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With the introduction of the 7650 over two years ago, Nokia started down a path of pushing the concept of a phone OS/UI platform. Nokia\'s Series 60 platform, as it was called, would run on top of the Symbian OS and would define standard user interface and programming API features, much as Microsoft Windows does on the desktop PC. The 7650 was the first Series 60 device on the market, but it has since been followed by numerous other Nokia devices, and a few non-Nokia devices, too (such as the Siemens SX1 and Sendo X, among others).

The 7610 is one of the first handsets on the market that makes use of the second edition of Series 60, and as such, it enjoys some not insignificant UI tweaks and the ability to support some new technology, such as Nokia\'s new Bluetooth Keyboard. But for most people, the significance of the 7610 lies not with the updates to Series 60, but with its megapixel camera - Nokia\'s first.

One of the common complaints with the Nokia 6600 series was the form factor; it is on the large side for a mobile phone. Part of the problem was the need to fit in a couple of Series 60 specific buttons onto the keypad. The end result was a phone that was fairly wide at just over 58mm - wider than even the P900 with its huge touch screen display. The 7610, by way of an ingenious new keypad design, has managed to trim both width and thickness when compared with the 6600, while managing to maintain the exact same length. In fact, Nokia\'s 7610 is both 5mm narrower and thinner than the 6600. This might not sound like much, but the impact when the phone is held in your hand or stuffed in your pocket is quite noticeable. Subtract 5g of weight, bringing the 7610 in at just under 120g with SIM and memory cards, and you have a difference you can both see and feel.

The keypad is awesome. It has a great feel, and the layout actually works. It is compact, but the curves seem to follow a natural path that my thumb, at least, seems to favor. There is one thing about it that irks me, though: there is no auto-lock feature. You\'ll have to resort to a 3rd party app for that function. The small directional-pad controller was not quite as good as the rest of the keypad. While it works accurately, it is a bit small and stiff. The surface of the controller could have done with a rubberized or textured coating. But after a short while it posed no obstacle at all. I simply got use to it.

There are a few things missing on the physical side of the phone, though. For example, there is no dedicated volume control; the d-pad must be used for that. The camera lens, located on the back, could also use a cover of some sort. Exterior access to the memory card would have been nice, too, but perhaps a bit questionable considering the size of the new RS-MMC cards that the 7610 makes use of. As is, the card slot is located under the battery, ala N-Gage. .

What we are left with is a pop-port on the bottom, next to the power socket, and a speaker grille located on the upper left side where you would expect the missing volume controls to be. The rubber power switch is on the top, safely recessed a bit to keep it from being hit accidentally. Each of the two non-rounded corners of the body also have a loop where you can attach the included lanyard, if you like. And you might, too, since it is a nice leather one.

The last bit of adornment is the odd mirror incorporating design on the back of the 7610. While the mirror is, theoretically, clear enough to perhaps adjust some makeup or something, it is on the small side and, in my opinion, really detracts from an otherwise elegant design. I\'d love to see some new covers that lack it entirely.

The 7610 has a brilliant 65k color TFT unit with a resolution of 176x208. The display is very bright (brightness is adjustable, of course), and its reflective nature allows it to work equally well in direct sunlight or total darkness. I do take issue with the fact that you can\'t adjust the duration of the backlight timeout period, though. The backlight will turn off after but a few short seconds of inactivity. The display is really good.

The 7610\'s sound system is a bit of a mixed bag. While it does support 48 voice polyphonic sounds, it often lacks clarity at the higher volume levels. But what most people will find to be the real problem is the lack of stereo support, since the handset is capable of playing MP3 files. That\'s a shame, since the raw capability is obviously already there. Otherwise, there is a nice assortment of pre-installed MIDI and AMR ringtones to chose from.

The 7610\'s real draw, though, is the camera, not its MP3 playing ability. The 7610 is Nokia\'s first megapixel class cameraphone. The camera creates images of 1152x864 pixels in size, which comes out to just a hair shy of 1 million pixels. The camera has a relatively simple set of available options. There is, of course, a night mode, but other than that you are pretty much limited to selecting from one of three quality levels. All of the photos that you\'ll find at the end of this review were shot at the highest quality setting. There is a digital zoom function, but it is entirely worthless. Nokia would do well to duplicate what Sharp did in the GX30, offering the option to shoot at lower resolutions and then making use of the large camera sensor size to offer a digital zoom that doesn\'t degrade image quality.

The output of the camera is pretty decent. The camera\'s white balance (light color balance) system is very good. The current 7610 firmware handles the switch between daylight and harsh interior lighting without so much as a twitch. Image sharpness and color saturation and accuracy are also good, as you will be able to see in the color wheel sample photo later. The sharpness might be a bit excessive, actually, as the photos have an obviously \"digital\" look to them that reminds me of what we saw in digital cameras 5 years back. A bit of color noise adds to that look (faint random colors appearing in otherwise solid color subjects).

The 7610 can use the camera to record video clips, too. You have the option of shooting clips in either the 176x144 or 128x96 format, and of shooting a short MMS friendly clip or a full length, 10 minute long clip. There is a mute function that allows you to turn off the microphone when recording a clip, which is something I really like. The video appears to me to be a bit choppy, but perhaps a bit sharper, clearer than what you get from other cameraphones. Video clips, as well as photos, can easily be sent to friends or family via Bluetooth, email, or MMS.

One new, and dare I say strange, aspect of the 7610\'s video system is the new \"Muvee\" generator. It is a bit hard to explain, but basically you feed the app a source video clip and then tell it to apply a theme to it. The theme can incorporate sound as well as graphics.

A megapixel camera really ups the storage needs in a phone, so Nokia has wisely placed a memory card slot in the 7610. But unlike earlier Series 60 devices, the 7610 makes use of the RS-MMC format. The \"RS\" stands for \"reduced size\", and as such, a RS-MMC card is about half of the size of a normal MMC card. The included RS-MMC card is of a decent capacity: 64MB. Since people are not likely to be loading up MP3 files on the non-stereo 7610, this should be enough to keep most people happy.

As mentioned earlier, the 7610 is one of the first handsets on the market to run Series 60 Second Edition. There is nothing majorly new on the surface, but there are a number of small refinements that have been lacking in prior version of S60. As a whole, things just work well now. For example, the keypad is linked to the top 9 icons in the main menu, and the keys even work when you have scrolled further down in the menu. Just press the key and it goes; you don\'t have to hold the button down, you don\'t have to hit select. This is much better than the Series 40 method. And when scrolling through a list of options, you can continue to press down on the d-pad when you have hit the last item and you will be sent to the top of the list, at the top of the page. Early S60 systems just stopped at the bottom of the list, which was annoying. Pressing on the d-pad will act the same as hitting the left softkey when you are at a yes/no type prompt. Icons and folders can be arranged as you please, though you still can not create a folder in a folder. In general, the interface is predictable and consistent, which is exactly what a UI should be.

Other plusses include easily set speed dials and configurable left and right softkeys in standby mode. The themes system is out of sight, too. No simple replacement of background colors here. Themes make use of multiple graphic sets and can even replace the default icons and clock faces.

But this is not to say that it is perfect, because there certainly are still a few things that just don\'t seem right. For one, the four directions of the d-pad are not used as shortcuts. That seems like a no-brainer. Pressing the d-pad itself in standby mode will call up the Contacts app, though. Also, the \"Go To\" shortcut system is not very well done. There were too many things that I wanted to create shortcuts for that just weren\'t allowed. One of the pre-configured default shortcuts in Go To is the message Inbox, for example, but there is no way to add a link to \"New Message\", which I use far more often since inbound messages automatically prompt you to ask if you want to view them. Another thing that bothered me was the inability to use T9 predictive text whenever text input required, such as when configuring an email account. I don\'t see the sense in limiting that.

The 7610 is among the best performing 1900Mhz phones in the market. Overall audio quality was good, even when using the hands free speakerphone function. 3 hours of talk time is well within reach, and over 2 hours of talk time when using a Bluetooth headset, too.

The 7610 has a nice profile system. There are a number of default profiles available, and you can create your own new profiles if you wish. There is no support for timed profiles, which might upset the business user, but otherwise the profile management is quite good. You can link them to one or more groups of contacts, even, so that you can ensure that your phone will only ring if you want it to (all calls still come in normally, the ringer is just disabled if the caller is not a member of the appropriate group).

The 7610\'s contact system is very good. Searching for a contact is done easily by typing in a few characters that match the start of the first or last name of one or more contacts. Just about any piece of data you could wish for can be stored in a contact. The system supports name, company, title, multiple phone numbers, URL, notes, email address, street address, etc. The 7610\'s contact system also supports Nokia\'s presence services, so that you can see the state (busy, away, etc) of your friends when you are on a network that supports these features. My network does not support this, so I could not test the system for myself.

The Nokia 7610 is a decently well connected phone. While it doesn\'t support infrared, it does come with a USB cable and also supports Bluetooth.

Like with earlier Series 60 devices, the 7610 does not appear to support the Headset profile, only the Hands Free profile. This posed a bit of a problem 2 years ago when most headsets only supported the Headset profile, but really is a non-issue today. Most headsets released since the time of Sony Ericsson HBH-30 have had Hands Free profile support. Another profile that the 7610 doesn\'t support is the Synchronization profile. While not an absolute must-have, since Nokia supplies PC Suite, support for the Sync profile in a device means that you can sync it up directly with another device that supports the profile, without a need for 3rd party software.

The profiles the 7610 does support, though, cover what most people need. There are the the OBEX Push and Transfer profiles and the Dial-Up Networking profile, in addition to the previously mentioned Hands Free support. This means that you can use the 7610 as a Bluetooth GPRS modem, or browse through its file system, or send a random contact or picture to it. That is enough for most people. The fact that they all work well seals the deal.

The Bluetooth app, found in the 7610\'s \"Connections\" folder, is where everything Bluetooth is managed. You can change the (few) available settings, or pair up a new device. Devices can be set as either \"authorized\" or \"not authorized.\" An authorized device will be able to connect to the 7610 and immediately do its thing without any intervention from you, the 7610 user. If an unauthorized device (even if it is paired) attempts to connect, you will be prompted first so that you can reject the connection. Unauthorized is the default state, even for headsets, so you will want to change that after you pair up a headset. Overall, the Bluetooth app is simple to use and gave me no room for complaints.

The other major aspect of connectivity that we want to touch on involves GPRS and the 7610\'s two browsers. The 7610 ships with both the standard Nokia WAP v2.0/xHTML browser and the Series 60 version of the Opera web browser. Both make use of the 7610\'s simple to configure GPRS system, and seem relatively speedy considering they are running on a phone.

The Nokia browser is a far cry better than what we were offered in the first days of WAP, back when displays were small and monochrome. WAP sites today can feature nice graphical menus and other touches that used to be the realm of the desktop PC exclusively. I used the browser with a Nokia press event wapsite and was impressed with both the speed and look of the site. The graphical menu buttons showed just how well the browser\'s file caching system was working, and the browser\'s integration into the rest of the OS allowed for easy downloading of ringtones and installation of games (including the previously mentioned pinball game).

The Opera browser offers a totally different kind of experience, though still a very positive one. Opera\'s browser does a good job of rendering down web pages to make them fit on a small display, much as Microsoft\'s Pocket IE will do on a Pocket PC device. This width-compressing mode can be disabled if you feel the need. Another nice feature of the browser is the full screen mode. Simply pressing the * key will toggle the browser back and forth between normal and full screen modes. I tested out the browser on Opera\'s Series 60 portal and our own site and was quite pleased. The browser\'s CSS support seemed perfect, rendering every aspect of our site exactly as it should be.

The new PC Suite offers a lot of functionality. There is the typical synching functions, of course, but there are also apps that let you backup your handset, move files to and from the 7610, and install files, but there are also media players and converters and other things, too. While it isn\'t quite perfect, the sync app works well. The only problem it seemed to have was in dealing with multi-day events. Instead of copying them over to the 7610 as a multi-day event, which the 7610\'s calendar supports, the sync app created two events, one for each day involved. Not a major deal, but odd. The integration into the Windows Explorer was also less than perfect. You can use it to copy and paste files to/from the 7610, but the copy function will not work on directories.

Nokia\'s 7610 has a pretty full featured suite of messaging features, including the typical SMS and MMS as well as a full featured POP/IMAP email client. This was one of the 7650\'s strong suits back in the day, and it remains so today with the 7610.

Nokia\'s email client handled all of the typical email tasks well. Creating a new message is simple, as is attaching a file of just about any type. Mail sending and pickup seemed pretty quick, owing mostly to a good GPRS connection. You can define multiple email accounts (\"mailboxes\" in Nokia-speak), but are limited to having only one of them active at a time. This is something Nokia will need to address in the future, for sure. Another thing that ought to be added is support for \"POP before SMTP\" authentication, which would round out the already included authenticated SMTP client.

The MMS editor in the current version of Series 60 is very nice, indeed. You can define multiple slides, embed images, sounds, or videos, and preview it in a very nice viewer.You will be able to scroll up and down to read the text while the video continued to play.

The SMS system is quite similar in layout to the MMS system, if only in a much simpler form. Multiple recipients can be selected, text templates can be used as the basis for a message, and confirmation receipts are stored neatly in a separate folder where you are not forced to delete them constantly.

And like the MMS editor, you had to select which phone number to use for each selected recipient.

Punctuation is handled with the 1 key, case and input modes with the # key, word alternatives with the * key, and spaces inputted using the 0 key.

It also has the ability to queue up messages for later delivery when there is no signal available, meaning you can type up all of your text messages while in the subway, and the phone will start sending them out once you get back above ground where you have a signal. I love that.

One of the great things about Series 60 is the number of 3rd party applications that are available for the platform. Since it has been around for over two years at this point, there has been plenty of time to develop a good base of programs. There are many different apps available to choose from, ranging from games to utilities like file browsers, to system enhancements.

But the 7610 comes with some pretty nice built-in apps, too. The best example, perhaps, is the Calendar app. I consider the 7610\'s calendar to be the best available on a mobile phone. It is both flexible and attractive. There are week and month views, both of which will give you a preview summary of an event when you click over to a day with something scheduled. Events can be repeating, and can have an alarm (with its own effective date and time), and even have a field for location, much as Microsoft\'s Outlook does. You also have the option to mark an event as Private or Public for synching, or to have it not sync at all. The app is just top notch.

Other built-in applications include a To Do list, a calculator, converter, voice recorder, clock, and wallet. All are of good quality and function well. But the key, of course, is being able to install your own selection of applications. And to that end, you need the help of Nokia\'s Manager application.

The Manager helps you keep track of what is installed on your phone, lets you remove installed applications, and lets you determine what kind of rights any given application will have. Another thing that the Manager can do is send copies of the install logs to another device via SMS or email, which is kinda cool.

The Manager will be important to you since there are plenty of free applications and games out there for you to try. There are a lot of Java games that will work quite well on the 7610, too.

There are still other things not discussed. Stereo support, FM radio, a backlight timeout setting, automatic keypad locking, so on and so forth. But the great physical design, phone functionality, and a Series 60 UI that has finally matured makes this phone a real winner. The megapixel camera is just icing on the cake.