Nokia adds to the kitty

Nokia announced Sunday night it has three new phones on the way--one for play, one for work and one for looks. The Nokia 6267, 3500 classic and 6121 classic are expected to become available in the third quarter of this year.

Nokia 6267

The 6267 is a multimedia phone with dedicated media keys designed to make it easier to sort through and access music, photos and video. It comes with 4GB of expandable memory. A flip phone, it sports two cameras, according to the company, including one 2-megapixel camera with 8X digital zoom. The 3G phone allows users to browse the Web, access a calendar and organizer, and make video calls. It's expected to cost about $320 and comes in orange, blue, black and silver.

Nokia 3500 classic

The 3500 is the lowest-end phone of the set. Nokia seems to have put the emphasis on style over new features with this candy bar phone. But the company does say it comes with an FM radio, 2-megapixel camera, instant messaging capability and space for 2,000 phone contacts. That's a lotta friends. From the pictures released, it looks to have a black face with an orange, blue or black back plate. Nokia says it will cost about $180.

Nokia 6120 classic

The most expensive of the bunch, the 6121, is a smart phone. It uses HSDPA (High-Speed Downlink Packet Access) technology the company says will make for quick Web browsing, video streaming and downloading files from e-mail. Users can transfer their contacts, calendar items, photos and videos from an old Nokia phone to the 6121. The 2-megapixel camera has 4x digital zoom and can take shots in panorama mode. A second camera is on the front of the phone for making video calls. Nokia released pictures of the phone in black, light blue with a black face, and another version that's all silver. The company says it will cost almost $350.

Nokia didn't say where the phones will be made available first or which carriers will offer them.

Nokia N76

When you think of sleek and sexy cell phones or smart phones, chances are you probably don't think of Nokia. However, the Nokia N76 certainly changes that perception. The Symbian handset boasts a beautiful and slim design, yet manages to pack in a boatload of features. Like its N series sibling, the Nokia N75, the N76 has a heavy music focus, as it's equipped with a robust music player, an FM radio, and a 3.5mm headset jack, so you can finally plug in a pair of decent-sounding headphones. What's more, the sound quality of the phone's speakers for music playback was one of the best we've heard to date.

Design
From the outside, the Nokia N76 is sexy and fun with its hot red casing (also available in black), but it's not all rosy; there are some major design flaws that detract from the overall attractiveness of this device. We'll discuss them throughout this section. Taking a page from the Motorola Razr's book, the N76 measures a tight 4.1 inches long by 2 inches wide by 0.5 inch thick, weighs just 4 ounces, and boasts a sleek profile. It's slightly on the long side, especially when open and held to the ear for phone calls, but it can still easily slip into a pants pocket.

The front cover features a 1.3-inch external screen that displays an impressive 262,000 colors at a 160x128-pixel resolution. It shows all the standard information, including time, battery life, signal strength, and caller ID, and it acts as a viewfinder for the camera. In addition, like the Nokia N75, you can use the dedicated music controls located right below the display to call up the music menu and radio, fast forward through your tracks, view song and track information, and more. It's nice that you can do this without having to open the phone. Once the backlight turns off, the screen blends into a mirrored surface that dominates the flip cover. While it looks very cool, it has quite a tendency to hold smudges and fingerprints, and you'll definitely want to take care not to scratch it.

You can control and access the N76's music functions with the dedicated buttons and external display.

You wouldn't think flipping open a phone would be a point of contention, but the Nokia N76 requires a little more work than other clamshell models we've seen to date. The flip mechanism is really stiff, and it's not easy to find a groove where you can open the phone with your thumb, so one-handed operation is quite difficult. We often just used both hands, and even then, it was a bit tricky as the surface of the phone is quite slick.

Once you do get the phone open, you're treated with a gorgeous 16 million-color, 2.4-inch internal screen with a 320x240-pixel resolution. Images pop with vibrant color, and reading messages and viewing Web pages is a delight on the sharp display. You can change the display's brightness and font size, and personalize it with various themes and wallpaper designs.

Despite looking sleek, the N76's navigation controls are somewhat hard to use.

The N76's keypad is very reminiscent of the Motorola Razr with its flat, metal buttons. In addition to the alphanumeric dialing pad, you get Nokia's standard navigation array of two soft keys, Talk and End buttons, shortcuts to the Main and Multimedia menus, an Edit key, a Clear button, and a four-way toggle with a central select key. We had no real problems dialing numbers, but ran into a bit of trouble with the other controls, particularly the four-way toggle. It's cramped, and it's very easy to press the OK button by accident since, like all the keys, it's flush with the phone's surface; the only distinguishable separation between any of the buttons is a very slight raised line. Also, like the external screen, the metal surface can get quite dirty with smudges. On the bright side, the keypad is nicely backlit so you won't have problems dialing and texting in darker environments.

The placement of the 3.5mm headphone jack and mini USB port is a major design flaw, as you can't open the phone to access any of the apps while you're plugged in.

On the left spine of the phone, you'll find a microSD expansion slot and power connector port, while there's a volume rocker, camera-activation key, and button to switch between image and video mode. The camera lens is located on the back along with a flash. The top edge of the phone holds the power button, a mini USB port, and a 3.5mm headphone jack so you can plug in Walkman-style headphones--a great addition for such a multimedia-centric phone. However, the one big problem with having this at the top of the handset is that you can't fully open the cover to access your phone book or any of the other applications. It would have been better were it located on the side or bottom of the smart phone. The same problem occurs when using the USB cable to transfer files. Another peculiarity of the Nokia N76 is the SIM card slot. It's hard enough to get the battery cover off and then the holder for your SIM card is actually a removable tray. We haven't really seen this in any other cell phones or smart phones we've tested; granted, you're not going to take out your SIM card that often, but still, take care not to lose it.

The Nokia N76 comes packaged with a number of accessories, though the contents vary by region. Our review unit came with an AC adapter, a USB cable, a wired stereo headset, a 256MB microSD card, and reference material. For more personalization options, check out our cell phone accessories, ringtones, and help page.

Features
The Nokia N76 offers a similar feature set as its Nokia N series siblings but most closely resembles the Nokia N75 with its focus on music. The N76's integrated music player supports MP3, WMA, M4A, AAC, and eAAC+ formats, as well as WMDRM and OMA DRM 2.0-protected songs. The music library categorizes tracks by artists, albums, genres, and composers; you can also create playlists right on the phone, shuffle and repeat songs, and adjust the sound with the built-in equalizer. To transfer music onto the device, simply use the included USB cable and drag and drop files onto your SD card via data transfer mode or use the Nokia PC Suite desktop software to synchronize your music library. The N76 only has about 26MB of internal memory, so make good use of the microSD expandable media. (The N76 can accept up to 2GB cards.) You can also listen to local radio stations, but you'll have to use the included headset to access the radio, since it acts as the tuner. Without the backing of a U.S. carrier, namely Cingular/AT&T, you don't get the support for the carrier's music services out of the box like you do with the N75. RealPlayer is also on board with 3GPP and MPEG4 video streaming support.

The Nokia N76 is equipped with a microSD slot on the left side that can accept cards up to 2GB.

The N76's other multimedia offering is its 2-megapixel camera. In addition to the flash with red-eye reduction and up to 20X digital zoom, the N75 gives you a wide range of customization and editing options. You get three image quality settings, six scene modes, white balance adjustment, a sequence mode for multiple shots, a self-timer, and more. There's a convenient image counter that shows you how many pictures you can take before running out of memory. The camera can also shoot MPEG-4 videos with sound at up to 15 frames per second, but your adjustment settings are more limited than in camera mode.

Overall, picture quality was OK. Images had nice, defined lines, but colors were a bit dull with a grayish overtone. Still, for a camera phone, the N76 is better than most. Video quality was impressive for a phone, as we enjoyed fairly clean pictures. That said, we encountered the same problems with the N76 as we had with the Nokia N75 when using the camera. It's awkward to take pictures using the internal display as your viewfinder. The option toolbar is aligned so you can only use it if you're holding the phone horizontally, and though you can hide the toolbar, there doesn't seem an option to switch it to portrait mode. It wouldn't be such a big deal, except it's cumbersome to have the phone fully open while capturing images since you're trying to support the extra bulk of the flip cover/internal display.

The N76's 2-megapixel camera took sharp pictures but they had a grayish overtone to them.

The phone's address book is only limited by the available memory, and the SIM card holds an additional 250 contacts. There's room in each entry for multiple phone numbers, work and home addresses, e-mail addresses, a birthday, and personal data. For caller ID purposes, you can assign each contact a photo, a group ID, and one of 39 polyphonic ringtones. As a quadband phone, the N76 offers true world roaming as well as a speakerphone, speed dial, conference calling, voice command support, and a vibrate mode.

Wireless options are a bit disappointing on the Nokia N76. Unfortunately, the N76 does not support the U.S. 3G band. There's support for Europe's HSDPA/WCDMA 2100 band, but not for the U.S. HSDPA bands, so it's EDGE or nothing. There's no integrated Wi-Fi either. You do get Bluetooth 2.0 with support for hands-free kits, wireless headsets, dial-up networking, generic object exchange, and more. However, A2DP is not among the supported profiles, so you won't be able to connect to stereo Bluetooth headsets--a letdown for such a multimedia-centric device.

The Nokia N76 runs the 3rd Edition of the S60 (Symbian) platform with Feature Pack 1, and offers a fairly intuitive and pleasant-looking interface. Most apps and utilities are neatly organized by category. For example, you'll find the phone's PIM tools, such as the Calendar, Notes, and Calculator, in the Office folder. That said, we noticed that organization of programs was inconsistent with previous Nokia models, which led to some confusion on our part. We're also disappointed that the device doesn't come preloaded with the QuickOffice app for working with Office documents, though you can download the suite to your phone. The N76 does have e-mail capabilities, though without a full QWERTY keyboard, this device will be better suited for reading e-mail than sending it. It offers synchronization with Microsoft Outlook and Lotus Notes, and supports POP3, IMAP4, and SMTP e-mail protocols. For push e-mail solutions, you have your pick of Nokia Intellisync Wireless E-mail and a number of popular third-party clients, including Good Technology, BlackBerry Connect, Seven Always-On, and Visto. There's also a built-in attachment viewer. The N76 also handles text, multimedia, and instant messaging.

Performance
We tested the quadband (GSM 850/900/1800/1900; GPRS/EDGE) Nokia N76 in San Francisco using T-Mobile service, and call quality was decent. We could hear a slight background hiss on our end, though it never really interfered with our conversations. In addition, we were able to interact with our bank's automated voice response system with no problem. Our callers didn't report any problems and added that they couldn't tell we were on a cell phone. Speakerphone quality was also good, and we had no problems pairing the phone with the Logitech Mobile Traveller Bluetooth headset.

General performance was good; the device had a fast response time as we opened various apps and tested the multimedia features. Speaking of which, we were really impressed by the sound quality of the phone's speakers as we played a variety of songs, ranging from hip-hop to classical. We enjoyed rich, full sound and there wasn't any of the tinniness that often plagues cell phone speakers. Of course, you get an even more intimate experience when you plug in a nice pair of headphones, but again, there's that problem of the placement of the headphone jack. Watching video clips was fine in short spurts, but you get the typical pixelation with action shots. As for Web browsing, well, it was on the slower side using T-Mobile's EDGE network, but then again, we've been spoiled by our experience with 3G handsets. It's really fine for occasional Net surfing.

The Nokia N76 is rated for 2.75 hours of talk time and up to 8.5 days of standby time. In our battery tests, the N76's battery lasted for 4.5 hours of talk time on a single charge. According to FCC radiation tests, the phone has a digital SAR rating of 1.04 watts per kilogram.

Nokia N95

Ever since the Nokia N95 first debuted back in September 2006, it's been one of the most anticipated and highly coveted smart phones. In fact, Nokia didn't even have plans to bring the N95 to the United States, but after the high number of requests from U.S. customers, the company finally decided to ship the hot smart phone across the pond. What's all the hubbub about, you ask? Well, let's see: it boasts a 5-megapixel camera that can also record VGA-quality video, a robust media player with a 3.5mm headphone jack, a dual-slider design, and integrated GPS, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth. Not to mention, it's a Symbian smart phone as well.

Design
Considering all the features that are packed into the Nokia N95, you'd think it would be a pretty hefty phone, but not so, my friends. The N95 measures a compact 3.8 inches long by 2.1 inches wide by 0.8 inch thick and weighs only 4.2 ounces. It feels comfortable to hold, and the soft-touch finish on the back of the device makes it easier to grip. That said, we couldn't help but think that the phone felt, well, kind of cheap. In particular, the front cover felt plasticky and rickety (more on this below). From an aesthetic standpoint, the N95 certainly falls more into the short and stocky category rather than svelte and sexy, but we think it's still a good-looking phone with its plum-and-silver color scheme.

Despite all the features that are packed into the device, the Nokia N95 is a compact and an attractive phone.

Of course, another attraction of the N95 is its innovative two-way slider design. Not only can you slide the front cover up to reveal the alphanumeric keypad, you can also slide it down to expose the media player controls. The dual functionality is nice, but we had a couple of concerns. First, the cover, which houses the screen and navigation buttons, felt loose and rattled around a bit. It just didn't feel like it was securely locked into place, thus leading to our next complaint. When putting the phone into a pants pocket or even when thrown into a bag, it was too easy to slide open the phone. There is a keypad lock, but we would prefer that the N95 just had a stronger mechanism for locking the position of the front flap.

Moving onto the display, the Nokia N95 features a gorgeous 2.6-inch QVGA TFT screen with a 16 million-color output and 320x240 pixel resolution. Be aware, however, that it isn't a touch screen. Images and text looked great, with deep color saturation and sharp definition. You can change the theme of the home screen, backlighting time, and font size. There's also an ambient light detector to adjust the backlighting depending on your environment, which helped keep the display readable in various lighting conditions. However, we noticed the N95's screen had a nasty habit of holding fingerprints and smudges, so keep some kind of wipe cloth close by. We should also note that when you slide open the phone to access the media player controls, the screen automatically switches to Landscape mode but once you close the phone, it doesn't automatically switch back. You have to open the dial pad to get back to portrait mode, which is annoying.

While the alphanumeric keypad is spacious, the navigation controls above it are slightly cramped and slick.

Beneath the display are the N95's navigation controls, which consist of two soft keys, the Talk and End buttons, shortcuts to the main menu and the multimedia menu, a Clear key, an Edit key that lets you choose the text input type, and a four-way toggle with a center select button. For the most part, the controls are easy to use, though they're a bit slick and the toggle and outer ring of buttons (see image above) could have been bigger. Still, it's an improvement over the Nokia E65's miniscule keys. The N95's numeric keypad features large, tactile buttons with bright backlighting, and they're raised above the phone's surface so it's easier to dial by feel. Unfortunately, the media player controls are less tactile and require a bit more pressure to register the command.

The dedicated media controls are a nice touch, but they're hard to press.

Since the N95 is a multimedia-centric device, Nokia smartly equipped the phone with a 3.5mm headset jack so you can plug in your favorite pair of earbuds or headphones for a better listening experience. It's located on the left side, in addition to an infrared port and the microSD expansion slot. On the right side, you will find the volume rocker, a shortcut to your photo gallery, and the camera activation button. The latter is in a position so that when you're holding the phone horizontally, it actually mimics the look and feel of a digital camera. The N95's camera lens itself (and flash) is located on the back and is guarded by a protective cover. Finally, there's a power connector and mini USB port on the bottom, and the power button on top of the handset.

Thankfully, Nokia put the microSD slot on the left spine of the N95 instead of behind the battery cover.

The U.S. version of the Nokia N95 comes packaged with an AC adapter, a USB cable, a TV-out cable, a 1GB microSD card with adapter for SD drives, a pair of earbud headphones, a headphone adapter with antenna and audio playback controls, a desktop software CD (which includes Nokia PC Suite), and reference material.

Features
It's hard to decide where to begin with the feature-packed Nokia N95, but since imaging is one of its biggest draws, we'll start there. The N95 is equipped with an impressive 5-megapixel camera--unheard of in the cell phone and smart phone world--with a Carl Zeiss Vario-Tessar lens. (Carl Zeiss was an optician who first started manufacturing lenses for microscopes and then used his expertise for camera lenses.) The breadth of customization and editing options available on this phone is astounding--almost like an actual digital camera. You can choose from seven shooting modes, ranging from close-up to sports to night portrait, and five quality settings. You can adjust the brightness, contrast, white balance, color tone, ISO light sensitivity, and exposure value to get the best picture possible. The flash even has a red-eye reduction option. Plus, there's also a self-timer and a sequence mode for multiple shots.

The Nokia N95 is equipped with an impressive 5-megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss lens and flash.

The N95 can record video at a maximum VGA resolution (640x480) at 30 frames per second, though you also have a choice of four other quality settings. The N95 can record video with sound in MP4 or 3GP (for multimedia messages) format, and length is only limited by the available memory. There's a handy timer that shows you how much video time you have based on the memory and the quality setting (this feature is available in camera mode as well). Editing options are a little more limited in video mode; you only get two shooting modes (automatic and night) and white balance and color tone settings. In addition, there's a video stabilization feature to help reduce camera shake as you're recording video.

The N95's camera produced some impressive photos with rich colors and sharp definition.

We were impressed by the quality of photos and videos the N95 produced, as one would hope with a 5-megapixel lens. Pictures boasted vibrant colors and sharp lines and edges, and unlike some smart phones, the N95 didn't require you to have a super steady hand to get a clear shot. The camera phone also did a decent job with nighttime pictures, though they were still pretty dim. Video quality was also good. There wasn't any of that graininess that sometimes plagues videos shot by camera phones. We also wanted to mention the camera's interface, as we found it extremely easy to use and change camera settings, which can sometimes be challenging when you don't have a touch screen.

Once you're done, you can touch up your videos and photos with the included image editors. For example, you can add clip art and reduce red eye on still images, or cut audio for videos. There's about 150MB of internal memory for saving your photos and videos to the phone, but we recommend saving them onto a microSD card, especially since the N95 can support up to 2GB expandable media. And sharing your memories is also easy with the ability to view them as a slide show, print them via Nokia's Xpress Solutions, upload them to the Web or Nokia's Lifeblog app, or transfer them to other devices. Also, Nokia includes video-out cables so you can hook up your N95 to your TV to view all your media on the big screen.

As a multimedia computer, the Nokia N95 isn't limited to just pictures and video. There's also an integrated music player that supports MP3, WMA, W4A, AAC, AAC+, and eAAC+ files, as well as OMA DRM 2.0- and WMDRM-protected songs. The music library categorizes tracks by artists, albums, genres, and composers; you can also create playlists right on the phone and adjust the sound with the built-in equalizer. The N95 also has an FM radio, though you'll have to use the included headset to access the radio, since it acts as the tuner. RealPlayer is also onboard with 3GPP and MPEG-4 video streaming support. Again, we applaud the decision to incorporate a 3.5mm headphone jack, which goes a long way in making the multimedia experience that much better.

The Nokia N95 has a 3.5mm headset jack that accepts Walkman-style headphones for a better listening experience.

On top of all that, Nokia has also packed a GPS receiver into the N95, along with a mapping application. With it, you can get color maps, route planning, and a healthy points-of- interest database. There's also a trip computer that shows you information about the total distance, time, average speed, and so forth. However, to get any kind of turn-by-turn directions, you'll have to download an upgrade to the device that costs an additional $91.93 for a one-year license or $11.81 for a month. The N95's GPS performance was satisfactory, although it took quite a while for the unit to get a satellite fix. Once connected though, it did a good job of tracking our position and gave accurate route calculations.

Aside from the GPS radio, other wireless options on the Nokia N95 include integrated Bluetooth 2.0, Wi-Fi, and an infrared port. The smart phone supports a number of Bluetooth profiles, including wireless headsets, hands-free kits, wireless keyboards, and A2DP for Bluetooth stereo headsets. As far as Wi-Fi, the N95 is compatible with 802.11b/g standards; in addition, there's support for Universal Plug and Play, which lets you use a Wi-Fi connection to hook up with a compatible PC, printer, or home entertainment system, but the number of UPnP devices is limited at the moment. The N95 was able to find and connect to our test access point, and we were able to surf the Net within minutes, using Nokia's excellent Web browser. Now, here's the bad news: the N95 does not work on the U.S. 3G networks. There's support for Europe's HSDPA/WCDMA 2100 band, but not for the U.S. HSDPA bands, so we're left with just regular 'ol EDGE speeds. Granted, we've been a bit spoiled after getting a taste for 3G, but for such a high-end and advanced phone as the N95, 3G support would have been huge.

While all the aforementioned features are great, you can't forget that the Nokia N95 is, first and foremost, a phone. The N95 includes a speakerphone, speed dial, conference calling, voice-command support, a vibrate mode, and text and multimedia messaging. Unfortunately, the video calling feature found on the European version of the N95 is not supported here in the United States. The phone's address book is only limited by the available memory, and the SIM card holds an additional 250 contacts. There's room in each entry for multiple phone numbers, work and home addresses, e-mail addresses, birthday, and more vitals. For caller ID purposes, you can assign each contact a photo, one of 44 ringtones, or a group ID.

Last but not least, the N95 runs the third edition of the S60 platform on the Symbian operating system for your productivity needs. An app called QuickOffice lets you view Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents, and it optimizes the pages for the phone's screen, so you don't have to scroll all over the place to read text. There are some nice shortcuts to jump to the top or bottom of the page to reduce the up-and-down scrolling, and there's also a search function. However, if you want any editing capabilities, you'll have to upgrade the preloaded copy of QuickOffice. For messaging, the N95 supports IMAP4, POP3, and SMTP e-mail accounts and comes with a full attachment viewer. The N95 does support a number of push e-mail solutions, as well as Microsoft Exchange Server synchronization, but this is dependent upon your service provider (for example, Cingular offers Cingular Express) and company's e-mail solution, so check with your IT department if you have any questions.

There's a handy wizard when you first power up the device to help you configure your e-mail, and we used it to easily set up our SBC Global account. Other productivity apps and PIM tools include Adobe Reader, a Zip Manager, a calculator, a notepad, a measurement converter, a clock, and a voice recorder.

Performance
We tested the quadband (GSM 850/900/1800/1900; EDGE/GPRS) Nokia N95 in San Francisco using T-Mobile and Cingular service, and in general, call quality was good. On our end, there was a slight background hiss but nothing too distracting that we couldn't carry on a conversation. Our friends, on the other hand, reported clear and excellent audio quality and said it sounded like we were on a landline. They were really impressed that such good sound was coming from a cell phone. Call quality didn't diminish when we activated the speakerphone. We also had no problems pairing the N95 with the Logitech Mobile Traveller Bluetooth headset.

In terms of general performance, the N95 was fairly sluggish. There was a delay in response time whether we were using the camera, launching the media player, opening documents, or just calling up the multimedia menu. All in all, it's just a matter of a few seconds, but long enough to be noticeable and a bit annoying. The Web browsing experience was good, as pages loaded fairly quickly (faster using Wi-Fi than cellular), and we've always been huge fans of the Nokia Web browser.

Multimedia is the N95's forte, as evidenced by the features and performance. Music playback through the phone's speakers was better than anything we've heard from recent smart phones. It still lacks that deep bass, but we're impressed nonetheless. We also watched a couple of MP4 video clips using RealPlayer, and the video quality was decent with some expected pixilation. However, the playback was smooth and audio and video were always synchronized.

The Nokia N95 is rated for four hours of talk time and up to nine days of standby time. In our battery tests, we were able to get eight hours of talk time on a single charge. While the talk time battery life was impressive, the standby time was not, as all the wireless radios and multimedia features take a toll on the device. After just one day of using the N95 in its various capacities--media player, phone, GPS, mobile Web browser--the battery was drained down to just one bar, so keep your travel charger handy. According to FCC radiation tests, the N95 has a digital SAR rating of 0.38 watts per kilogram.