Author Archive: Emma Samuel

Nokia E52 Review

You may have seen the Nokia E55 review that I did a short time ago. As Matt mentioned, I was really impressed with it. I now have the E52 to play with and the obvious difference I can see is that it has a good old phone keypad rather than a compact qwerty one. I’ll quickly fly through the features of this Nokia E52 and point out and changes that I come across, and please excuse my copying and pasting of some text from the E55 review but the handset are very similar!

The Nokia E52

What’s in the box?

• Nokia E52 handset
• Nokia Charger AC-10
• Nokia Charger Adapter CA-146C
• Nokia Battery BP-4L (1500mAh)
• Nokia Stereo headset HS-48
• Nokia Connectivity Cable (CA-101) supports charging
• 1 GB microSD card inside device
• User Guide
• Nokia PC Suite (v7.1.26) in microSD card

For more information you can check out Matt’s Nokia E55 unboxing video

Nokia E52 Specification:

• Dimensions: 116 x 49 x 9.9mm
• Weight: 98g
• Battery:
  – Talk Time: 8 hrs
  – Standby Time: 672 hrs
  – Capacity: 1500 mAh
• Display: 240 x 320 pixels/2.4 inch
• Network:
  – GSM: 850/900/1800/1900 (Quad-Band)
  – WCDMA: 900/2100 (Dual-Band)
• Camera: 3.2 mega-pixels, LED Flash
• FM Stereo Radio (RDS)
• Messaging: SMS / MMS (with video) . E-mail (POP3, SMTP, IMAP4, MS Exchange)
• Memory: 60MB (internal) / microSDHC (external)
• microUSB
• Nokia 3.5mm AV connector
• Bluetooth (2.0)
• Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11g)
• AGPS
• Nokia Maps
• Accelerometer
• Nokia Web Browser
• Flash Lite 3.0
• Ovi Support

General:

Front – You can see the 2.4 inch QVGA screen (240×320 pixels) and keypad

Nokia E52 – front view

Keypad – Starting from the top.are the left and right soft keys. Below these keys are the home, calendar, messaging and back button shortcut keys. Next are the send/receive (or call/hang up) buttons.

In the middle of this is the D-pad for navigation through the phone. In the centre of this is the select button. Finally, you can see phone keypad

Nokia E52 – keypad view

Top – There is a 3.5mm headphone/handsfree connection and power button on the top of the phone.

Nokia E52 – top view

Right – From the left you can see the dedicated camera button, then there is the up/down rocker buttons with a voice control button placed between them.

Nokia E52 – right side view

Left – There isn’t much on the left side except for the sync/charge connection.

Nokia E52 – left side view

Back – The battery, sim card and microSD card are housed under the back cover. You can also see the 3.2MP camera and flash. Under this is the loud speaker.

Nokia E52 – back view

Highlights:

• Stylish design
• Light weight
• Good in-call sound quality
• Great battery life
• Easier messaging?

Lowlights:

• Camera quality is disappointing

Review:

The Nokia E52 is a stylish phone. It may seem a bit too slim for some but I quite like this.

As expected, the screen display is bright and sharp just like the E55. I’m guessing that it can be a bit difficult sometimes to view the screen in bright sunlight but during the couple of weeks that I’ve had the phone it’s been constant rain making the daylight hours darker and shorter than usual!

The E52 has the same Symbian S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2 OS as the E55. The home screen can be switched between and business and personal profile/mode so you can set up shortcuts on the home screen to suit. Then you can just toggle between the two modes. The home screen can look quite cluttered. Of course Nokia have taken this into account. So, you can select a basic theme which will provide you with a clean home screen.

The same N-Gage support is provided which means you can access a wide variety of games. It’s still aimed at business users too and all of the useful business applications such as Nokia’s Ovi maps, FM radio, video player, Calendar, etc. are also there to use.

Connectivity offers 3G, WIFI, GPS, Bluetooth and USB connections.
Emailing and messaging seems pretty straightforward. If you use Gmail all you have to do is enter your Gmail user name and password and the phone does the rest for you. The email client also supports other personal and corporate email types such as, IBM Lotus Notes Traveller, Microsoft Exchange, Yahoo! mail, etc.

As you may have read,  really didn’t get to grips with the compact qwerty keypad on the E55 so there’s no surprise that I found this phone keypad on the E52 much easier to use. But as always, it boils down to personal preference.

The camera is just like the E55 as well. Not great. There is a flash but it doesn’t really do the camera any favours as you can still only take a decent picture in good lighting. The E52 is designed for business users though so you can really expect the camera to be a selling point for the phone.

The 3.5mm headphone socket means that you can use your own headphones when listening to any media – always a plus for me as I always like to use my own favourite earphones. I’m just picky!

In-call sound quality is quite good. It’s active noise reduction helps to eliminate background noise. I made and received a few calls on this phone and I’ve no complaints on the call quality. The speaker phone is loud and clear enough for calls and of course can be used to listen to media though.

Conclusion:

I guess after all that the only difference was the keypad!

The Nokia E52 is a slim, lightweight and stylish looking phone. Geared towards business men and women, it’s packed with features and applications to keep you up to date and in the loop with everything that’s going on.

Not one to buy if you are after a camera phone but otherwise a very nice phone to use.

Reviewed by: Emma

LG GD510 POP Review

The LG Pop has followed today’s common market theme of being a touch screen phone. There is a big difference here though, and that’s the price. It’s much more affordable than other touch screen phones.

The LG GD510 Pop

What’s in the box?

• LG GD510 handset
• Battery (Li-ion 3.7V)
• USB cable (proprietary connection to the handset)
• Mains charger (USB cable used)
• Stereo headset/handsfree (proprietary USB connection)
• User guide

For more information you can check out Matt’s LG GD510 Pop unboxing video

LG GD510 Pop specification:

• Display: TFT touchscreen 240 x 400 pixels – 3.0 inches
• Memory: 42MB internal storage
• Card slot: up to 8GB
• Dimensions: 97.8 x 49.5 x 11.2 mm
• Weight: 87g
• 2G: GSM 900 / 1800 / 1900
• Camera: 3.15 MP, 2048×1536 pixels
• Radio: Stereo FM radio with RDS
• Bluetooth: v2.0 with A2DP
• USB: microUSB

General:

Front – 3″ touch screen display and multi-function button

LG GD510 Pop – Front view

Top – Power button and lanyard loop

LG GD510 Pop – Top view

Left – Up/down rocker button for volume and USB socket

LG GD510 Pop – Left side view

Right – Camera button (also used as a quick app button)

LG GD510 Pop – Right side view

Back – 3MP camera (the battery, sim card and memory card are located under the back cover)

LG GD510 Pop – Back view

Highlights:

• Affordable price
• Compact
• Lightweight
• Quite simple to use
• Optional solar panel back
• Good battery life

Lowlights:

• Touch screen not very sensitive
• No camera flash
• No 3G
• No Wi-Fi
• Too small? (or lack of stylus)

Review

My first impressions of the LG Pop GD510 were quite mixed. It looks quite nice. It is pleasing to the eye, compact, and pretty light weight. But, at the same time it looks quite plastic. It looks nicer than the LG Cookie mind you.

The size of it really stands out. Very slim, and not much bigger than a credit card. This can be either a good or bad aspect. I think people with relatively big hands may find this phone a bit fiddly.

LG GD510 Pop

One great feature of the LG GD510 Pop is the optional solar panel battery/cover (purchased separately). I didn’t have this to try out but I think the concept is a good one.

There is a downside to this though. The panel is of course on the back of the phone. So in order to charge the battery using the panel you have to place the phone screen side down so this would increase the chance of scuffing or scratching the screen.

LG GD510 Pop with solar panel

I didn’t seem to warm to the touch screen. It didn’t seem to be sensitive enough. Even a bit temperamental at times. When scrolling it seemed that an awful lot of pressure was required whilst dragging your finger across the screen. The screen also feels soft. There’s a slight bit of give when pressing on the screen which makes it feel a bit flimsy. This is very noticeable if you use a phone like the IPhone, or HTC Hero. I think that if you haven’t used a touch screen phone before this you won’t mind these aspects of the Pop’s touch screen.

The display is ok. It’s clear and bright enough but not anything special. I remember commenting on the LG Cookie’s display which was very good. So, when it comes to the Pop, I feel a bit disappointed that LG didn’t keep the high quality screen.

There are three desktops on the home screen. You just slide your finger across the screen to get to each one. You can place widgets, contact and shortcuts on the desktops which comes in handy for your most used features.

The menu looks a bit busy at first but is actually quite organised and very straight forward. The items in the menu are set in categories. Each line of categories can be scrolled through separately. This isn’t necessarily helpful in any way but it’s a nice touch. If you don’t like this slide menu you can select a tabbed layout which has fixed icons.

The built in accelerometer is quite impressive. The response time when switching to phone from portrait to landscape mode (by turning the handset) is extremely quick. I must admit that I didn’t expect this at all.

Texting is very simple in portrait mode using the T9 setting and the text is very big! Makes life easy for anyone who’s sight isn’t perfect! I found that you could type away quite quickly without any problems. However, you can also choose a qwerty keypad. This is a nightmare to use! The screen is just a bit to small for this, and the buttons on this qwerty keypad are very small. LG really could have not bothered having this feature on the phone, or at least provided a stylus.

The LG GD510 Pop has good call quality. The sound is clear and background noise doesn’t cause any problems, and the people I spoke to using this phone said that they could hear me clearly. The dial pad is brought up on the screen with on click of a shortcut screen that is on the home screen icon bar (along with other main buttons such as your contacts, messaging and menu)

You can see in the menu picture a range of applications and tools. There are of course more hidden away which you can see if you scroll/slide though the menu. Applications such as the browser, Yahoo search, email, etc are available and great for those wanting a slide phone that has all these features for an affordable price. The huge let down here is that the GD510 Pop does not have 3G or Wi-Fi capabilities. If you’re going to use these applications you’ll need to be patient because it is pretty slow! What a disappointment.

The music player is simple to use and looks pleasing to the eye. Sound quality through the stereo headphones is average (but expected for standard boxed headphones).

The handset supports a microSD card upto 8GB which means you can fit shed loads of music (or what ever else you want) onto the phone. But, there is no 3.5mm jack which is a shame as you can make the most of the music player by using your own headphones. I’m sure it’s not just me who like to do that. The USB socket on the side is used for both the headset connection and for charging the phone. Of course, this means that you can have both plugged in at the same time.

The camera is unfortunately very disappointing. It’s a 3MP camera with no auto-focus or flash. As always, in good lighting you can take a pretty decent picture. But, as there is no flash, as soon as the light goes the camera is next to useless.

You can take videos with the camera. The frameset is very low though which means that you won’t be getting the best of footage from the Pop.

One thing that did impress me was the incredible battery life. From being fully charged it lasted almost three days before I had to charge it again.

Conclusion:

The LG GD510 Pop is a nice looking and adequate touch screen phone for the price. It may be too small for some but looks quite stylish because of its size.

The touch screen is ok if it’s your first touchscreen phone but I wouldn’t recommended it if you been used to a high quality and sensitive touch screen as you will be pretty disappointed or at least frustrated!

The optional solar panel for charging the phone is a great idea and definitely fits in with the energy saving focus that we have, and let’s face it, it will also save on your electricity bill in the long run.

Over all, it’s not even near the standards of many of the touch screens on the market but for a low-cost and entry level touch screen phone the LG GD510 Pop is well worth considering.

Reviewed by: Emma

Nokia 3720 Classic Review

With all the latest fancy smartphones these days that do just about everything except for washing the dishes, we need to now and again come back down to earth and check out the more basic/entry-level phones.

Nokia has provided us with their 3720 Classic. A stylish yet simple looking phone that should do the basics such as call and text, and as Matt mentioned in the unboxing video into, it is built to be robust and is water, dust and shock resistant with an IP54 rating.

The Nokia 3720 Classic

What’s in the box?

• Nokia 3720 Classic handset
• Battery (BL-5CT)
• Headset/handsfree
• Mains charger
• Manual

For more information you can check out Matt’s Nokia 3720 Classic unboxing video

Nokia 3720 Classic specification:

• Dimensions: 112 x 51 x 15.4mm
• Weight: 94g
• Battery: Talk Time: 7 hrs / Standby Time: 450 hrs
• Display: 320 x 240 pixels/2.2"
• Network: 2G: 900/1800/1900 (Tri-Band)
• Camera: 2 mega-pixels (auto-focus)
• Video: 11fps Video Recording (QCIF)
• Music: Supported formats: MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+ & WMA / FM Stereo Radio (RDS)
• Messaging: – SMS – MMS (with video) – E-mail (POP3, SMTP, IMAP4) – Instant Messaging (MSN)
• Memory: 20MB (internal) / microSDHC (external)
• Connectivity: microUSB / Bluetooth (2.0)
• Navigation: Nokia Maps
• Features: Water, Dust & Shock resistant
• Opera Mini Web Browser
• Flash Lite 2.0 Support

General:

Front – First, there is the 2.2″ screen (320×240 pixels). Below this are the left and right soft keys and then the call and end buttons (the ‘end’ button is also the ‘Power . In the middle is a typical d-pad for navigation through menus and the select button in the middle of this. Lastly, the is a basic phone keypad.

Nokia 3720 Classic – front view

Left-hand side – There is absolutely nothing on the left side of the phone. This keep the phone as simple as it was designed to be.

Nokia 3720 Classic – left-hand side view

Right-hand side – Again, very simple. The up/down rocker button can be seen here, and near the bottom of the handset is the loop hole for attaching a wrist strap/lanyard.

Nokia 3720 Classic – right-hand side view

Bottom – The charger socket is located here. The rubber cover encases microUSB and headphone sockets.

Nokia 3720 Classic – bottom view

Back – The back cover is secured with a screw which can be loosened with a small coin. The microSD card, sim card and battery are located under this cover. You can also see the speaker grill, camera (2MP) and flash.

Nokia 3720 Classic – back view

Highlights:

• Simple stylish design
• Robust build (water, dust and shock resistant)
• Clear display
• Flash for the camera
• Good call sound quality

Lowlights:

• Quite complicated for an entry level phone
• Camera quality is quite poor
• No dedicated camera button
• USB cable not provided in box
• No 3G

Review:

The Nokia 3720 Classic is one of Nokia’s entry level/basic mobile phones. The idea is that it is a simple to use, plain-looking mobile phone that does the basic things that you would want a phone for.

Nokia have done well with the design of the 3720. Some of the entry level phones that are on the market look quite dated, but this one is actually quite stylish. What I really noticed what the solid and robust feel to it. It gives the impression that it could definitely stand up to a bit of rough handling! Made to be water, dust and shock resistant, it has secure covers and rubber seals in order to keep out the elements.

To look at this phone objectively I took the approach of keeping a family member in mind who doesn’t really use their mobile phone except for the odd text or phone call.

The  Nokia 3720 Classic

I was nicely surprised with the display. It’s bright and clear – even in bright sunlight.

The Nokia 3720 comes with the Series 40 6th edition user interface. This is where I think Nokia could have made a change. This user interface is one that has become familiar with Nokia phone users. It looks great, and for the smartphone users out there it seems very simple to use. But, there are people out there looking for an entry level phone. People who have rarely used a mobile phone or haven’t used one at all. Taking this into account the 3720 is actually quite complex. I actually think that it has the potential to put people off from choosing this as their first phone.

For me, texting on this phone was great. The large keys and clear display make it a very easy task. Again, I think that many of the options when texting can over complicate things and make a beginner texter want to just call the person they want to get in contact with or not bother at all!

The main menu can be viewed in either a grid mode or list mode and is quite straight forward. You can access the usual applications and tools here such as messaging, contacts, media, calendar, etc.

You are also provided with the Ovi store, Opera web browser, email and instant messaging, which means the 3720 Classic offers many ways to keep up to date with applications and your social life. This could be seen as a bit of a waste though as people looking for a very basic phone would most likely steer clear of the more technical applications.

One thing I feel I should mention here is that web browsing on this phone is not user friendly in the slightest. The smaller screen and lack of capability to view in landscape mode make web pages a pain to read and navigate through. The rendering of the pages seems to take an age as well.

The camera is only a 2MP camera. Not the most advanced compared to many camera phones, but you can take pretty good pictures when the light is right. Just don’t expect to be able to enlarge the photo without loosing some of the quality. The fixed focus means that photos taken with the camera are very average looking – but if a camera phone is what you are looking for I guess you would buy a camera phone! In saying that, if you have any pictures that you copy onto the phone from your pc, viewing them on the 3720 is quite good. The clear and bright display really does the phone justice here.

The music player is very standard and does the trick. Straight forward, and I would think that it would be quite easy to get used to for a new mobile phone owner.

The audio quality for music playback using the loudspeaker is not brilliant but is good enough. The earphones that are packed with the phone are very average.

There are a few pre-installed games on the phone – great for killing time on the train.

Connectivity on the 3720 includes GPRS/EDGE, Bluetooth and USB. Not a huge range but it keeps the phone simple.

Nokia have stated on their site that the 3720 is “resistant against dust, splashes, drops and shocks”. Now, I was a bit dubious about trying anything here and handing Matt back a dusty, scratched and possibly soggy phone – so, I had a good look on the web. It’s amazing what people have tried! From light splashes of water to submersing the handset in a glass of beer, and from a short drop onto the floor to running over it with a car!! (Please do not try this at home!) Well, the result seems to be a pretty hardy phone!

As I’ve mentioned a few times, this has been designed to be an entry level phone so I can’t forget to mention the main function – phone calls!

The sound quality is very good on the Nokia 3720. People that I called when using this phone commented on the clarity as there seemed to be hardly any background noise even when I was walking about in a noisy shopping centre. The reception seems to hold well with this phone too. I know it depends some what on the general reception in your area but it performed great compared to other phones that I have tried out. The speaker phone worked well too. The sound came through loud and clear.

Conclusion:

It’s a nice change to have a look at an entry level mobile phone as all you really see these days is the smartphone and touchscreen phone market battle.

Although I like my fancy phones with all of the bells and whistles I found myself really liking this phone. It it nice to hold and robust enough to make you not worry about dropping it.

I did find myself looking at a few apps thinking that some of the features could really confuse an absolute mobile phone newbie. But, over all, this is a good entry level phone from Nokia.

Reviewed by: Emma