Nokia 7280

Despite having launched some truly odd-looking phones over the past couple of years, the 7280 fashion phone from Nokia certainly breaks the mould. It's a 'slider' phone, yet not in the conventional sense of the word; it's a fashion phone, but not like anything else you've ever seen - at least from Nokia; and it brings Apple iPod-style scroll wheel navigation to mobile phones. Though the concepts are new, however, the question that begs itself is virtually ancient: is it any good?

At 115 x 32 x 19 mm and 84 g, the 7280 is a truly minute mobile phone with an extremely sleek form factor. Sleek doesn't mean stylish, however, as the early pre-production prototype provided to us was nowhere near as slick as the recently previewed 7270. That being said, however, there is plenty of time left for polishing before the 7280 is slated to hit shelves.

Returning to dwell for a moment on its small size, one can rapidly deduce that the surprising exclusion of a keypad plays a major part in the narrowing of this phone. Rather than a keypad, the 7280 boasts first generation iPod-style scroll wheel, through which the bulk of interaction with the handset is made. Another surprise: the 7280 is to be held sideways, as the display - cleverly doubling as a mirror until activated - has been tilted 90 degrees to better fit within the design paradigm of the handset. At times, the screen can be somewhat difficult to spot due to glare, but overall worked surprisingly well.

To activate the handset, users will have to slide it open, which both activates the screen and reveals the 0.3 Megapixel camera hidden on the back; a clever solution for lens protection. We miss a spring-loaded type solution for added James Bond factor, but the simple sliding mechanism does its job, too.

Entering numbers and text was also rather intuitive, and courtesy of a T9-style predictive solution, text input was surprisingly usable and responsive to the point of excellence. Per-letter input is also available, but I still believe the most likely scenario to be users storing their numbers in the included phone book and accessing them via the speaker-dependent voice dialing feature.

The 7280 also includes Bluetooth, which should make dialing in conjunction with a Bluetooth headset even less of a hassle, and for those preferring the wired variety there's thankfully a 2.5 mm handsfree jack as well. Additionally, the phone can also be answered and used easily whilst in its included wraparound leather case with magnetic closure - for that extra touch of style.

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