Best Phone Blog

Nokia has been trying to shake it’s ‘dad at the disco’ image for a while now, mostly just by using the letter X. With its XpressMusic, it’s X6, it’s X3… but all the while we’ve been tutting and thinking: what’s wrong with being thought of as a slightly older, slightly more sensible manufacturer. Surely most people are going to want to buy themselves phones from the most reliable, the most wise people around?

Well, in a very novel move that doesn’t really in any way shake their image as boring and middle-aged, but DOES make us very excited about the quality of the product itself, Nokia have released a full set of details (and a nifty video, as you’ll see below) for the Nokia Booklet 3G. That’s right, you heard us: Nokia are releasing a netbook. A computer. A proper one. Running the newest windows and everything.

And as you’ll see from that video, or from this Nokia Booklet 3G review, or even the official page itself, the Nokia 3G Booklet is shaping up to be a whole lot more than just another netbook to add to the over-stacked bandwagon that is the netbook market. Fair enough the RAM, the processor, the screen and a few other bits and bobs aren’t exactly going to make the Acers and Samsungs of this world come over all aquiver. But but but… what about a 12 hour battery life? What about A-GPS onboard along with Ovi Maps? What about WiFi and 3G… see, impressed, aren’t you?

And then there’s the sheer design of this thing. It looks absolutely stunning. Like, Sony Vaio stunning. Like, (almost) Macbook stunning. Which most definitely sets it a long way apart from most of the tat that tries to pass itself off as netbooks these days.

We do have one possibly slightly larger than minor concern though. The price is yet to be confirmed and we have this sneaking suspicion that Nokia might just go and price themselves out of the market before they’ve even start. But then, we are a cynical bunch of grumps. Here’s hoping that’s not the case. Fingers crossed for that soon-but-unconfirmed release date…

Maemo.

No, that wasn’t a greeting from a retarded cat. Or the sound a deaf cow makes. It is, unfortunately, the name of the operating system for the otherwise fantastic N900.

What is it with Nokia and names? First, you have all those cursed four digit phones, meaning you can never remember whether you have the 6590, the 6950 or the 6095. Then, even worse, there’s the supposedly ground breaking, supposedly the-future-of-all-things-Nokia file-sharing, media-editing, global-communicating, content-hosting, app-suppling, map-making entity that they truly want to be the bestest thing ever, but that they then go and call Ovi. Ovi. Like some street slang for ovaries. Yeah, bruv mate, I like totally got messy up in Shazza’s Ovi last night, yeah bruv, let’s hope the slag’s on the pill, innit. Ovi. For the love of…

Then you have an operating system for what are supposed to be your absolute high-end, top of the range, all-singing/-dancing/-karaokeing/-gymnasticating handsets. And you call it? You call it?… You just don’t know. So, being Finnish, you go throw a special cat at that cow in the farm down the road that’s always looking at you funny, record the noise and decide that that, that right there, yes, Maemo, that will be the name of your operating system. You god damn…

Anyway, we feel as though we might be trangressing slightly, that you might be losing the focus here. Pay attention, dear reader, pay attention. Because, despite its arse-named operating system, the Nokia N900 is actually a cracking phone. Well, actually, it’s one of the best phone’s we’ve ever, ever seen. That simple enough for you? No? Then watch the pretty moving pictures thing below. Or trying and read the big words in this Nokia N900 review. Or ask a friend who’s not got the IQ of a maimed cow to translate these official stats for your tender little brain. Then go buy this phone.

Another day, another new Nokia that’s not really new, not really offering anything exciting. Stumble forward, the Nokia 5230.

We should be clear straight away, before all you Nokia-heads start agrumbling, that there is little wrong with the 5320 2. Almost nothing in fact, especially when you consider how darn cheap the thing is. It’s got a great 3.2” touchscreen that’s responsive and has lovely tactile feedback. A great music player with up to 33 hours playback. Good image sharing and internet connectivity. Nice design with some fun swappable covers as well…

But the problem is that there’s very little to distinguish the Nokia 5230 from, say, the 5800, or the 5530. And this is just what Nokia seem to be doing an awful lot of at the moment: re-hashing already successful models rather than blazing trails with new designs. And this, we’d be confident enough to say, is why they’ve been struggling in their last couple of financial reports. There’s only so long that your very loyal fan base is going to put up with little innovation, lots of renovation.

Again, the 5230 is not bad – as this Nokia 5230 review or even the official page amply show. It’s just that… well… it’s not much of anything that you haven’t heard about before.

Buck up, Nokia my son, buck up.

Even their videos are starting to make us yawn, as you’ll experience yourself by clicking below. Like, seriously: why would anyone ever, ever make a video like that to ’show off’ their product. Don’t even dare look at 36 seconds, for example, when the video actually makes the phone look just plain faulty…

Sort it aaawwwtttt!

In a far, far less glamorous version of what Clark Kent achieves when he steps into a phone box, the Nokia 5800 has some out of some kind of dressing room and announced that it is no longer the cool, bass-thumping, sexy music phone that it once was. Oh no! It is now the sensible, efficient, traffic-delay-warning Nokia 5800 Navigation edition. Kneel before its efficacy! Quake at the power of its 5-day weather forecasting. Behold the horror that is its ability to synch with your PC and Mac to share pre-plotted routes. Quiver at the thought of its in-box car charger. Slightly wet yourself at the… well, you get the idea.

Never before, in fact, have we seen a phone undergo what can only be described as a detransformation. Or a devolution, perhaps. Because what once was cool is now not, and what once was for da kids is now most definitely for the parents of said adolescents. So, the Nokia 5800 Navigator edition, if you spit at people from buses, stick fingers in the your friends orifices and generally make the world a more greasy, spotty place, might not be for you. But that’s not to say it’s not going to make a large number of people’s lives better.

Whether those people actually read blogs is another matter. Chances are if they do they wouldn’t actually have the technical skills required to, say, click through to this Nokjia 5800 navigation review to find out more. Or to follow this link to the official page. But anyway, once they do somehow manage to find their way to purchasing the all-new-ish 5800, they will definitely be able to find there way to your Aunt Beryl’s place in the Cotswolds far more efficiently than they have done before.

The future, people, is here. Cower before its… oh, right, yeah, we did that bit…

Maths is a simple game, and one we enjoy.

Try this equation on for size:

Stupidly overweight, oversized phone + lots of really good features = two million sales in three months

Not the most common of outcomes, you’d have to say, but that’s exactly what happened with the original N97. Now, Nokia’s resident mathematicians must have done some very technical alogorthims to realise that if they substituted out that first bit of the equation, they might be able to get themselves some even better results. And this is exactly what’s happened with the Nokia N97 Mini. For this little beauty is based on the following equation:

Slimmed down, streamlined and downright fits-in-your-hand beauty phone + lots of really good features = even more million of sales in even less time

Now, while that outcome of the equation is, as yet, unproven, we have no doubt that maths will prevail and the outcome will be confirmed.

It’s a complicated thing, this mobile phone manufacturing, but we’re glad we have the likes of Nokia at least stretching their huge brains to bring us the likes of the mini Nokia N97. (Have a look at these Nokia N97 Mini deals, or at this Nokia N97 mini review if you want less maths, more stats.)

Really, you have to marvel at it… the leap it took… to think that if only you take something that makes you feel a little ill and sore to hold and make it into something you want to hold, you’re profits will increase… really marvellous thinking

There are, according to our scientific observations on the local buses round this way, two types of young person these days. Group A, as we shall call them, like to play terrible, terrible music on their phone speakers in some kind of weird throwback to the days when kids had ghetto-blasters. The thing about the ghetto-blaster days, though, was that firstly, the music was good, secondly it actually sounded good because ghetto-blasters were huge things designed solely for playing music, not tiny thing designed mostly for making phonecalls. So it’s with dread that we blog about phone’s like the Nokia 5800 with its extra loud, extra bass, extra music blah blah blah, because we know Group A is going to be blaring out some terrible choons on it as soon as it’s released.

Group B, on the other hand, will get very excited about the forthcoming release of the Nokia 6760 slide. Because this has all the elements that make them tick together in one phone-like thing. Again, it’s very unlikely they’ll care all that much about the handsets ability to make actual calls, but they’ll be flocking to 6760 deals once they know about it’s large QWERTY keyboard and the apps and software on it that allow fast and easy access to all the Twittering and Facebooking and emailing that gets these more quiet, but equally as disturbing group excited. Because it’s group B that are the ones that skulk around with their heads permanently on a screen of some sort, sniggering occasionally as they look up and exchange eye contact with someone 3 metres from them who’s just sent an instant message to them. Oh yes, the 6760 is going to make group B very happy indeed. Check out this Nokia 6760 slide review if all this proof isn’t as damning as it should be for you.

Like most of the videos they make for themselves, Nokia’s effort for the Nokia 3720 Classic is pretty amusing in its innocence and, well, banality. Because although they prove their point very well – that the Nokia 3720 is about as tough a phone as you can possibly buy – they do so in this whimsical, almost surreal way that would actually wind us up if the phone wasn’t so impressively hard.

Because we all know that normal people only break there phones in one of two ways:

1 – Drunkness. Clearly the biggest cause of phone death man has ever known. From waking up to find your phone inexplicably floating in a glass of rum (check), to realising you dropped it down the toilet while drunkenly expelling stuff (check) to betting a friend you could hit another friend in the head with your phone from a distance of 30 metres (check)…

2 – Clumsiness. Can’t drink tea without spilling some all over your desk? Stub your toes at least once a week? Fall over inexplicably every now and then? Sit on, tread on, crush, drop or otherwise bully your phone? Then you, sir/madam, are a Clumsy Clive/Claire

Or, sometimes (for us all to often) a combination of those two ways. But you know what, this phone can withstand even the most inane, drunken, awkward, stupid, embarassing tumble you might take. It could have withstood that time when you might, hypothetically, have gotten into the shower with all your clothes on to sober up. Or the time you fell into the hotel pool. Or that other time you fell into a different hotel’s pool. Or that…

Admit it… your interested, aren’t you… then click here for the official page’s stats lowdown, or have a look at this Nokia 3720 classic review.

Rare indeed it is for Nokia to actually stick a name with any meaning next to one of their products, but so it is with the Navigator. Nokia spent more money advertising their mapping capabilities last year than just about anything else, so it makes sense they’re going to keep on plugging away with pushing it into consumers hands as hard as possible. And, to be fair, if it’s navigation you need, you can’t really do any better than the Nokia 6710. With Nokia maps 3.0, localised settings and information preloaded onto the handset, and dedicated navigation and zoom keys on the phone to make everything as intuitive as possible, the Nokia 6710 Navigator comes out smelling of roses from all the different mapping tasks we could think to throw at it.

However if you think the map functions are only something you’ll be using occasionally, then you might want to take another look. Or, actually, you might not. Because, well, this phone ugly. In fact, this phone so ugly it make your momma look like an oil painting. Yo’ phone so ugly it got beaten with the ugly log, not the ugly stick. Yo’ phone so ugly it looks like it ran a 100m sprint in a 90m gym. Yo’ phone so ugly the ocean doesn’t even wave at it.

And so on and so forth and, well, you get the point. Seriously, Nokia – this is the best you could do, the best body and face you could give to all this lovely mapping goodness? It’s too thick, the slideout bit is weird, it feels like a cheap Korean knock off the plastic’s so bad, it’s got a crap design scribbled all over the casing… it… it… it just ugly, yo.

Call us vain, call us conceited, call us anything you like. But you sure as hell won’t be calling us on this thing, that’s for sure. Check out this Nokia 6710 review for a less superficial judgement, watch the cheesy vid below, or have a look at The official Nokia page where, like even the ugliest of babies, the 6710 gets all the parental loving it needs.

There are some things in life – washing machines, for example – that you buy, put where they’re supposed to go, use them when you need to, but, for the most part, forget about. Your new washing has probably been bought because the old one broke, or was at least on its last legs. Your new washing machine might have some kind of drying cycle or power saving function or some other features that are, when you think about it (which is rarely), pretty cool. You don’t invite your mates round, stick it on ’super quick spin with extra rinse’ then all ooh and ahh as it rocks into action.

The Nokia 6700 is – and we apologise, Nokia employees, if you’re reading this, but stick with us – just like a washing machine. This is not a phone you choose to show off your mates with. You don’t stick the new Batman film on, tilt it into landscape, then scream LOOK AT THAT, JUST LOOK AT IT, THAT’S DVD QUALITY THAT IS. Even though it does play videos in landscape on its modest screen. The Nokia 6700 classic is a phone you buy, load your numbers onto it, play around for a few minutes just so you know what’s where (yep, just where I thought it would be), then put it – just where it belongs – in your pocket. When you need to make a call, you get it out. And without really realising it, the new noise cancellation makes that call that little bit clearer. When you want to check something on the internet, you use the internet. And Nokia’s awesome browser makes that browsing pretty damn enjoyable. But you think nothing of it, put it back in your pocket. And that’s that. (Have a look at this Nokia 6700 review for more details – or even Nokia’s official page if you want.) Sound boring? Ah, go buy yourself some cheap speed you freak. Sound great? We like you. Check out this video for a little sneak peek. And you can even have a taste of these Nokia 6700 deals

Battery life, battery life, battery life… you’d have to see us shaking our heads in a dejected fashion as we wrote that to understand the full pain we feel every time someone mentions battery life to us. We’ve been hurt by more batteries over the years than we have women (which might not surprise many of you), but things just haven’t been getting any better. In fact, in many cases they’ve actually got worse. We can remember the old Nokia 3310 lasting for what seemed like weeks, most probably because it’s monochrome display had only 84×48 pixels. Bless. And that little thing sold 126 million pieces units… But little did those manufacturers learn because soon they were slapping on huge screens, massive connectivity thingies, media players, rocket boosters and whatever else they could think of in some kind of Cold War style race for supremacy, even if that race was at the expense of battery life (okay, maybe that’s not quite similar to the expense of life threatened by the Cold War, but you get the point). For years now, it seems, battery lives have been getting shorter. And with the most recent kick in the teeth of 18 month contracts for phones that have only been built to last for a year, it’s gotten even worse.

Well, luckily, things might be about to change. Or they will do, that is, if the Nokia E52 is anything to go by, because with its 25-day standby claims, it sounds like the E52 is the kind of phone for us. Fair enough, claims are claims and facts are often quite some way from these, but even if that 25-day in claim-land = 20 days in reality, that’s still some way better than just about anything else being released these days. So we say, bring back the old days! Bring back phones that last for weeks upon weeks! Bring back monochrome LCD screens!

Oh, and if you’ve not been quite as emotionally affected by battery life, you might also want to read about all the other things the pretty nifty Nokia E52 does in this Nokia E52 review. And why not have a look at the video below too.