Introduction, packaging
It has been more than two moths since the 7500 Prism has been in our editorial office and now, thanks to XXL GSM we have received the other member of the series, the 7900. I had great expectations for this machine, as its little brother has grown to my heart despite (or maybe because of) its interesting exterior.
I have opened the box having similar characteristics as its brother’s in great excitement. Taking the phone in my hands really took my breath away: it looks really strange, much stranger than the 7500, although that was something too. The most interesting element is the keypad which is really tiny compared to the size of the phone; I still can’t imagine how the designers at Nokia realized this – but let’s not put the horse in front of the carriage.
So the box is small and well-designed, we can find quite a lot of accessories inside it: an HS-82 stereo earphone, charger, data cable and a textile case. The latter is different from the one packaged with the 7500, about which I have received a lot of emails since the test, the ladies are just going wild about it. Consequently I say that it was a pity changing it, but men will probably be happier with this low-keyed one.
Exterior
Judging the exterior is something very subjective, this is why it’s not a very good thing to use such big words in an article as I will, but I think that the 7900 is quite ugly. Somehow I liked the 7500 much more and it addition that had the magic of novelty with this whole prism thing. But here this magic disappears; furthermore usability suffered a lot because of the extravagant design. Anyway it’s a fact that this new design gives a much more demanding exterior than in the case of the 7500.
On top of the front cover, near the Nokia label we can find the phone’s speaker and a bit lower the OLED display is placed with a diagonal of two inches and QVGA resolution. These types of displays have a smaller maximum light intensity than TFT panels but their consume less and are easily readable. The display’s picture is good, the colors are all right too, we have no reason to complain – life span is a different question, but problems connected with it only arise later, in long-term usage. It is important to note that the Nokia 7900 is the first massively produced phone with a QVGA resolution OLED display; we have seen such a display with a lower resolution in the Samsung E420. The OLED technology has another huge advantage: it has a view angle of almost 180 degrees, so it is readable form the sides too.
A bit lower we find the keypad. The joystick has been replaced with a d-pad, which would be really pleasing by default, but this has been "overdesigned" too, so it doesn’t really bear the marks of comfortable usage. The four function keys found near it have a normal shape, there is no problem with them, not like with the numeric keypad. The strange shaped buttons are extremely tiny, although there had been place for a larger keypad. To add to the difficulties the 2/5, 4/7, 6/9 and 8/0 keys are very close to each other, I have pressed the wrong button a lots of times, but ladies will probably have less problems with this. It’s a jolly feature however that the color of the backlight can be set manually, more exactly we can choose from 49 different colors. Some of these don’t resemble in reality with the one appearing on-screen and the lights’ intensity depends on the color.
The “coloring game” doesn’t end here though, as there are two light sources on the top of the phone, which also blink in the color chosen by us in case of a missed event. Between the two rows of LED is the microUSB connector which is used for charging too. It isn’t covered with anything, looks quite lame and moreover hardens making a call when the phone is being charged.
The lateral sides are part of the removable back cover; there is nothing of interest here just the prism pattern. The bottom part is also empty.
The back cover has a fairly pleasant look, and in addition it’s made of metal. In the upper part we can find the 2 megapixel camera with fixed focus near the LED flashlight, near them is the loudspeaker for the built-in hands free and in the center part there is the Nokia logo. The camera’s resolution is not displayed near it, which is in part a joyful thing, as I think this would be an unnecessary kitsch, but in the same time makes me think why couldn’t our Finnish friends put at least an automatic focus on a phone costing almost 100.000 Ft.
Menu, basic functions
The phone uses the Series 40 platform. To tell the truth it is rather hard to write in a way which reads well about the twentieth phone of the same type, but I’ll try anyway – and for the fans of the brand I mention that this wasn’t a negative attribute, I personally am overjoyed that so many phones use this mature and well-functioning system.
Luckily there is active standby (2. picture), this enhances greatly the ease of use. The menu has a grid layout with 3x3 icons; the system is logically constructed and completely customizable. There are no real problems with speed; I would say it is at a medium level, as there are faster solutions.
The part regarding information handling and making phone calls is flawless. The phone book has a capacity of 2000 entries, which can be extended with 15 extra fields, one by one. The internal memory has a size of 1 GB, from this 29 MB is allocated for PIM functions (MMS, notes, etc.) and we can store all our multimedia stuff on 940 MB.
MMS messages have a size limit of 300 KB. There is an email client capable of handling attachments and authenticated SMTP servers. The calendar is the usual with day/week/month views and we can find all the usual applications near it, like the stopwatch, countdown timer, currency converter, sound recorder (max. 1 hour), calculator, world clock and the notepad. The web browser can display HTML pages, but in case we would dissatisfied with Nokia’s browser we can also use the pre-installed Opera Mini.
Other software, phone calls
There are 4 games by default on the phone, the Music Guess, the latest version of the classic Snake (3. edition), Sudoku and a creation named golf Tour. This list can be extended, since the phone is Java-compatible.
Amongst other applications we can find the Nokia Sensor and the Yahoo Go!. Unfortunately there is no support for voice commands.
During calls I did not have many problems; sound quality and volume are OK; when changing between UMTS and GSM networks there was no considerable wait time. Once has happened however that because of low battery power a call was ended, although the battery was far from being dead.
Multimedia
The camera has 2 megapixels with fixed focus, so supposedly it is unsuitable for macro mode, but in poor lighting conditions the low capacity LED flashlight can help taking good pictures. In theory. In practice, however, I have experienced that it is not synchronized with the shutter, it first flashes and takes the photo only after that so it isn’t really much use. The software doesn’t really overflow in options, don’t even dream of sensitivity or something like that; there are only the usual options like delay timer and some effects. The highest possible resolution is 1200 x 1600 pixels, motion picture can be recorded in QCIF resolution.
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The FM radio has been somehow left out from the repertoire, but the music player is a fair one anyway. We can filter our music by artist, album or genre and we can use playlists. It can runs in the background, displays album covers, the volume can be adjusted in less then 10 steps. There is no bass boosting function, but there is a 5-band equalizer, in which we can use our own settings. The HS-82 earphone has a decent sound quality, when using the phone’s loudspeaker we have to go through a somewhat lower class experience, but it will pass somehow. In matter of movies the phone can play back those that are in 3gp format. By default there are two movie clips included on the 940 MB storage space which cannot be extended by the way.
Data transfer, summary
In means of data transfer and communication possibilities the phone is all right. The GSM module is quad-banded (850/900/1800/1900 MHz), there is GPRS, EDGE and UMTS support, however HSDPA is missing. It’s no use looking for WiFi in such a fashion-phone but Bluetooth is naturally present with version 2.0 and A2DP support.
The battery has a capacity of 850 mAh and theoretically supports a 2 hour talk time. In my hands the machine carried on for 3 days with normal usage (which means 20-30 minutes talking and a few SMS messages per day) – this is possibly the merit of the OLED display.
Conclusion: I’m not all that much impressed with the 7900 and these are small words. Compared with its little brother it’s only better in means of having 3G support and a 1 GB large memory, but it costs twice and I don’t think the OLED display is worth that much. I don’t want to judge the exterior; although I think it’s ugly it is still of higher quality than the 7500. It won’t get any seal even in spite of the OLED display.
Bocha
Translated by Szaszati
The Nokia 7900 Prism has been provided by XXL. The phone can be bought at:
Budapest VI. Jókai square 6.
Budapest VI. Teréz boulevard 18.
On-line at www.xxlgsm.hu.
Specifications
| Nokia 7900 | ||
 | General | |
| Technology | GSM, UMTS | |
| Size | 112 x 45 x 11,3 mm | |
| Weight | 101 grams | |
| Display | ||
| Display diagonal | 2 inches | |
| Display resolution | 240 x 320 pixels | |
| Display type | OLED | |
| Number of colors | 16 million | |
| Memory | ||
| Phone book capacity | 2000 entries | |
| PIM memory / max. MMS size | 29 MB / 300KB | |
| Internal memory | 939,6 MB | |
| Memory expandability | - | |
| Data transfer | ||
| Frequency bands | 850/900/1800/1900 MHz | |
| GPRS / EDGE | Class 32 (107 kbps) / Class 10 (236,8 kbps) | |
| UMTS / HSDPA | present (384 kbps) / none | |
| IrDA / Bluetooth | none / 2.0 (with A2DP) | |
| WiFi | none | |
| USB | 2.0 (microUSB) | |
| Push-to-talk / RSS | present / none | |
| GPS receiver | none | |
| Basic functions | ||
| Profiles | present | |
| Vibra function | present | |
| Built-in hands free | present | |
| Voice calling / voice commands | none / none | |
| Sound recorder | present (max. 1 hour) | |
| Alarm clock | present, also when turned off | |
| Predictive text entry | Hungarian T9 | |
| Software | ||
| Platform | Series 40 | |
| WAP / HTML browser | present / present | |
| E-mail client | present (POP3, IMAP4, authenticated) | |
| Java | present, MIDP 2.0 | |
| Games | 4 | |
| Currency converter | present | |
| Extra software | Opera Mini, Yahoo Go!, Nokia Sensor | |
| Multimedia | ||
| Main camera | 2 megapixels, fixed focus, LED flashlight | |
| Secondary camera | - | |
| Video recording | present, maximum resolution of 176 x 144 pixels | |
| Music player | present, runs also in background | |
| Equalizer | 5 bands, custom settings | |
| FM-radio | none | |
| Battery life | ||
| Main battery | 850 mAh Li-Ion (BL-6P) | |
| Stand-by time | 240 hours | |
| Talk time | 3 hours | |
| Other | ||
| - | ||
