Nokia 7710 Review
Review by Jah - 10 January 2005

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The hand writing recognition is very accurate and could handle the Graffiti 2 type characters input (i.e. those used for the CIC Jot system used for the SE Pxxx range). The system seems to be very tolerant of mistakes and very quick at translation; it seems to "stack-up" the translation tasks so that you can enter whole series of characters very quickly.

Unlike the Motorola A92x and A1000 UIQ devices, the 7710 does not include a predictive word selection application. A third-party solution, for example Zicorp’s eZiTap, may become available in the future for the 7710.

Multimedia:

The primary multimedia components are:

• RealPlayer, for video
• Visual Radio
• Music Player (MP3, AAC, WAV, etc)
• Images viewer
• Opera web browser
• Camera and camcorder

The RealPlayer is documented to support playback for 3GP, MP4, RAM and RM formats at 15/17 fps (full screen/normal screen). The RealPlayer is integrated with the web browser, however no success was achieved in viewing videos on the BBC (UK) web site. The 128 MB MMC provided in the retail package includes samples of videos in 3GP and RAM formats. These do demonstrate the capabilities of the 7710. Using a standard free DVD ripper (e.g. #1 DVD Ripper) and a typical compression application for mobile devices (e.g. PV Author) it is possible to produce acceptable quality videos in 3GP format for playback using RealPlayer. The PV Author (version 3.0) settings that provide a good balance between smooth playback, picture quality and sound quality were:

• Video size: 172x144 pixels
• Codec: PV MP4
• Framerate: 12.5 fps
• Audio: AAC at 16 kbps coding (mono)

As with the Nokia 9500, third-party applications, such as Smartmovie, are likely to be available in the near future to make the process of video capture and playback easier.

The Visual Radio includes an application for downloading channel information via the Internet. When used with the provided HS-3 headphones, the Visual Radio is an impressive application and is a valuable addition to the Music Player. In weak signal areas it is advisable to use the Manual Tune option, however.

The Music Player supports popular formats such MP3, AAC and WAV. Music encoded in MP3 format at 128 bps sounds good, especially the bass/low frequencies and music encoded in AAC at 128 kbps is even more impressive on the 7710. The provided HS-3 headphones are very good, much better than stereo headphones normally provided with other devices similar devices. One point to note, however, is that the volume setting needs to be set high for these headphones when listening to MP3s when compared to other third party headphones connected using an adaptor to the 7710. Tracklist/playlist creation is not supported by the Music Player application.

The Image viewer, by default, will display thumbs of the pictures on the selected memory area (device memory or memory card). If you have many pictures it is worth noting that it can take about one second for each thumb to be rendered, so a directory with about 30 images (say each around 50/100 kb) will take (initially) 30 seconds to display. In addition to viewing images, this application can also be used to create sketches.

The web browser is Opera version 7.5 (build 721) and as with the browser on the Nokia 9500, it allows a standard web page to be viewed with the layout preserved so that the user does not need to scroll horizontally. This is one aspect of the 7710 package that is particularly impressive especially when used in full screen mode. Even with GPRS and downloading of pictures enabled, the browser is very usable. Its utility would obviously improve significantly when used with EDGE (EGPRS).

The camera is a high quality device with two levels of digital zoom. Pictures taken in day light at the highest quality are very good when compared, for example, to the SE P910 (with a typical file size is 440 kb). However, when used at the highest quality setting and files being saved to the MMC memory card it can take around 8 seconds for the 7710 to process the image. The camcorder appears to be limited to 1 hour of video capture. The images below have been resized from full size pictures. Click on the picture to download the original, unmodified image.

PIM and Other Applications:

The main personal information management and principle device management applications are:

• To Do/Tasks
• Calendar
• Contacts
• Document
• Sheet
• Presentations
• Messaging
• Filemanager
• Profiles
• Clock
• Control Panel

The To Do application, like other PIM applications benefits from the large screen, small font option (when using maximum zoom out) and the option to not show command buttons (these are normally shown on the far right of the screen). "To Do" items can appear in the Calendar application but its not possible to create them from the Calendar application.