Nokia 7900 Prism

Introduction:
Many of us, mobile phone fans, have repeatedly faced the dilemma of whether to pick a unit featuring numerous functions, or one with a good design. Unquestionably, as we have witnessed, this is a consequence of the fact that phone manufacturers tend to compete in only one of the above aspects, leaving aside the other. However, more and more companies have recently started, and very actively at that, to aim at filling this market niche, i.e. combining functions and attractive design. The new 7900 Prism model testifies to Nokia’s aspiration towards achieving this goal. Being a variant of the Prism concept, it resembles Nokia 7500, but is a representative of a higher class. Besides the increased number of functions, Nokia 7900 Prism will impress you with its aluminum housing, one that is even slimmer and cleaner as a design. Undoubtedly, the model has been targeted at younger users, who are looking for something stylish yet extravagant rather than the conservative trend in models such as 8600 Luna and the 8800 series.



Design:
Nokia 7900 is a candybar phone that will feel comfortably in your hand and pleasant to touch on its aluminum corpus. Due to the solid construction one will not hear any disturbing creaking or other noise made by rickety parts while handling the device.

The entire front is made of one piece smoked glass, with an anti-reflective coating. The same type of glass is also used in another high-class designer phone: 8600 Luna. Positioning the display under this cover and the plain black of the inactive keypad both contribute to rendering the design more pleasurable by simplifying it. Regrettably, though, the glass is time and again covered by fingerprints, so one will need to often clean it.




Interface:
Just as the 7500 Prism, Nokia 7900 uses Series 40 5th Edition user interface. When the phone is at standby, in the upper part of the display, information appears about the signal strength, battery status, the clock and the mobile operator. In the lower part, the functions, related to the left and right selection keys, appear, which are „Go to” and “Names” by default and you can adjust them, as well as the functions of the five directions of the D-Pad to your liking. There is an opportunity here to use Active Standby – a function that alters the appearance of the Home Screen; therefore it is rendered similar to that of the Series 60, visualizing links and information on certain applications on the screen.

The icons in the main menu are animated and are located in a 3x3 grid, as you can displace as you wish to ensure your own convenience. You can also set them to appear as List, Grid, Grid with labels or with Tabs. Working with the phone and menus is very easy, the order is intuitive and logically connected and will hardly be difficult for you. 7900 reacts comparatively fast but sometimes you can see the slow loading of some applications or submenus.



Nokia 7900 Prism is not meant to be a multimedia phone, but it is not deprived of such settings. It is equipped with 2 mega pixel camera with 8х digital zoom. Activation time is about 2 – 3 seconds, which is fast indeed; for a comparison, Nokia 7500 Prism featured a delay of 5 seconds. The camera interface is in a portrait orientation and the display shows information for the number of pictures you can take before the memory is exhausted, the resolution and the quality of the pictures, as well as the regime – picture or video shooting.

You can choose from among a total of 7 different shooting resolutions varying from 160х120 to 1600х1200, as well as from 3 image quality options: basic, normal and high. You can also make pictures with specific effects like false colors, grayscale, sepia, negative and solarise. When you are taking pictures in the dark place or in the night you can use the night mode or the integrated LED flash.

For the time that we used the phone we noticed that it performs with amazing speed; there was no slowing down or interruption in the menus, even when we were opening heavier applications.