Nokia 701

Overview

Nokia 701 Ensures Smooth Operation

Misc

Design

Camera

Shades

Sibling of the Nokia 600 and 700 models, the Nokia 701 is claimed by Nokia to have ‘the brightest screen in the world’ – a bold claim in an age of super-AMOLED smartphones. Let’s take a closer look at Nokia’s latest offering.

Design and Build Quality of Nokia 701

While the 701 doesn’t have the most exciting design yet seen from Nokia, it has plenty of positive qualities. Pitched as the most up-market of the three phones, its design is heavily indebted to the Nokia C7 and it does look lightly outdated. Available in silver, violet, steel and white, it’s a strong, sturdy build, and certainly not the heaviest smartphone around at 131g, although at 11mm it’s pretty thick. The main controls are beneath the screen: a Menu key and the two Call keys. The display is intended to be the phone’s biggest selling point, and it doesn’t disappoint. Protected by Gorilla Glass to make it scratch-resistant, the 3.5” IPS capacitive LCD touchscreen displays at 360x640 resolution. Its ClearBlack technology makes even the darkest visuals deep and vivid and give the phone outstanding performance even in bright sunlight.

User Interface and Comfort to Use

The 701, like the 700, runs the Symbian Belle OS, upgradable to Symbian’s Belle FP1. This performs nicely on the phone’s 1GHz ARM11 processor, with quick transitions and load times. Symbian Belle comes with its standard 6 home screens (an upgrade of the 3 in Anna), as well as live widgets of varying sizes, drop-down task bar and menus. Home screens can be customized with shortcuts, and each one features 3 buttons – home screen settings, menu and calls. The interface has done away with endless sub-folders in favor of a flat main menu, which is far less confusing but does require extensive scrolling and can get crowded. Overall, it’s a clean and clear interface that runs smoothly on the phone’s capable processor.

Telephony and Phonebook of Nokia 701

The Contacts app is a single tap away on the home screen, and it offers a capable phonebook that readily syncs with an Exchange account. Contacts are ordered by first or last name and can be easily edited and grouped. It features social network integration with Twitter and Facebook, and the Social app manages info across the platforms well. Calls on the 701 are solid and rarely drop. The additional mic for noise-cancellation does a good job of removing distortion, although sound quality overall is only average. Smart dialing and voice dialing are available, and the proximity sensor disables key presses during calls – a nice addition. The phone also includes a secondary front-facing VGA camera for video calling.

Messaging and Emails

The phone supports the usual spectrum of messaging formats: MMS, SMS, IM Email and Push Mail. It should meet the needs of almost all users, managing messages in one universal inbox with a shared editor. Setting up accounts is quick and easy, with a few manual settings needed for Active Sync, and the phone readily manages multiple accounts. On the small screen, the portrait QWERTY keyboard is a bit too cramped, but with the aid of text prediction, it is readily usable.

Gallery, Photo Viewer and Video Player

With 8GB of internal memory, the 701 is generous to media-lovers, particularly as this can be boosted to 40GB using a 32GB disc in the microSD card slot. The photo viewer of the 701 has been redesigned and the result is pleasing: a smart grid display with smooth scrolling and easy sharing with social networks. The video player is impressive, although it lacks support for DTS/AC3, and videos display beautifully on the screen, although sound lags occur frequently.

Nokia 701 Music Player and FM Radio

The phone’s music player is underwhelming: despite the new Cover Flow display, it’s hardly different to that of Symbian3. It can be minimized to run in the background, and the equalizer gives a reasonable audio quality, although loudness levels are distinctly average. The phone also features a FM transmitter and a FM radio with RDS support and auto-scanning.

Still Camera and Image Quality of Nokia 701

The phone features an 8MP camera with a dual-LED flash and fixed focus, and is capable of shooting stills at 3264x2448 pixels. It’s an Extended Depth of Field camera (EDoF), which gives vastly improved results over other 8MP offerings. It includes face-recognition and geo-tagging features, which are nice additions, and the raised shutter button is easier to locate for fast snaps. Photo quality is good, with natural-looking colors and strong contrast.

Video Camera and Video Quality

The 701 shoots video at 720p resolution and a frame-rate of 30fps, and records with stereo sound. The video quality is, like the camera, very good: thanks to EDoF the picture is always well focused, and the dual flash adapts well to changing light levels, although useless at nighttime. The mono loudspeaker has a good tone and works well.

Connectivity Options of Nokia 701

The 701 supports quad-band GSM, HSUPA (5.76 MBps) and HSDPA (14.4 MBps) 3G, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 3.0. It comes with NFC support, lauded by mobile phone companies as the future for smartphones. Disappointingly, there’s no HDMI port for connecting to a widescreen TV.

Organiser and Other Utility Tools

The phone’s Calendar includes 4 different modes and can sync with multiple accounts, each color-coded to make the display easy to read. A significant omission for a smartphone of this kind is any sort of office document editing support – users are forced to purchase an upgrade to get this kind of capability on the 701. The rest of the organizer package is good, particularly the classic Notes app.

Web Browser and Applications of Nokia 701

The browser interface shows signs of improvement. The Tabs shortcut makes navigation easier, and the fixed shortcuts reduce the number of clicks needed. Text reflow support makes reading a pleasant experience. Unfortunately, the phone’s browser lacks full Flash support, opting instead for Flash Lite. Pre-loaded with apps for Facebook, Twitter and other useful software, users can also boost the phone’s capabilities with apps from the Nokia Ovi store, although it’s a poor offering compared to Android Market.

Google Maps and GPS

Ovi Maps is a great Google competitor, and includes free voice-guided sat nav for life. The smooth, user-friendly interface includes many great features and is easily customizable. The GPS locates the phone quickly and responsively.

Value for money

Positioned in the mid to upper range, the 701 feels solid, offers great specs and plenty of battery life, and has impressive visuals, making it a good buy at this price.

Verdict of Nokia 701

Despite a handful of flaws, the 701 is the best of the three phones in this series, with nicely integrated hardware and software – and, of course, a beautiful screen.