FM radio is much more advanced, as additionally to the ease of use there is RDS support too. Sound quality is not very good via the speakers, so we’d rather use a headset for listening to music, but the speaker is good enough for ringtones.
Data transfer, battery
Well, based on the features enlisted until now, it is surprising, but 7610 Supernova doesn’t support any kind of 3G network, the fastest available mobile data transfer method is EDGE. Besides 6300i WLAN is not very wide-spread amongst phones without an operating system, so poor Opera Mini has some serious fighting to do in order to display more complex web pages.
Nokia has clearly though that the target user won’t connect the phone with a PC, as there is no data cable or CD in the package, which is a bit surprising. Of course PC Suite can be downloaded, the phone can work as a modem and we can even obtain a TV-out cable, the connector is on top of the phone.
The battery under the cover had an uptime of three days, with reduced use (some pictures, games, a couple of calls, browsing), of course if used more intensely the uptime might get shorter. We really can’t expect much more of an 860 mAh battery nowadays.
Summary? I’ve been missing 3G. Otherwise 7610 Supernova can be a pleasant companion if we’re not afraid of the fact that the scratching of the mirror-cover is much more probable in a woman’s handbag. The usability of the menu system characteristic of mid-range Finnish handsets is great, I think this „colourise” is absolutely unnecessary, but it’s good to play around with. My female acquaintances didn’t really like it as much as L’Amour models, but of course there will still be some demand for it. It gets an award:
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| Nokia 7610 Supernova |
Bog
Translated by Szaszati
Nokia 7610 Supernova has been provided by XXL GSM.
The handset can be purchased at:
Budapest VI. Jókai tér 6.
Specifications
| Nokia 7610 Supernova | ||
 | General | |
| Technology | GSM | |
| Size | 98 x 48 x 15 mm | |
| Weight | 99 grams | |
| Available colors | blue, red, purple, grey | |
| Display | ||
| Display diagonal | 2” | |
| Display resolution | 240 x 320 pixels | |
| Display type | TFT | |
| Number of colors | 16 million | |
| Memory | ||
| Phonebook capacity | 2000 entries | |
| SMS memory / max. MMS size | na / 300 KB | |
| Internal memory | 64 MB | |
| Memory expandability | microSD (included in package: 512MB) | |
| Data transfer | ||
| Frequency bands | 900/1800/1900 MHz | |
| GPRS / EDGE | Class 10 (4+1/3+2) / Class 10 (236.8 kbps) | |
| UMTS / HSDPA | none / none | |
| IrDA / Bluetooth | none / 2.0 (A2DP too) | |
| WiFi | none | |
| USB | 2.0 (microUSB) | |
| Push-to-talk / RSS | present / none | |
| GPS receiver | none | |
| Basic functions | ||
| Profiles | present | |
| Vibra function | present | |
| Built-in handsfree | present | |
| Voice dialing / voice commands | present / present | |
| Sound recorder | present - 1 hour | |
| Alarm clock | present, also when turned off | |
| Predictive text entry | T9 | |
| Software | ||
| Platform | Series40 5th edition | |
| WAP / HTML browser | 2.0 / present | |
| E-mail client | present (POP3, IMAP4, authenticated) | |
| Java | present, MIDP 2.0 | |
| Games | 4 | |
| Currency converter | present | |
| Extra software | Widsets, Sensor, Converter, Maps | |
| Multimedia | ||
| Main camera | 3.2 megapixels, autofocus, flash | |
| Secondary camera | none | |
| Video recording | present (MPEG4 format, VGA, 15fps) | |
| Music player | present, can run in background | |
| Equalizer | present | |
| FM radio | present - RDS | |
| Battery | ||
| Main battery | 860 mAh Li-Ion | |
| Standby time | 300 hours | |
| Talk time | 340 minutes | |
| Other | ||
| Mirror on cover, changeable back cover | ||
