Nokia 7280 Is it a phone?

Of course it’s a phone. Despite looking like a cross between a James Bond spy camera and a lighter, the Nokia 7280 is a phone. This particular offering from Nokia is more about being cool than making phone calls though. Yes, it’s a phone, but more importantly it doesn’t look like one. This seems to be it’s main selling point because I found the whole thing incredibly annoying to actually use as a phone.

The display is tiny, and if you have any sort of eyesight issues, forget about using it, particularly when trying to view web pages. There is a teeny-weeny little compartment for the sim card and after losing the special tool supplied, I was reduced to trying to get it open with a bent paper clip.

It does have a reasonable size built-in phone book which will hold up to 5,000 numbers under 1,000 entries, more than enough for just about any user, but the interface is just too fiddly for comfort. I just couldn’t get to grips with it, and very soon gave up.

Despite it’s small size, the call quality was very good, and it worked well with a Bluetooth headset. It does have a camera, which I found to be about on a par in quality with similar cameras. No video recording, but, oddly enough, a built-in FM radio receiver.