Photo gallery: Nokia 3250MP3 phones are common nowadays, but Nokia's 3250 effectively blends the functions of a hardware music player and a phone seamlessly into the single device. Even better, at AU$649, it's towards the budget end of the scale for Symbian-based smartphones.
Design
The 3250 is bulky next to current-generation devices, measuring 105 x 50 x 20mm and tipping the scales at a portly 115 grams. It feels solid in the hand, and the body is loaded with a 2-megapixel camera (1600 x 1200 or 640x480 resolutions; videos at up to 176x144), colour screen and a headphone connector, but the real innovation is in the twisting form factor.
The base of the phone can swivel through 180-degrees to expose music playback buttons on the reverse of the keypad. Back/forward, play/pause, and stop buttons are present, enabling the device to work like a standalone music player. Pressing the function key brings up the menu, and the navigator key is used to browse the playlist. You can select tracks by album or tracklist and continue navigating the phone during playback. MP3, AAC, ACC+ and eAAC music files are supported as standard, but you can't play OGG or FLAC tracks, nor can you play DRM-encrypted WMA or iTunes files. And if you get tired of your own collection, an FM tuner is also included.
The swivel doesn't just provide access to the multimedia functions, though. Rotating the base back to 90-degrees operates the camera, and the music playback buttons become the shutter and zoom. The device automatically senses the position of the swivel and launches the appropriate application to suit, but this can cause problems. If you don't rotate the swivel around to play back music fast enough, the device thinks that you want to use the camera and launches the camera app. It's not a major hassle once you get used to it, but it takes a little practice at first.
Features
The Symbian 9.1 operating system works best with a high-resolution screen, but unfortunately Nokia has skimped to keep the price in check. The 176 x 208 pixel display produces slightly blocky graphics and text and limits how much information can be displayed on screen. During use, pressing the menu button presents a list of running programs with a scroll bar. 12 icons fit the screen (up from nine in most phones), and it makes it easier to keep track of what's running on the phone at any given time.
As expected of a modern smartphone, the 3250 ships with a comprehensive software set, including Nokia PC Suite to synchronise data between a desktop PC and the device. The operating system will also detect the phone as a USB mass storage device, allowing you to drag and drop files of any type onto the phone for transportation. The Nokia relies on microSD memory cards up to 1GB, and ships with a 128MB card.
One of the coolest features is support within Windows Media Player, though. You can manage the list of tracks directly from the PC and even rip audio directly from a CD to the 3250.
Performance
Nokia claims 245 hours of standby time and 180 minutes of calls thanks to the 1100mAh battery, and our testing showed this to be accurate.
The phone ships with two browsers built in, but the low-resolution screen makes it difficult to navigate through pages, so surfing the Web is best done elsewhere.
One excellent feature of the firmware is Flash Player, which gives you access to an enormous number of videos, multimedia applications and games directly on the handheld. The performance is zippy enough to handle Flash Lite apps, and we found ourselves whiling away many hours installing and playing games.
During our tests, the bundled headphones pumped out great quality sound.
Though the 3250 lacks a high-resolution screen, great sound, an innovative form factor and a solid software set helps make it a great phone for those looking for bells-and-whistles on a budget, and the seamless integration takes the pain out of managing audio files. It's not as feature-rich as the N91, but it's still a stylish, multi-faceted phone that's worthy of serious consideration.
Asher Moses from CNET.com.au contributed to this review.
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