Nokia 7380 review: Weird and stylish

2 MP in a "non-smart" phone

Nokia 7380 has 52 MB of memory space, which is why I cannot recognize it as a MP3 player. Not even if it is able to work as such and to provide stereo sound through the earphones delivered in the original box. My reasons are simple: if there is too little memory, the phone loses points. It just cannot be recommended as a MP3 player.

The radio is something else. To make it function properly, attach an earphone, which will serve as an antenna. You can save and name up to 20 stations. There is both manual and automatic tuning available. Both the radio and the MP3 player can be played through the loud speaker.

This is the first time that Nokia implies a 2 megapixel camera in a common phone. Pictures are taken in 1600 x 1200 pixels resolution. Setup and modification options are marginal. When you capture a scene, it appears on the display, but its image is often difficult to recognize as the display is too small. Eventually, pictures can be sent via MMS or transferred to another device through Bluetooth. They can be additionally downloaded with the use of PC Suite if necessary.

Camera's environment

Nokia 7380 takes pictures with significant quality, when the weather conditions are good, which surprised me pleasantly. I took images that could even be placed on a website if needed. After certain minor modifications, of course. Quality gets worse if pictures are taken indoors as the lack of light increases the noise level, but they aren't so bad in general. What is really catastrophic is the macro mode. As a rule, camera lenses without auto focus or mechanic switcher do not have a good macro mode.

Sample photos taken with Nokia 7380:

The video application features low resolution of 176 x 144 pixels and it's significantly worse than the camera one. On the other hand, it is able to make an hour long video records.

Watch a video shot with Nokia 7380 (ZIP, 290 KB)

The phone is quite fast if used for common work. But once you enter the gallery, it slows greatly. At the same time, slide shows of megapixel pictures are relatively flexible.

Gallery • picture detail

No games, no Java

Nokia 7380 has no games.It doesn't support Java applications, so you cannot download games either. As you can see, midlets do not work well with the landscape display and the control wheel.

Nokia 7380 establishes internet connection through a built-in modem. As far as communication with PC is concerned, the only possible method implies Bluetooth. Nokia 7380 doesn't have an infrared port, unlike its forerunner. Even though Nokia doesn't mention EDGE among the phone's specifics, after certain observations have been made, we tend to think that Nokia 7380 supports this technology. But even if it is true, no information about EDGE connection path or EDGE being present in the correspondent network appears on the display.

The phone is equipped with a simple built-in WAP browser. Unfortunately, some web pages get scattered as a result of the landscape mode of the display. Still, the browser is able to open unsophisticated internet pages like the text version of MobilMania, for example.

WAP browser

Will anything similar ever be made for men?

I spent Christmas with Nokia 7380. It was my main mobile phone for more than a week. No matter how skeptic I was at the beginning (just like anyone who has only seen pictures of the phone or has had it for few short minutes), I have no other option but to agree with my colleague Polesn?: Nokia 7380 is not only an extremely attractive mobile phone, but also a phone full of useful applications, even if these require certain trade-offs.

In terms of functionality Nokia 7380 is a fully sufficient phone. It is a standard middle-class mobile device with several interesting innovations. I would like to highlight phone's excellent speaker independent voice dialing and is applicable in the entire phonebook. If we look back, we will find this same function in Nokia N70 smartphone, but Nokia 7380 is the first "non-smart" phone to have it.

Charger, wrapped up with its cable

Nokia 7380 is extremely expensive. Its price is a little bit higher than 530 euro. It gains many points for design and cool style, but as far as the relation price / performance is concerned I do not dare recommending it to anyone. Things may become much more interesting if Nokia offered a similar bijou for men. However, for the moment we will have to content ourselves with the L'Amour line suitable for women only.