Nokia 7390 review: Fully loaded glamour

Beauty at any cost

As usual for all Nokia phones of the L'Amour collection, Nokia 7390 has an ornamental wrist band, which looks more like a design accessory rather than a practical element. Anyway, be sure you treat it with care as intensive usage may convert it from a stylish decoration into an unsightly, ragged piece of something.

Ornaments on the front • leather on the back

Apart from the eyelet for the wrist band and the microSD memory card slot under the rear cover, where the card does not fit perfectly, here you will also find a BP-5M Li-Ion battery. According to the official statements Nokia 7390 should provide you with 3 hours of call time (2 hours in UMTS network) and more than 9 days on stand-by. By the way, it was the durability of the battery that surprised us a lot; if not used intensively, the phone easily makes it for 5 days. The device is compatible with AC-3 and AC-4 chargers. Charging with the AC-3 model takes approximately 2 hours and 20 minutes.

Buttons open everything

Once having given a light glance at the phone, your eye will also be caught by three buttons located beneath the external display. They facilitate the control of the phone’s multimedia functions. For example, you could run the radio, the music player or the camera without opening the phone; the last icon closes the keypad. However, the pictures shot with the camera do not come out pretty well on the tiny display; you’d better only use them in case of emergency. The mini-display also allows for deactivation of the alarm clock, confirmation of a reminder in the calendar etc.

The main keypad is divided into two blocks – a functional and a numeric one. Both are surrounded by a silver frame, between which and the nearby plastic surface there is a tiny gap, through which one can see into the internals of the keypad. Key distribution is standard, just like one would expect from a Nokia clamshell. The keypad is completely flat, on the same level like the rest of the phone surface. The only exception is the four-way control key. Even though there is a notable tendency for the keypad to go down in the area of the side columns or up where the middle column is, this helps very little for the overall orientation when typing. On the front, beneath the keypad you will also find the speaker grill.

Keys are big; control is generally comfortable with touchpad orientation being slightly more difficult

The superb level of Nokia 7390’s design has been reached at the expense of user comfort. Keys are quite difficult to use, but getting accustomed is just a question of time. Key presses are accompanied by soft, but loud clicks.

A large speaker grill beneath the keypad

Backlighting is a joy for the eyes due to the successful distribution of the keys and their silver frame bedding. The light is decent and evenly distributed both under the keys and between them.

Keypad backlighting is weak, but sufficient

The menu offers automatic keypad lock due to the ease with which external keys can be pressed when the device is in a pocket or a bag. Once the corresponding interval has been set up, the lock blocks both the external and the internal keys. The lock gets automatically unblocked if the phone is opened.

Two colorful beauties

The keypad weaknesses are compensated by the highly professional elaboration of the display. Let’s start with the external one, able to show up to 262K colors on a resolution of 160 x 128 pixels. Using colorful wallpapers is not advisable though as they interfere with the character legibility significantly. If you prefer, you may set up a screensaver, animation that should appear when the phone is opened or a sleeping mode for a gradual deactivation of the display and battery saving.

The external display features a small menu • playing music • changing a profile

The internal display is a completely different story. It represents the maximum for non-OS phones. Nokia 7390 features a QVGA display (320 x 240 pixels), able to show up to 16 million colors, on which you could comfortably enjoy the finest images taken with its built-in camera.

The main display occupies a great part of the surface • the tiny camera reveals 3G • QVGA resolution allows for displaying plenty of information

Above the display you will find a light sensor.. This way the phone tries to save the maximum amount of energy. Unlike the external display, the internal one is not able to visualize screen savers or other similar elements. If the phone is inactive, the backlighting gets weaker and the display goes out completely within a moment or so.