Nokia N70 review: Universal fighter

Received, missed and dialled calls are saved into individual folders of the log application. Each call carries information about its date and time. More missed or dialled calls from one and the same number appear as a single one with the date and the time of the last event. You can call, send a SMS or save a number into the phonebook directly from the log. The log also remembers call lengths and all transferred data, but only if you start the log application from the main menu. It does not work if the log is entered by clicking the green button while in stand-by mode. When entered from the main menu the log lets you go into an even more detailed log, which contains info about all the operations with the phone: individual calls and data transfers. Unfortunately, there is no function to export this data to another device.

 
Log main menu • detailed list • data transfers

Tip: the phone gets quicker if you switch off the log function or if you at least set the saving data period to one day, not to the standard 30-day one.

Even if not new, the option for rejecting a call by writing an explanatory SMS is quite worthwhile. When you press the relevant button, an editor with predefined text appears on the display. The text can be modified and then sent right on.

Endless phonebook

No changes are to be found in the phonebook. It uses shared memory, which means that it suffers no limitations in terms of the amount of contacts or phone numbers that can fit in it. Beside the name and the surname, which are divided and saved in separate fields, each contact person can be assigned the following details: company, function, nickname, mobile phones, fixed phones, numbers for video calls, fax numbers, pagers, emails, web pages, notes, complete addresses, birth date. It seems that some types of fields can fit in an unlimited number of sub items (for example, the phone let me save several dozens of mobile phone numbers).

Searching the list • contact details

Just like most current Symbian Series 60 phones, Nokia N70 phonebook synchronizes with Microsoft Outlook. You have to deal with certain limitations given by the device that is worse or less detailed though. For example, you will not be able to get more than one mobile phone number into Outlook. I mean, you will get them - at least a second one, but it will appear in a different place - in the Auto field).

How you will get into the phonebook depends only on you and your setup. In the standard mode the reference to the phonebook is placed on the first position in the active stand-by mode, but it can also be set to get opened by the context button or the new user key. Once you start the phonebook, just enter the first letter of a name or a surname and the phone will help you search the whole word. I was surprised that N70 fulfils these tasks quite slowly, for other models from the Series 60 equipped with a phonebook of the same capacity do not perform with delays.

All contact names from the phonebook can be dialled by voice. The good news is that you do not need to make your own voice record. The phone is said to recognize any voice. In my case, its performance was brilliant. I would press a button, pronounce a name from the phonebook and the phone would display person's portrait, read their name and dial the phone number, which was saved as first. Each number in the phonebook can also be assigned a shortcut option by pressing and holding a selected key.

 Quick choice setup

Ting-a-Ring

Each name in the phone book can be accompanied by a special ringing melody and a picture. The latter appears as an icon both when you search the contact list (inconveniently covering the heading) and when a call is coming in or going out. The phonebook also supports groups. Each group can be given a specific melody, which also makes it possible to filter calls with the help of ringing profiles.

 
A contact name with a picture • picture accompanies an incoming call • call groups

Nokia offers 5 profiles and one additional profile for use in the offline mode, but new profiles are also possible to create. Within the profiles application you can set a ringtone for calls, video calls, messages, emails and chat. Loudness, vibration, keypad sound and filters are setup here too. As for the filtering option, here only the members of the selected groups ring; the rest just blink quietly.

Ringing profiles

Ringing melodies are supported in nearly all formats usually offered by mobile phones. You can use MID files with 64-voice polyphony as basic ones. In addition, Nokia supports MP3 files, AAC, AMR, RealAudio, RealTones, TrueTones, WAV…

Video calls

Nokia N70 is a phone that works with both GSM and 3G. On top of it, it knows how to make video calls. These are standard - when you select a name or a phone number you have to select Video call from the context menu. Then look at the front camera lens. Your image is displayed on part of the display. The other part shows a picture of the opposite party. As the main camera on the backside of the phone is also able to shoot the video, you can also select to switch off the nested control preview. Moreover, you can send the opposite side a static picture as a substitute of the live and animated image of your face.

Video calls bear relation with the Shared video function, which helps you show different things to the opposite side while you are making a standard phone call in the UMTS net. It is different from video calls, because here you do not have to maintain an active data transfer from the very beginning to the very end of the call. An important condition for the Shared video function to work is that your mobile operator supports UMTS (3G).

I have to confess that I did not come to make practical tests of the video call application in N70, but I expect it to work in a way similar to the one in the 6680 model.