Nokia 7370

Photo gallery: Nokia 7370

Nokia's recently launched L'Amour Collection is a follow-up to last year's fashion 7200 series. This new trendy trio of handsets features designs that combine cultural and ethnic influences with non-traditional materials and unique craft techniques. The midrange model of the three, the Nokia 7370, sports a compact swivel design and comes equipped with an FM tuner, 3D stereo speakers and 1.3-megapixel camera. Retailing at AU$629, the new Nokia handset is priced to look good without burning a hole in your pocket.

Design
At 88.5 x 43.4 x 22.6mm, the 7370 is one of the smaller swivel phones in the market today. The Nokia handset comes with a large 2-inch QVGA (320 x 240 pixels) LCD display that's capable of rendering up to 262K colours. As a result, images appear sharp and crisp on the screen, but some users may still have to squint at the display to see the tiny text fonts used in the phone's user interface.

The most distinct feature about the Nokia 7370, however, is the little fabric tab on the side of the handset. Much like the famous Levi's tab on jeans, the little cloth attachment on the new triband mobile is one of the key recognisable characteristics of the L'Amour Collection. The overall design, complemented by a beautiful leather surface battery cover and matt metallic exterior, should make this compact number from Nokia a phone hard to resist among the trendy female crowd.

In idle mode, the display shows the date, time, incoming calls and SMS details. As with other Nokia phones running the Series 40 platform, icons are simple yet intuitive, so it should be easy for less tech-savvy users to pick up the phone and use. We're nitpicking, but we thought the icons could have been better designed to complement this stylish phone. The large, well-spaced buttons on the keypad make it easy to use, be it for making calls or SMS texting.

We like the sturdy semi-automatic swivel mechanism of the 7370. Similar to that of the Sony Ericsson W900i, a slight push of the top display in either direction and the whole display swings through 180 degrees to unveil the keypad. The downside is the glossy finish of the screen which tends to attract smudges easily.

Features
As a midrange phone, the 7370 offers a good set of basic multimedia features including a 3D stereo speaker which produces good sound quality, particularly for the preinstalled ringtones. For those who commute frequently via public transport, you can appreciate some music on-the-go with the built-in FM tuner. While the handset is capable of playing MP3 songs, the 10MB of built-in memory puts a serious limitation on the number of tracks you can store in the phone.

The integrated 1.3-megapixel camera shoots in a full-screen landscape mode and offers a maximum of 8x digital zoom. Night mode is available; however, there is no strobe flash on the phone. Picture quality is average at best, which is expected of most camera-phones in the market. We did notice a fair bit of noise in some of our pictures, especially when our subjects were too close. Slight chromatic aberration also existed in the form of purple fringing in some of our snaps with heavy backlight. Video recording was limited to a maximum of 5 minutes.

When testing the camera on the 7370, we noticed a minor design flaw. By placing the camera lens at the bottom edge of the phone, there's a tendency for your fingers to block the lens when it is held in the natural shooting position.

You can synchronise the phone with your personal computer via a USB connection (purchased separately) with the supplied PC Suite. The handset also features Bluetooth connectivity and it didn't require a rocket scientist to pair it up with other compatible devices. The phone doesn't come with an infrared option.

There are several quirks in the 7370. You can reject, but not answer, an incoming call when the phone is closed. You may also want to make a conscious effort to exit all applications because there are no buttons otherwise for you to return to the default main screen while the phone is closed.

Instant messaging network services and e-mail applications are both available on the Nokia 7370. Instant messaging allows you to hold a conversation with online users, and you can still use the other functions of the phone while connected to the service. The email application uses enhanced GPRS (EGPRS) and you can access your email accounts from your phone. With these two features, you can stay connected at all times -- as long as there's network reception.

The Nokia 7370 allows SIM messages to be copied or moved to the phone memory but not the other way round. For those intending to switch phones regularly, you may want to save important messages in the SIM memory, not the phone.

Performance
We didn't encounter any major problems while using the 7370. There was excellent reception and the voice quality was above average. The built-in 3D stereo speaker was relatively loud and clear. On normal usage comprising sending text messages and making voice calls, the phone lasted not more than three days.