Nokia 7210 Supernova review

Back in October we reviewed the Nokia 6650, a clamshell handset which though capable seemed the very antithesis of a traditional Nokia mobile phone. Had the company turned a corner and broken from its roots in the high volume candybar market? Don't be silly, with the 7210 Supernova we are safely back on familiar ground.

As the entry level model in its Supernova range, the 7210 was designed to be a simple, fun model with funky styling appealing to fans of fashion on a budget. How much of a budget? Well Nokia is serving up the 7210 on prepay for just €120 (£107 in these days of scary exchange rates) and it is free on even the smallest of contracts. So the premise is simple, but does it live up to the task?

In short yes - but only if you keep your expectations strongly in check. If ever there was handset that surmised that old Ronseal saying 'It does exactly what it says on the tin', then this is it. With this in mind, the build quality is perfectly fine. The 7210 Supernova is rather swamped by cheap feeling plastics but there are a wide range of colours available while bright accents which add some swagger and the strong flat keys and solid four way rocker is vintage Nokia.

As is the OS which is the standard S40 affair with large icons and a layout the vast majority of the global population could navigate in their sleep. That said, the 2-inch QVGA display is sharp and the colours surprisingly vivid while the addition of Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP and an FM tuner are nice touches for music fans.

The multimedia player does a job too with MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+ and WMA support plus Mpeg4 for video though it loses points for the inexplicable choice of a 2.5mm headphone jack. Flickr uploading is offered too for anyone with enough patience to perform such a task over the 7210's tribrand connectivity. 30MB internal memory won't help your cause either, but a microSD expansion slot is included - even if it only plays nicely with cards of up to 2GB.

For the record, wildly optimistic additions like 3G, GPS and WiFi would prove just that and the two-megapixel camera lacks both autofocus and any form of flash and you won't get decent results in anything but optimal lighting conditions. At just 10 frames per second I'd also advise using the integrated video recorder for well, much at all really.

That said to gripe too long about the previous two paragraphs - as is so often the case - would be to miss the point of the 7210. It sets out to fulfill a basic purpose and look good doing it. What's more at just 106x45x10.6mm and 70g it is impossibly light and there were several times when we genuinely thought we had forgotten to take the phone with us when in fact it was simply nestled in a different pocket.

A genuine complaint? Yes there is one and that is the rather paltry and penny pinching 860mAh battery Nokia has strapped to the 7210 because despite its lack of grunt or high end features you'll get no more than two hours of continuous talk time before it needs a charge.

Now normally we don't get the time to fully test out the extended talk time on most modern mobile phones (would that we had five hours to witter away continuously) but in the case of the 7210 an evening spent catching up with many too-often ignored friends and family members did indeed find the handset giving out a warning beep just shy of the two hour mark. In this instance it conveniently got us out of a worrying conversation about farming but in general use it's not great. So chatterboxes beware.