Nokia 7205 Intrigue Review

Introduction:

Until recently, most stylish phones for Verizon were limited to LG, Motorola, and Samsung.  Now, Nokia has entered into this range with the introduction of the Intrigue 7205.  It is a step up from the 6205 and is comparable in features to the Rapture and Gleam, with a QVGA display, 2MP camera, and microSDHC memory card slot, but between these three, we believe the Intrigue to be the best looking.



The retail box contains the message “This small eco-friendly packaging has saved 99,000 tons of paper and materials, and use 50% less trucks and planes for transportation.”  This is apparent in the small size of the package, which includes the phone, wall charger, 860mAh battery, and user manual.

Design:

The Intrigue is a compact flip-phone with shiny black plastic used throughout, but it does offer two keypad color variations:black faded to silver with a plus-shaped d-pad, and black faded to pinkwith a flower-shaped d-pad.  Obviously, this is done to appeal to bothmales and females, but the pink fading does stand out more than thesilver.  Overall, the Intrigue feels more durable than the 6205 and Gleam, but still not as good as the metal construction of the V9m.  It open and closes smoothly without any noise and can fit comfortably in your hand or pant’s pocket.



You can compare the Nokia Intrigue 7205 with many other phones using our Size Visualization Tool.

Located on the front is a 1.9” diagonal 176 x 32 pixel PMOLED white display, which normally appears hidden in the surrounding black plastic.  Once it’s activated, you have to turn the phone horizontally to read it (similar to the VX8700), with it showing the time, battery level, signal strength, song being played, and any new text messages.  We’re not fond of this format and would prefer a large color TFT external display, such as the one used on the Chocolate 3 or V9m.  We were able to view the one on the Intrigue in most lighting conditions, but it does appear dim while in sunlight.  Directly above it is the speaker, with the 2.5mm headset jack, volume rocker, and microUSB port on the left side, 8GB microSDHC card slot on the right, and 2MP camera and flash on the back.




The internal 240x320 pixel QVGA display is 2.2” diagonal and can produce up to 262K colors.  It is equivalent to most other phones in its class, with text and images looking good, but it does get harder view while in sunlight.  The design of the d-pad depends on which color keypad you get, but between the two variations, we found that the flower shaped one was easier to use since the buttons are rounder and not as narrow, but both were still larger than the average size d-pad found on the 6205 and Chocolate 3.  The keypad itself has a bright white backlight, which makes it easy to see in low-light conditions.  The buttons are flat and somewhat narrow for people with large hands, but there is a small silver ridge between the rows, which does help to separate them.  We didn’t have any issues using the Intrigue for dialing numbers and text messaging.

Nokia 7205 Intrigue 360 Degrees View:

Software / Features:

The home screen and main menu feature something new called Habitat Mode.  With it turned on, the home screen becomes interactive, with it showing icons of people who you have recently talked to.  You can press the down button on the d-pad to select the person’s icon and then toggle between the calls and messages from that person.  We enjoyed this new feature and found its layout easy to use.  The Main Menu still has the familiar Verizon categories for media center, messaging, contacts, recent calls, and settings & tools.  With the Habitat Mode turned off, you can then change the color and layout of the menus (8 colors with tab, list, and grid view) and have a personalized wallpaper on the home screen.  We like the fact that the Intrigue allows for more user customizations than most phones and hope that Nokia continues to do this with future devices.



Both the 6205 and Intrigue have the same phonebook, allowing up to 500 entries to be stored, each with their name, mobile 1, work, email 1, group, picture, ringtone, mobile 2, fax, and email 2.  We’d like to see the Intrigue store up to 1000 entries, since most other mid-level phones support this.  After a contact is saved, you can assign them to one of 999 speed-dial locations.




Since the 1.3MP camera on the 6205 didn’t do so well last year, we weren’t expecting much from the Intrigue, even though it is 2MP.  Thankfully, this is not the case; with the Intrigue taking better looking images than most other 2MP cameraphones.  Pictures taken outside have accurate color representation with good detail and white balance.  In fact, the Intrigue took better outside images than the Motorola Rapture or LG Versa.  When indoors, the picture quality on the Intrigue does goes down, but this is common with most cameraphone due to the lower light levels.  The flash on the Intrigue is brighter than the Versa, but still doesn’t illuminate a dark room enough to make much of a difference.  The only issue we had with the Intrigue’s camera was in regards to its position on the back of the phone, with our finger sometimes getting in the way.  A better location for the camera would be the font flip, as it would give your hand more room.


Music playback on the Intrigue and 6205 are identical, since both use the same player and have the speaker located on the front flip.  When the phone is closed, the external display will show the track name with a progress bar, and the touch sensitive control buttons become active.  The quality is average, with distortion being heard if there is a lot of bass or vocals.  Luckily, the Intrigue does support Stereo Bluetooth (A2DP/AVRC), unlike the 6205, which means you can enjoy better quality music on your stereo Bluetooth headset, or use wired earbuds with the 2.5mm headset jack.


Other software features include Mobile Web 2.0, Visual Voicemail, VCast Music and Video, and VZ Navigator for GPS guided directions.  You can also download a wide variety of games and other programs through Get it Now.  The browser is slightly better than the one found on the 6205, since it will load an HTML site and display is as separate pages, which allows most pictures to be shown, but in doing so you lose the original page layout.  Unfortunately, it cannot stream videos from YouTube, despite the phone supporting EVDO Rev A.  It also comes with the Dashboard software, which can show up the 13 channels of information (news, entertainment, music, games).  Additional tools include voice commands, calculator, calendar with desktop preview, 3 alarm clocks, stopwatch, world clock, and notepad.  The voice commands (powered by Nuance) worked rather well, as it would dial by number or stored contact without issue, but it does not support speech-to-text for text messaging.  The calendar is also similar to the 6205, and will allow you to type in events that you wish to be notified of.



There is a total of 169MB of internal memory, with almost 21MB used by the Intrigue out of the box.  Even though this is more internal memory than most other phones in its class, we’d still recommend a memory card for easily transferring pictures and music, even though it only supports up to 8GB.

Performance:

The Reception of the Intrigue was quite good and about equal to the LG VX8360.  Voices through the earpiece speaker were loud and clear, unlike the muffled sound of the 6205, and lacked any static or distortion, but weren’t as natural sounding as the VX8360 or Chocolate 3.  People that we called, who were using a landline, said our voice sounded clear and natural on their end. We liked that the Speakerphone could be used with the flip open or closed, but there was noticeable distortion if the volume was turned up past medium.  We also noticed that there is only one universal volume adjustment for both the earpiece and speakerphone, meaning that if you lower the volume of the speakerphone, then change back to the earpiece, you have to raise the volume level.  Most other phones have separate volume settings for each.

The included 860mAh battery is rated to provide up to 4 hours of talk time or 11 days of standby time.  During our testing, we were able to get 4 hours and 30 minutes of continuous talk time on a full charge.

Conclusion:

The Nokia Intrigue is one of the best looking and feature-rich flip phones available for Verizon, other than the Chocolate 3, which is geared more to music users.  The two keypad color options are nice, and the Habitat Mode is very useful.  We would highly recommend the Intrigue for anyone who is searching for a stylish modern looking phone with good call quality, reception, camera, and user interface.