Nokia 7230

The Nokia 7230 is a compact slider with stunning looks. Rounded edges and a sleek finish make this Series 40 device easy on they eye at a price that’s even easier on the pocket. It doesn’t do badly on the feature front either whilst the 2.4-inch screen makes the most of the available space.

Size and Weight :

This is a fairly elegant phone. Thanks to its slider format, its front is kept clutter-free and the chrome, gun metal and black colour scheme is simple but effective. Slide it open and a white-on-black keypad is revealed, which again is plain but generally attractive. Closed, the phone measures 98 x 48 x 14.8mm so it’s a fair bit shorter but noticeably fatter than your basic candybar phone – something that's to be expected for a slider, of course. With it open, the phone's length increases to a sizeable 127mm.

Network and connectivity:

The Nokia 7230 is a phone supporting EGSM 850/900/1800/1900 and WCDMA 900/1900/2100 (or WCDMA 850/1900/2100 for some regions). It also supports 2G Network (GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900), 3G Network (UMTS 900 / 2100 / 1900). It also supports GPRS (Class 32, 100 kbps), EDGE (Class 32, 296 kbits), Bluetooth (v2.1 with A2DP), USB (v2.0 microUSB).

Camera and Video:

This shoots stills to a resolution of 3.2 megapixels, which is very much an entry level specification. You can choose to upload a photo to the Web direct from the camera. If you’ve shot a still at the top resolution there is quite a wait while the handset prepares it for over the air transmission, and when that’s done your only choice is to share it via Ovi. You can get photos onto other sites, such as Flickr, but you need to fiddle around and find the app, log in to the site, then upload. The same goes for using Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube. There's no camera light and the video recording capabilities are pretty average.

Memory and Display:

Memory is of the micro SD variety – the device comes with a 2GB card – and the phonebook is good for a little-miss-popular 2,000 entries. Out of the box our review handset had 14MB of internal memory free Sadly the card slot is under the battery cover, so you have to power the handset down to do card swapping. It has a 2.4 inches (240 x 320 pixels) display. Display type TFT, which can show 256K colors.

Entertainment Features :

Apps for Nokia 7230 along with Opera Mini for Web browsing, the Ovi Store and a few other bits like a clothing size converter are hidden away in a Collections folder, itself in an Extras folder, which is in the Applications folder you see on the main menu. It is a bit of a Russian dolls approach to organising apps. Music playback is catered for of course, and Nokia has not only built a 3.5mm headset jack into the casing so you can ditch the provided earphones in favour of your own favourites but also put this on the top edge, so that a connected headset does not snag the pocket. The features of this phone are Browser-WAP 2.0/xHTML, HTML, Radio-Stereo FM radio with RDS, Games-Snake III, Bounce II, Sudoku II, Rally Start + downloadable, Java-MIDP 2.1. The music player supports MP3/eAAC+/WAV/WMA & the video player supports MP4/H.263/H.264/WMV. It will be available in Graphite, Hot Pink color.

This is a straightforward phone that should be good enough for most people when it comes to mobile Internet, music playback and basic photography.. as well as making phone calls. It's a good looking handset too, and given all of these features we think that it should appeal to both prepay and budget contract customers.