Nokia's Mobile Style

Since Coco Chanel introduced the "little black dress" in 1926, it has become the epitome of chic. Her first LBD was a slash-necked, short silk dress with only diagonal pin-tucks as decoration. American Vogue called it the "Ford" comparing it to Henry Ford’s Model-T car, which was an instant hit, widely available, and only came in one colour. Chanel believed fashion should be functional as well as chic. Radically simple, her LBD was designed not to show stains and to fit every woman. It was meant as the fashion ideal: a perfectly simple, yet sexy object.

Nokia took this fashion philosophy to heart when they designed the Nokia 6300. Made out of cool steel and black accents, mobile aficionados took to this stylish mobile phone when it was launched 2006, making it a best seller with almost 47 million units sold to-date. Not one to rest on their laurels, Nokia again has introduced another stylish mobile staple, the Nokia 6700 classic. "When we set out to design the Nokia 6700 classic, we wanted to build on all the things that made the Nokia 6300 great and make them again - but make them better," says Mark Delaney, Nokia designer.

Nokia works with the leading design agencies in the world, pooling together trends in the world of car, product, furniture, and fashion design. "The thing what we have to do is take all that trendwork and then bring in a Nokia point of view - what does it mean to Nokia and more importantly, what does it mean to people we're designing these phones for?" adds Delaney.

Mobile elegance

The Nokia 6700 classic answers the call for stylish mobile phone users who look for a device that’s timeless. The device combines smooth surfaces, rich materials and precisely crafted parts with a full metal keymat, which completes the premium finish. Delaney says "the Nokia 6700 classic is all about restraint, elegance, classic, timeless, and refined. It's like the little black dress of phones. It's never in fashion, it's never out of fashion. It's just perfect." Improving on all areas of its forerunner, the Nokia 6700 classic comes with a 5 megapixel camera, assisted GPS navigation with Nokia Maps, and high-speed data access meaning instant sharing and uploading of images or video to your Ovi account is faster and easier than ever. The Nokia 6700 classic comes in matte silver, elegant black, and smooth chrome.

Stylish simplicity

Basking in the same style spotlight of the Nokia 6700 classic is the Nokia 6303 classic, another ideal mobile phone for people who want value for money in a fashionably elegant body. With this device, you can continue snapping away photos with its 3.2 megapixel camera while viewing it on the large 2.2-inch screen. People can also turn it into a handy music player when they plug into their earphones into its standard 3.5 mm audio jack.

The Nokia 6700 classic retails for PhP16,570 while the Nokia 6303 classic retails for PhP8,120 at all Nokia Stores and authorized dealers nationwide.

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Mobile Phone Shops Update, Southside Philippines

Some good news for mobile enthusiast along the Zamboanga Peninsula, Nokia N97, the most anticipated phone of the year, can now be bought fare and square with several units available in two of the biggest shops in Zamboanga City, Expressions Mobile and EMC Mobile Center along Shoppers Center Mall, The Gateway. I finally had a grasp on it out of pure luck, it just so happen that when I was in Expressions Mobile, a group of Chinese were on their way to buying a unit and the Sales Representative of the store took out two units, the black and white versions for them to tinker and try. They got the black N97 while I jump in to grab the white one and play with it for awhile with no holds barred even against the amusement of the people around, what matters is the chance to be able to hold it for real. c",

Well, I thought it was very light in the hand, very solid and well built. It looks very classy with its glass like front cover and metal side railing. I even tried to snap the slider several times just to gauge its complexity and indeed it has a sturdy snap as brag by Nokia. The QWERTY buttons were rather great to look at and nice to press though I couldn't feel the tactile feedback of it much compared to my N82, maybe it was because of the height of the buttons but it really doesn't matter much on my part. The user interface is responsive and fast compared to my brothers 5800 Xpressmusic and the widgets on the front screen looks glorious. It has a Clickthecity.com widget pre-installed while the rest was left blank for the users to choose there own. The camera lens cover at the back is a bit off to me because of the possibility for it to loosen up in the future as compared to the mechanism used in N82 but then its a minor issue rather. The menu icons were just similar to the 5800 XpressMusic except for the add on features like N-Gage among others. I knew I like it the very moment it was announced months ago and I like it even more after the hands on. Buying one wouldn't be possible though because of my 5530 XpressMusic unit coming and I'm already set buying N86 8MP. N97 cost at about Php30,995 in Expressions while it cost a hefty 33,400 at EMC via credit card purchase.

Speaking about N86 8MP, it is also very much available in most of the mobile shops in the City. Expressions mobile have dummy phones on display for users to flipped and rugged but I wasn't satisfied with the dummy alone, I head over to EMC to try a real one by tricking the sales rep that I'm interested in buying the phone right there and handed me the black version. The phone was a bit heavy in the hand, also very solid and sturdy. It fells great to hold, has a thinner dimension yet wider than my N82. The slider was smooth and locks in tightly, the screen was very vibrant with its glorious AMOLED, never saw such a clear and crisp screen before, and the glassy like front cover which covers the entire upper slide surface extending to the buttons where alluring and classy to gaze. Makes me want to buy the phone right there and then if only I have enough money to dish out. Unfortunately, I have to wait a few more weeks to finished the cash2go account I incurred with my Mastercard before barging in for another installment. c", Price tag of this phone on Expressions Php24,495.

Other new phones on the shelve, the Nokia 6700 Classic with a Php14,995 price tag at Expressions. This is the most talk about upgrade of the very successful 6300 tagging along a more attractive design, more specs and features feted for royalty. A you can see in the image on the left, the phone was laid in to a throne stand beaming a simple yet classy and elegant design. Added feature includes a 5MP camera with LED flash, accelerometer, FM radio with RDS, Nokia Maps with A-GPS among others.

The astounding 5730 XpressMusic QWERTY phone's dummy starts to prop up rather on Expressions. I love its unique and ambiguous design, and the size of the phone is very much ideal to the hand. When it comes to build quality and slide capability, the dummy phone of course cannot stand up to its original so my description of the phone stops here. According to the Rep, the phone will start selling within the 3rd week of the month with no price point known yet.

I thought this is worth featuring rather, the 5800 XpressMusic booth set up at Expressions Mobile. It was well suited and well budgeted. As you can see in the image left, the booth have two flatscreen TV installed to magnify the phones screen and two working phones laid set for customers to tinker with but enclosed to a wooded casket with only the screen left uncovered and chained down to the wall. Imagine that for a security, I supposed they have a bad experiences in the past of sample phones lost to wilderness, nonetheless the units were still playable yet bulky to carry.

On the other part of Mindanao island, I couldn't see any shadow of N97, N86 8MP and 6700 Classic yet in Ozamis City, Dipolog nor Pagadian City so Zamboanga City is the only way to go mobile phone lovers if you want buy the following handsets within the Peninsula.

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Thoughts on Nokia's New Devices

Time for my not so famous and uninteresting thought on Nokia's new device offering.

To start with, a mid teir music device emergence, the Nokia 5630 XpressMusic. I was a bit skeptical seeing this phone for the first time in the web, I thought it was not interesting due to its simple look and design but when i peek on the specs sheet, i was amazingly surprise how feature packed it was that sent shock waves to my nut size brain.

Among the very specs that caught my attention was the processor speed, it carries an ARM 11 CPU with 600Mhz speed, a big boast among Nokia's line up which is most of the time within the 200-300Mhz zone even on its high profiled N-Series Flagships. The phone will also carry WLAN (Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, UPnP technology), a very fast 3.5G HSDPA connectivity of 10.2 Mbps, standby screen widgets like that of the 5800 and N97, Symbian S60 Feature Pack 2, N-Gage compatibility, thin dimension of 112x46x12 mm and best of all, music capability at its best with dedicated music keys on the side, powerful sound speakers and a new feature, "Say and Play" where you only have to speak the name of an artist of track and the phone automatically plays it, where in the world can you find a 199 Pounds phone with this powerful features, none among the competition. Although the camera is only a 3.2 megapixel but this is not bad rather, this rage can still capture decent images enough to save fun memories.

I would definitely recommend this to everyone, this is the best featured packed mid tier phone in the market at the moment. Perfect phone suited for the mass market on this turbulent economic times. The phone is expected to be release, 2nd quarter this year.

Another stellar device on Nokia sleeve is the 6700 Classic, a very savvy and good looking device that targets style conscious consumers and can lure business strata at the same time. The steel outer layer brings a solid and durable impression while the black screen frame conveys a classy and modish appeal, a perfect combination of contemplative mood and durability. Looks if this phone alone could already attract potential buyers but Nokia did not stop from their, they gave it a modest and powerful features starting with 3.5G HSDPA of up to 10 Mbps, a very fast connectivity option that is even faster than WLAN, this depends though on the network your using, Globe Telecom here in the Philippines supports up to 1Mbps only.

Other great feature includes Content Adaptive Brightness Control, I never meet this before, Micro USB Charging, 5 megapixel camera, built in GPS with A-GPS support and Flash Lite 3 for .flv (YouTube) compatibility. The phone is scheduled to be release on the third quarter of 2009. Far fetch but worth the wait.

I believe their were more phones coming this year for Nokia, my wild guess, Flagship Camera device will be unveiled in the upcoming GSMA Mobile Phone Congress, and several mid tier touchscreens. I'm very much looking forward to this event. Stay Tuned for more!

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