Excellent phone but my god its UGLY
Written: Mar 09 '01
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Pros: Plenty of features anf functionality
Cons: UGLY UGLY UGLY
The Bottom Line: Its a brilliant phone if you can accept its looks !!
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| mickm9's Full Review: Nokia 7110 GSM Cellular Phone |
This one had the background guys at Orange flapping with excitement when it was first received for testing from Nokia, not only was it the first ever WAP enabled handset but it was also a pretty revolutionary design in to the bargain.
First off though there was the race with certain other networks to launch it first which Orange achieved, this though had its disadvantages with early software versions displaying various bugs, thankfully though these have now, to a large extent, been overcome and the handset itself is pretty stable. There are various arguments around whether the handset should have been launched before it was 100%, I guess if it wasnt the bad publicity surrounding it in the early days would have been avoided.
However on the other side of the coin the market pressures brought to bear on networks when there's a sniff of a new product (especially one as radical as WAP) in the air have to be seen to be believed. Of course there is also the kudos of being first to market with a product as well, all things considered then it is therefore inevitable that short cuts are sometimes taken, it's unfortunately a fact of business life.
Anyway, enough of that because I dont really want to get drawn into that particular argument so lets get down to the handset itself.
Well, as already stated it was very revolutionary at the time. Unfortunately though samples were very hard to get hold of so they had to be shared around so I only had access to one for a week, (and it wasnt WAP enabled) however this was more than enough time for me to decide I didnt like it. Yes, it had the excellent Nokia menus and it had a brand new design of "navi key" which basically rolled you through the menus. I must admit I did like this feature and found it really speeded up my use of the handset once I'd got the hang of where each function was.
It also had several other key features which I would have found very useful if I'd decided to have one of these as my main handset, the first of which was the ability to store up to 50 text messages, not only that it also lets you store these in folders (similar to a filofax format) which is an excellent idea. It also utilised predictive text functionality which is an added advantage in any handset as far as I'm concerned.
Another major plus point in it's favour is the memory capacity, this can hold a massive 1000 names which has got to be enough for anybody !! Of course this does lead to a problem if your handset goes faulty because you'd lose these numbers as they werent actually stored on the SIM but the handset itself.
It has the normal calendar/reminders functionality which is a must for me on any handset as I use this to organise my days meetings. For those of you that dont understand how this works it is in effect a very basic personal organiser where you enter in individual alarms for various reminders you need during the day.
For example you could set it to give you alerts at various times during the day, i.e, at 10.30 an alert will give you a message saying "Meeting in Room 1 re Nokia 7110", at 12.30 you'll get another one saying "Lunch appointment with Fred Bloggs", 3.20 another one to remind you to phone the wife etc etc.
It also has the very handy profiles feature, this allows you to categorise your programmed numbers and assign them to different groups, for example you could put your work colleagues in one that give a professional type ringing tone, you could set another with your girlfriends number that uses your favourite "romantic" ringing tone, another group could be your mates which has a daft ringing tone etc etc.
This might sound a bit pointless but you can also set up a different profile for the handset depending on what situation you find yourself in, for example lets assume your at work and the boss frowns upon personal calls been taken at work, with a normal handset the only way you could stop this would be to switch your phone off, but then what happens if your work colleagues need you ?
The way round this with the profiles function is to set one profile for work where only numbers assigned to the works group will actually generate a ringing tone, you can in this particular profile "mark" any other groups not to ring thereby avoiding the embarrasment and subsequent bollocking when the "Titanic" melody starts blasting out while you should be working !! Once your out of work you simply swwitch the handsets profile from work back to normal and hey presto, if your girlfriend rings so will "Titanic".... problem solved.
Of course it also has a vibrate alert so you could get round all of the above by simply switching that on !!
So as far as functionality and ease of use goes it is a very accomplished handset, however, the reason I didnt like it was purely and simply from an asethetic point of view ... I think it looks damned ugly !!!
OK, the colour scheme is so so, in fact the iridescence material of the handset moves it between a metallic red or green shade depending on the light hitting it, normally though it looks a boring dull grey. This in itself is bad enough but it also has a bulbous appearance which does it no favours at all. Of course this was necessary to give a decent size screen for WAP usage. Its also quite bulky and doesnt fit very snugly in the hand, this obviously is a personal comment though as another person might find it very comfortable so thats down to the individual to decide.
I also had misgivings about the slider, at first it was a novelty but it soon becomes a bit of a pain sliding it in and out all the time, memories of the 502 come flooding back !!
Talk of the slider reminds me of a very funny story about the 7110 which happened during a meeting I attended in Oranges Logistics operation where the Senior Engineer was demonstrating the handset in a pre launch review, he was showing how the slider was very unreliable and sometime didnt open at all, sometimes however it would shoot open at high speed. On this particular occasion the slider decided to open OK but somehow disengaged itself from the mechanism and flew across the table at high speed to land nicely on the Purchasing Managers lap ... he was not impressed !
Luckily though this particular problem was ironed out otherwise there would probably have been several cases for Nokia to answer to where people managed to decapitate themselves just by opening these sliders !!!
So in summary then I would say that it was a very good choice of handset if you dont mind the size and colour, it has plenty of functions and features to suit the average user and serious business user alike and as such should certainly be considered if your in the market for a decent handset. The price as well is no very attractive with the advent of new technology such as the 8210/6210 you can pick one of these up for next to nothing on contract.
Oh yeah, WAP ..... I'm afraid I have never actually used WAP on a phone so I am not really qualified to make an opinion on that aspect of it, however, what I have heard is that it is no better or worse than any other subsequently WAP enabled handset so make of that comment what you will. I am sure there are many more people on here that could give you a more comprehensive review though so if this a requirement of yours please read those reviews first.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 50
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Epinions.com ID:
mickm9
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Reviews written: 17
Trusted by: 0 members
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