Nokia 7310 Supernova Review

Introduction:

The Supernova line was announced by Nokia with the idea to offer budget phones, balanced between an attractive appearance, features and price. Similarly to the higher classes, here the main thing for the design is not only to be easy to use but also to be striking and become the reason for the consumer to purchase it. Bold colors are used, including electric green and pink as opposed to the basic boring grey, black and white; a phone with such a panel rarely remains unnoticed, and that’s exactly what the creators of Supernova wanted to avoid.

7310 Supernova is the first of the four announced models to be released on the market.It is a candybar phone, positioned in the lower-mid class. It is sold in three color versions and every package comes with the blue version plus a panel in one of the other colors. In addition, Nokia will offer five extra colors.



The package includes:

Design:

The design language of 7310 is typical for the Supernova line and is something new for Nokia. All three color variants have a pattern on the panel, but when touched the plastic reminds us of the low price of the phone.



You can compare the Nokia 7310 Supernova with many other phones using our Size Visualization Tool.

The numeric keypad and the area around the display are silvery and shiny, which not only creates an interesting contrast but also transforms 7310 in a pocket mirror. We’ve seen this effect in other phones as well, but here, it is very well expressed. It’s a bit darker than the conventional mirror and you’ll have to clean it from the fingerprints, but it’ll do the job. As a result of this of course, suffers the display, making it totally useless in direct sunlight (even if it’s not too bright). Because of the glass, the image is pale even indoors. The QVGA resolution is good and overall is OK for this display, but compared to other models the quality is poor.



All buttons on the front are hard to press but there is a good physical feedback, accompanied by a well expressed “click” sound. Only the D-Pad is easily distinguished from the others, and the numeric keys are separated via a relief in rows. The keyboard is totally OK. It’s not like we’d complain about it, but we wouldn’t recommend it to the heavy texters.

On the right, we have the volume rocker; it can be used but is very uncomfortable. The opposite side houses the charger slot and on the top you’ll see the 2.5mm stereo jack for headphones accompanied by the standard microUSB for computer connection.



We are often unhappy when the memory card slot is located under the battery lid. Here, we have the same situation and even worse, because the lid comes off very hard. A lot of effort is required to take it off and we thought it was going to break into pieces. A unique design element represented by two stars appears under it (although we think its pointless since it remains invisible under the lid), which adds to the idea for a fun device. From here, you can take off the front panel to replace it and you’ll have to push and pull hard one more time.

Software:

Nokia 7310 Supernova is based on the Series 40 5th Edition, Feature Pack 1 interface which is used in most of the other non-smart phones of the manufacturer. To personalize your Supernova, you can choose between various themes. Even more diversity is brought by the fact that the homescreen background is animated and the objects on it change. Our review unit had four themes and all of them were abstract and multicolor, adding to the image of the phone.

The main menu can be visualized in a few ways and its icons can be rearranged. Navigation is kind of slow (we expect better performance from a non-smart phone), and there is a noticeable lag when entering in it and choosing a given object by using a numeric key (shortcut).


You can add many details to every contact in the phonebook and the only comment we have is related to the search, which is done just by first name (or the first in order). There’s an option to search by first or family name but the results will include only matches from the first entered word.

The organizer offers an Alarm, Calendar with multiple options, To-do and regular Notes, simple Calculator, Countdown timer and a Chronometer.


Besides text and multimedia messages, 7310 also supports the ability to configure e-mail accounts (IMAP/POP3).

The phone is equipped with a 2-megapixel camera without autofocus and flash. The interface is neither beautiful, nor convenient to use, and on top of that, it is extremely slow (it takes about 15 seconds to record a picture). The image quality is also quite low which makes the overall use of the camera pointless. It’s a similar story with the videos, shot with maximum resolution of 176х144 pixels, which is not e enough even for the use of sites like YouTube.



The music player can sort your music by different criteria (artist, album, genre), and the interface has a pleasant appearance and is quite convenient to use. Our phone came with the standard and an additional graphic theme, but you can get more so you can change its design. The sound from the loudspeaker is at an average volume level and bearable quality, but sometimes a crackling noise can be heard. The earphones don’t bring anything impressive to the table either, so do not expect 7310 to replace your portable musical player. It is sad that the sound quality of the player is mediocre, because the interface is very good. We are happy with the FM radio (with RDS) software, and the video player disappointed us since it doesn’t play QVGA clips even in H.263 codec, which most contemporary phones support.


Nokia 7310 Supernova is tri-band GSM with EDGE support. The manufacturer announced a European (the one we got) and a North American versions of the phone.

The computer connection is done via the microUSB cable (not included in the package) or with Bluetooth 2.0. Since it supports A2DP, Supernova can transfer stereo music wirelessly.

Nokia has added four games in the phone: Snake III, Backgammon, Seasweeper, and Sudoku. They’re not the best ones but at least are not demo versions. JAVA MIDP 2.0 is supported and you can add new games or applications.

Performance:

As we’ve mentioned above, Nokia 7310 Supernova is relatively slow during menu navigation, which we consider as a drawback, easily noticeable in the daily use. Despite not being a serious problem, it will be annoying for some.

We are happy that the sound quality is OK; it’s not extremely good, but it definitely is far from terrible. During a talk you’ll hear a decent sound with the only remark that the voices are heard sharp and monotonous. The collocutor however, will hear you quite well with your voice sounding realistic and loud. Using the loudspeaker is pointless, because it is very weak.

Conclusion:

Is Nokia 7310 Supernova worth it? It really depends if you like its appearance. The unconventional image is its key feature, having pleasant, rarely used colors and a slim body. Nevertheless, the materials used for the make, remind us of the low class that the phone belongs to. In theory, Supernova offers multiple functions, but all of them have a mediocre performance, which makes using the device as anything different than a phone pointless. If the music player offered decent quality in addition to the user-friendly interface, the Nokia would have been an attractive model but now we consider it only a handset with an interesting design and mediocre functionality. The alternatives are 5310, which has good musical capabilities and 6301, offering a metal panel and a business image