Nokia 3720 classic review: Handle without care

A 2 megapixel snapper

The Nokia 3720 classic is equipped with a 2 megapixel camera. Typical for Series 40, the camera settings are limited, but that makes them simpler and easier to use. The settings include white balance and various effects. Sequence shots and shooting in both portrait and landscape mode are also among the available extras.

The camera user interface in portrait and landscape mode

There is a LED flash on the device, which should in theory make the photos in low light conditions somewhat usable, but of course it doesn't go a long way in practice. Anyway, we suppose the main utilization of the LED will be as a flashlight.

In general, the Nokia 3720c photo quality is decent enough for the 2 megapixel class. The colors are nice, the resolved detail is satisfying. The noise levels are high at some places, but we can't expect much from this camera anyway. Just look at the sky in the samples below and you will get the idea.

Nokia 3720 classic camera samples

The video recording is rather modest - QCIF@15fps, but we didn't expect much either.

There is one disappointment about the camera which is not directly related to picture quality - the absence of a lens cover. Despite playing it all tough and rugged, the Nokia 3720 classic camera fails to deliver adequate protection for the lens and only relies on a slight recession into the surface to avoid scratches or damage.

Opera Mini 4.2 onboard

Much like all recent S40 6th edition devices, the Nokia 3720 classic comes with an integrated WebKit-based HTML web browser and guess what? Apple's Safari and Mobile Safari are based on WebKit, as well as the browser for the Android platform and the Palm Pre. The browser in the 3720 classic shares code with some of the best out there and doesn't disappoint.

Now before you ask, inline Flash content (including video) is not supported - there's some rudimentary support but it's just enough to display certain banners, not play YouTube videos. For YouTube playback you'll need to use the mobile version of the website. Then again, we guess the Nokia 3720c is not your dream portable YouTube player and you know that from the very start.

Lack of landscape mode and Google (or any other engine for that matter) search is another downer of the proprietary web browser. A flaw that sticks out like a sore thumb is the font rendering - it's very rough and zooming out at even 75% makes the text almost unreadable, and at 50% even headings become very mangled.

Opera Mini still comes preinstalled - a tradition on S40 phones. And it has its place, despite the big improvements in the built-in browser. The way Mini works is the page is rendered on Opera's servers and sent into a lighter format to the device, with the images compressed. While this somewhat spoils the quality, on a small screen (as most low-power devices that rely on the Mini have) you can't tell the difference.

The difference in image quality aside, the compression really saves on data charges. For example, GSMArena.com clocked in at about 370KB through the built-in browser and just about 70KB through Opera Mini.

Anyway, both applications are preloaded and you can choose the one that suits you best.

The built-in web browser • the Opera Mini 4.2

Organizer and apps

The organizer of the Nokia 3720 classic has undergone very few changes compared to the other S40 models. Not that it needs many, as it handles time-management almost perfectly. Month, week, and day views are available for the calendar. The week can start on Monday, Sunday, or Saturday. There are also five types of events available that can be set up: reminder, meeting, call, birthday and memo.

The different calendar view modes and the events available for setting up

A To-do manager, alarm clock, voice recorder, countdown timer and stopwatch are also onboard. The usual calculator, unit converter and search applications are not forgotten either.

Organizer menu, alarms, apps

Ovi Maps is also on board, but since there is no GPS receiver, its practicality stretches only to provide an electronic map, but we guess even that is not bad to have on a regular feature phone.

Finally, holding down the Star key turns the flashlight on and off. We could not find any software shortcut, but nothing beats having a hardware shortcut for that.

Games to kill a bit of time

There are four preinstalled games on the Nokia 3720 classic - Block'd, Bounce Tales, Brain Champ and Sudoku. While the last three are very familiar and we've seen them on almost every Nokia nowadays, Block'd is a new one to us.

It's has very simple gameplay - group similarly colored blocks destroys them. Your goal is to clear the screen of all the blocks.

Block'd • Bounce Tales • Brain Champ • Sudoku