Nokia 7280 - Wacky or Wonderful?

When I first saw this phone I thought to myself, now where are the damn buttons! Turns out that Nokia have gone for a completely revolutionary design in creating a phone like none other before.



As part of their fashion range they have released the models 7280, 7270, 7260 and a few other gems for the hip. Not only does this stick style phone come packed with features such as an FM Radio, bluetooth, allows synchronisation with Apple for photos, audio files and video clips, allowing also for a voice activated interface, but also it is a sleek small and light phone(as light as 8310) with integrated HIDDEN digital camera and the usual Nokia phone features.

Wait you may be saying, in terms of HCI this is a disaster, no keys means impossible texting, but that is where you are wrong. Nokia have installed a iPod style dial which they call the NaviSpinner which can not only be used to scroll through the menus but also can be used to type text messages. I dont know if you've ever used a remote controlled GPS satellite navigation system in a car, but basically that works using the same principle as the NaviSpinner. At first all the letters will be available, but as letters are selected by process of accessing a dictionary the possible next letter is cut down to the possible ones. On the whole it works pretty well in a car and I see no problems with it being applied to text messaging.



The whole design on the 7280 is made for the type of funky music hearing partying guy/girl, which is probably why it is so suprising that an mp3 player has not been included with this. This would probably have set this aside from other phones in that its design is neat enough to pass off as a multimedia device. Perhaps Nokia are considering making a 7280i version soon.

In my opinion this model will probably take off quite easily and may succeed where others have failed due to the sheer cleverness of the design. Unusual it may be but then again so was the iPod when it came out.