The Battle For Middle-Ground - Nokia 7250 vs. SE T610

by Chris "ngws"

26th June 2003

The Menu

    The SE T610 inherits the familiar icon-style desktop with a stubby joystick for navigation from the all-time favorite, the T68m/i. The R&D team for the T610 is obviously trying to build an enhanced T68m/i .... a device similar in specs but with all the bells and whistles of today. In a nutshell, it has a 'one-look-access-all' desktop similar to the old T68m/i which eliminates the need to scroll down to access the next page and so on. Now for the bad. This phone is slow. Well, it's not slow in everything but just sloooow in accessing the individual menu. Slow in loading themes. Slow in accessing the Inbox (SMS, email etc). In the beginning, I thought the phone was no longer responding when the scroll bar pauses for a couple of seconds. I was wrong, the phone is still hard at work! All I need to do is .... wait. Users with the old T68m/i will feel right at home from day one when it comes to using the joystick. However, I feel that the joystick could use a much needed 'head' as the current one doesn't give enough 'grip'. Something along the line of the T68m/i for more control and traction.

The stubby joystick on the T68i vs. the 'skinny' stick on the T610.

    The NK 7250 is an improved version of the successful NK 7210 which I have reviewed here. I used the word 'improved' instead of enhanced for a good and simple reason - The changes are mostly cosmetic with only one to two major addition. Notwithstanding, Nokia phones still have the same simple and idiot-proof menu navigation that everyone including your dog (just joking) can adapt to in less than a minute. Back to the issue of cosmetic changes, the menu are now updated with animated graphic i.e. fish swimming across the screen when you navigate to the Message menu. In a nutshell, the menu system is straight forward and very user-friendly.

Icon-style desktop for the T610 vs. the scrolling system on the Nk 7250.   

The Screen

    When I first heard that the T610 will have a 65K colors screen, I was thinking of beautiful colors with subtle graduation ... something to rival the Panasonics and Samsungs. Man, I was so wrong! Despite having a 65K colors screen, the T610 struggles to match the rest (in the 65K clan) in finesse. The color saturations are a bit on the dark side, a little noisy or dirty if you like. Too cartoony if there is such a word. To make matter worse, it's belongs to the STN family and please before you guys start flaming me, the NK 7650 is an example of how GOOD a STN screen can be. However, the screen excels in displaying bright, colorful images but stay away from nature shots etc. Slight flicker can be seen if you look close enough and ghosting is present too albeit very slightly.

The NK 7250 did admirably well while the P800 displays a washout version.

Despite a 4096 colors screen, the NK 7650 is still the one to beat! Original test pic as shown.

    The Nk 7250 retains the same STN 4096 colors screen found on the Nk 7210/6610 but surprise surprise, this LCD screen is of a better quality than those on the previous generation. Notice that white is now so much 'whiter' on the 7250 and overall it's cleaner and brighter. The issue of ghosting is still evident on the 7250 and it's slightly more noticeable than the T610.

A noticeable 'cleaner' display on the NK 7250.

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