Here is a review to the very popular Nokia 3250!

Nokia 3250
Features of the Nokia 3250 include:

* Smartphone (Series 60 Symbian operating system)
* 2 megapixel camera with 4x digital zoom
* Video camera (176 x 144 pixels, 15 frames per second, up to 1 hour recording)
* Display: TFT, 262,144 colours, 176 x 208 pixels
* Music player (MP3, eAAC+, AAC+, RealAudio formats)
* Visual Radio
* Ringtones: 64-voice polyphonic / MP3 ringtones
* Ringtone composer
* Voice Features: Enhanced voice dialing, Voice commands, Voice recording, Integrated handsfree speaker
* Messaging: SMS, MMS, email (SMTP, POP3, and IMAP4 protocols)
* Applications: File manager, Organiser, Games, Downloadable Symbian and Java applications
* Caller ID with image
* Memory: 10 Mbytes plus microSD card (expandable to 1 Gbyte)
* Connectivity: Bluetooth, USB 2.0
* WAP 2.0, GPRS class 10, EDGE class 10 - download up to 236,8 kbit/s
* Advanced web browser
* Vibration alert
* Triband
* Size: 104 x 50 x 20 mm
* Weight: 130g
* Talktime: 3 hours
* Battery standby: 245 hours
* Music playback: 10 hours

Detailed review

Phone rating:

The Nokia 3250 smartphone is an excellent music player phone. It features a unique twisting design that's intended to make the music player functions of the device easy to access. The phone starts off with a conventional keypad below the screen. Twist it once and the music player controls become accessible. Twist it again and it's a 2 megapixel camera. Gimmicky perhaps, but it works well enough and is fun too!

Let's look at the music potential of the 3250 first. The phone is supplied with 128 Mbytes of memory and this is expandable up to 1 Gbyte - not as much as an iPod, but enough for a few hundred songs. There's also an FM radio with Visual Radio functionality (find out what song is playing, who sings it, and other artist information). Sound quality is very high, with audio features such as an equalizer, stereo widening, reverb and bass boost included. Stereo headphones are supplied with the phone, and there's a 3.5mm jack for you to plug in your own high quality headphones if you prefer. The twisting lower part of the phone might be gimmicky, but it does allow you easy control of your music and playlists. The Nokia Audio Manager CD supplied lets you rip songs from a CD and transfer them to the phone in MP3 format. USB mass storage functionality makes it easy to transfer songs between your phone and a PC.

Nokia is replicating similar products built on S60 platform at full speed. After releasing base model, another 3-4 products with small differences between each other in terms of functionality and design appear. Within a certain time interval the models don't have major hardware differences. A lot of things are just software changes, and few additional features, like different camera module, presence or lack of IrDA port. This method is great for saving money on developing new platforms, it's economically correct, but it also leads to problems with explaining differences between the models to the consumer.

The camera is high quality, with 2 megapixels with a digital zoom, but no flash unfortunately. The video camera is excellent too, and can record up to 1 hour of video. A video editor is included in the applications. The display is a high quality active matrix screen with 262k colours and a high resolution - not as good as the screens on the Nokia N80 or N90, but as good as other smartphones such as the N70 or N91.

Sound, videoclip (wmv, 2 Mb)

The mechanical durability of the rotating block will be a subject to discuss for the first 3-4 months after the phone will be launched for sale, when we will know the breakage statistics. In our case after the phone fell down on the leather couch from 1 meter altitude a small crack near the lens appeared. After some time the block simply opened inside my pocket, the fastening was not reliable enough. According to the company's engineers you will not encounter any problems while using the phone in usual exploitation mode. When the phone is falling out of your hands, well, none of the phones on the market are 100% protected against casualties that might be caused by such accident. Rotating block in Nokia 3250 is its weakest spot. There's no reason to overestimate or underrate this problem, you just have to keep that in mind, it's case's peculiarity.

An interesting fact is that the phone's sides are made of metal painted into the phone's main color. This way the main module is protected, meanwhile back side is covered by the battery cover and the battery inside it, the display is covered by some sort of sandwich made of front panel and protective plastic.

Try to guess where the microSD card is located in this handset, considering that hot swapping is supported. Here's the answer: you have to rotate the block, and look at the space that became visible now, you will see the card's icon on the left. Here you can also see screws that seem to be strengthening this part of the case tightly. This impression is deceiving, there's a small hollow on the corner, you can hock the plastic cover, after this operation the slot will open. It's easy to insert and remove the card, but the fact that the card itself is small, and the rotating block is located nearby don't' really put you in the mood for often card change, and we strongly advice you not to do this operation while you are in public transport, or on the street, choose some calm indoor location for such a delicate work.

Consumers have skeptic opinion on all kinds of releases of already existing and known phones for quite a long time. The majority thinks that releasing of slightly redesigned version looks like an attempt to sell old product in new wrapping. Motorola's ROKR E1 is a perfect example, there haven't been such huge failure on the market for a long while. Meanwhile the release of Nokia 6630 Music Edition was encountered calmly, there was neither heightened interest nor negative feedback. Unfortunately for Nokia, there weren't many consumers for this model either. The youth prefer phones that have cameras with big resolutions, they choose new models. Consumers are not morally ready to buy an “old” model even with new case color.

A whole different case is when manufacturer places almost the same filling into a different body, speaks about “special” music assignment of the phone and releases it with new index. This game is as old as the world that we are living in, but it's still attractive for the youth. They don't have the “deceived consumer” syndrome (it's a good thing, in case they had it a lot of industries would fall into a deep crisis). Nokia has done a lot of homework, they prepared almost ideal communication with potential focus group of their first smartphone for youth - Nokia 3250. Here it's important to remind you that Nokia has very big experience in releasing such products, unfortunately for them, most of the times it was negative, instead of desired positive, but this forced company to spend more time on planning and doing correction of mistakes. They were the first to release first music phone for youth - Nokia 5510, and its successor - Nokia 3300. These products were met wit enthusiasm, caused battles of supporters and their opponents, but first encounter with reality did not leave these products a chance, they disappeared from retail sale. The company tried their best in order not to repeat their mistakes by taking all of the experience into consideration, with that all put together Nokia 3250 turned out being backed up in all directions.

Weight and battery life are typical for a smartphone. It's certainly not a lightweight phone, but it weighs less than a phone plus an iPod! Many smartphones suffer from reliability problems and can be slow accessing menus - we are pleased to report that the 3250 seems to be mainly free of these problems.

Design (rotating keypad, etc)

Rotating block is based on one hinge, no doubts, the fastening is safe. The block gets nicely fixed in any of the available positions, just rotate it until you hear the click. The phone cannot “open” by itself when you carry it in your pocket, there's just not enough space to do that. Same can be said about the bags, unless you drop the phone into your sport bag where all stuff is mixed, and you suddenly decided to do some mountain climbing. Casual user will not have any problems with rotating mechanism, the model looks more like a usual phone.

On the other hand buttons placed on two sides of the block (keypad in front and music control buttons on the back) create high probability of accidental key presses. In case you prefer not to use key lock function, you may encounter some problems. There were times when this lead to playback of the last track in the playlist (note that it was in a speakerphone mode). That's why we highly recommend using key lock, you can do it by pressing the turn on/off button and later on selecting the corresponding menu item. The phone lacks automatic key lock feature, but it will be possible to add it with the help of 3 rd party software (currently it is unavailable).

The block can be rotated by 90 and 270 degrees, in these cases camera will start automatically. Small rotation by 90 degrees and the camera will be directed to the usual camera's angle for a mobile phone, the screen acts as viewfinder. Such method is known because of Nikon who was the first manufacturer to use it in their digital cameras. The technology was rather successful. Nokia's 3250 rotating camera mechanism is not perfect, and there are several reasons for that. Firstly, when you rotate it, the camera will not be activated instantly, it will take about 2 seconds before the image will appear on the screen. I'm afraid there's nothing you can do about it, it's a special thing for such models, you will have to wait some time. Secondly, there are no side-keys, which means that you will have to use joystick as the shutter, navigation through the menus is done in the same way. Joystick is only 0.5cm away from the rotating block, people with big hands will find this distance way too small, their finger might slip. The most convenient way for holding the phone is doing it with your right hand, when your thumb will be on the joystick, meanwhile bended forefinger will support the block. In this position your forefinger will not interfere with camera's lens. Other holding positions exist as well, but I did not find them comfortable, usually it was either lens or the screen that got accidental fingertips. It is possible to control the camera with the help of custom music keys located on the side. In this case you will be holding the main part with one hand, and with the second you are able to take shots, zoom in/out. In case you have the chance to use both hands -- this way is convenient, but it's not in case you don't.

The model is highly overrated by the potential buyers, it is not worth its price, according to many. When it was released, that's last April, its price ranged from 350 to 360 Euros (in Russia the price started from $470 and go up). This is appropriate price of S60 3 rd edition smart phone with adjusted functionality, but overstating for the music phone. For example Sony Ericsson W800i is cheaper, has better package and the most important fact – it's great at playing the music, its main destination. This lets us to summarize the following: Nokia 3250 will not become the bestseller on the market, this is a rather niche solution, which might sell well because of good PR campaign and marketing efforts. It's sad that despite having the potential of S60 manufacturers could have created a really impressive product which would become a bestseller, but they did not. On the other hand such task did not exist in the very beginning, the aim was different: creating of narrow assortment model for “cheap” consumers, it was not supposed to be massive.

Overall this is an excellent combined phone & music player, with plenty of extra features too. A good alternative to the Walkman phones from Sony Ericsson, and a highly recommended phone.