Phones.com » Cell Phones » Review of the Nokia 7310 Supernova

The SuperNova 7310 has the dimensions similar to a Nokia 6301, except that it's a tad wider owing to the dense plastic covers. It is also 1 mm slimmer than the 6310. The 7310 SuperNova measures 106.5 x 45.4 x 12 mm, and weighs a moderate 83 grams. The plastic construction is strong but feels inexpensive to the touch. The SuperNova however is nice in terms of handling, owing to the good design. The SuperNova 7310 has a tiny 2.0" screen but has QVGA resolution and high pixel density. The D-pad was hard to operate but all the keys on the keypad offered stiff feedback. On the right side of the 7310 is a volume rocker; the left has a charging port. Theres only a 2.5 mm headset jack on top. We noticed that sunlight legibility was very poor on the Nokia SuperNova 7310's display.

Despite being from the mid-end market, the Supernova 7310 pleases the user by offering a good feature set. The phone has a 2-megapixel camera whose images are not impressive, but does well for casual shots. Video recording at QCIF resolution in 15 fps was supported. Multimedia support on the 7310 makes it stand out from the crowd. The phone does MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+ and WMA audio. Album art and an extremely user-friendly interface make this phone a great choice for media. On the video side, there was support for MPEG-4. The best part is that the 7310 has a Visual radio and FM with RDS. Another surprise was the presence of TV-out on such an inexpensive phone like the 7310. We watched a couple of Flash videos, thanks to the FlashLite 2.1 support. The phone was good at customization like most S40 handsets by Nokia. The 7310 Supernova has 32 MB of internal memory and there's support for SDHC. So you could simply swap-in a card of much higher capacities than the 4 GB it was advertised with. The built-in browser was handy, but not anything heavy-duty. You might like to install Opera Mini as it looks great and functions like a full-featured browser while saving data costs. There's an Email client and IM application, but we noticed they work slower than on smartphones. However these are a great addition.

The 7310 Supernova is a tri-band GSM phone, available for two markets as either 900/1800/1900 MHz or 850/1800/1900 MHz. The phone has good data connectivity since it comes with the newer Class 32 standards of GPRS and EDGE which support download rates of up to 88kbps and 296kbps respectively. There's Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP, to aid connecting to nearby devices. PC connectivity could be established at Full speed of USB 2.0, using the microUSB connector on the side of the 7310 Supernova.

The Nokia 7310 Supernova is powered by a relatively small BL-4CT battery with 860 mAh capacity. The phone still manages to squeeze about 4 hours of talk time from it. The standby time was noted as about 13 days. This means the SuperNova can be your phone for calls and text; for about two-three days without needing a charge.

The answer is clear. While the Supernova 7310 was built to appeal to people, it was also built to last with its design and unique feature set. There's no doubt the asking price is well worth the handset Nokia is delivering us. This is one of the best deals if you want a unique phone still without burning a hole in your pocket or compromising on features. The Nokia 7310 Supernova costs somewhere around 200 dollars at many places, so getting it as quick as possible is your best bet.