Nokia 700 review: Agent seven double-oh

Introduction

The Nokia 700 has a license to chill. Unburdened with high expectations, this phone is getting ready to surprise you. Not in it for the win, it has too much class to lose.

Scorching hot body and super crisp ClearBlack AMOLED screen, the Nokia 700 is stepping on its 1GHz processor to the delight of those who like their Symbian shaken (Belle) not stirred.

Small phone ready for big things. That's how we summed the Nokia 700 up in our preview. Time we guess for it to take its first big test.

Nokia 700 official photos

While the typical thin smartphone keeps fit by spreading the innards out under a huge slab of a 4+ inch screen, the Nokia 700 is compact in every dimension. That includes weight too - the nice metal touches that give the 700 its solid hand feel haven't pushed the weight over 100g.

The 3.2" nHD screen is a perfect fit in this petite smartphone. The AMOLED unit uses Nokia's ClearBlack technology, which has repeatedly demonstrated its great image quality and near-perfect sunlight legibility.

The Nokia 700 has a lot going for it, but it’s not without downsides either. Here go our traditional lists:

Key features

• Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support
• Penta-band 3G with 14.4 Mbps HSDPA and 5.76 Mbps HSUPA support
• Slim 9.7mm body
• 3.2" 16M-color nHD ClearBlack AMOLED capacitive touchscreen (220 ppi); Gorilla glass
• 5 megapixel fixed-focus camera with LED flash; geo-tagging, face detection, smart zoom in video
• 720p video @ 30fps recording, stereo sound
• Symbian Belle OS
• 1GHz CPU and 512 MB RAM
• Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n
• 2GB of inbuilt storage, microSD expandable
• Active noise cancellation via a dedicated mic
• DivX, XviD, H.264 video support
• Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
• Stereo FM Radio with RDS
• microUSB port with USB On-the-go support
• Stereo Bluetooth 3.0
• GPS receiver with A-GPS support and free lifetime voice-guided navigation; Digital compass
• Flash Lite support in the web browser
• Smart dialing and voice commands
• NFC support
• Built-in accelerometer and proximity sensor
• TV-out functionality (SD)

Main disadvantages

• Small screen, too narrow for comfortable typing
• 5MP fixed-focus isn't particularly impressive
• No video-call camera
• Browser lacks full Flash support
• Relatively limited 3rd party software
• No office document editing (unless you buy an upgrade)
• Non-hot-swappable microSD card
• No HD TV-Out

What's under the hood should come as no surprise. Nokia's current crop of Symbian phones have more or less the same hardware. The camera is down a notch to 5MP from the 8MP unit in the 701. However, with both using fixed-focus optics and both shooting 720p video, we don’t think there's that much of a difference.

Inside is Symbian Belle, which we quite liked, running on the 1GHz CPU and 512MB combo that's enough to keep Android happy, let alone an OS that emerged around 2001.

Nokia 700 held in hand

Flip over to the next page to find out what the Finns packaged the Nokia 700 with and find out if it enjoys the typical Nokia build quality (spoiler: it does).