Video: PhoneArena’s Nokia Astound review – for $79.99 on contract, you really can’t knock on the Nokia Astound.
- One solidly built handset all around. We like the choice of materials. Gives it a sense of durability all around.
- Overall, it’s one attractive looking handset.
- nHD screen provides plenty of detail, very easy to see even the tiniest of text.
- Colours on the jucier side being amoled with acceptable viewing angles.
- Softkeys are flat but exhibit nice tactile response.
- Camera buttons recessed but still more than distinguishable.
- Removing the stainless steel cover is pretty easy – access to battery, sim card and microsd card slot.
- Movement between the homescreens is very fluid (hurray)
- Symbian^3 provides a pretty good amount of customization.
- A nice new addition with the Astound is that it has the Swype keyboard. But unfortunately it’s only available in landscape (ahahahahahaha, stupid Nokia). I uninstalled swype on N8 because I can time so much faster on two hands with the standard keyboard (but with the prediction/autocorrect turned on)
- Portrait keyboard is extremely cramped. (well, 3.5″ 16:9 screen doesn’t really lend itself well in this respect). Luckily it does exhibit a really good response.
- Email experience is pretty typical of any smartphone out there. Provide user name and password – automatically sets up. (Good to hear) Full HTML offers quite a good amount of features not quite as in depth as other platforms out there.
- Differentiating itself over the C7, it has tabbed browsing (well other stuff mentioned so far differentiates over C7, draggable homescreen, portrait qwerty, Swype built in…)
- Unfortunately, overall web browsing experience is not that great. (I really want the MicroB team to go see the Symbian Browser team and give them a good kick up the arse. I am soo looking forward to Nokia with IE9.) Takes time to resize and re-render the page. Unfortunately not as responsive as we’d like. Overall a very challenging experience. (Man these guys are kind)
- Nokia social experience is nice (lolol)
- Symbian^3 music player is definitely an attractive one. Very fluid and smooth cover flow.
- Speaker quality a little on the sharper side. Alright but not the best sound out there.
- Thanks to its gorgeous looking AMOLED display, the video watching experience is pretty fantastic.
- Video we’re watching is in DivX 1280×720 so plenty of detail. Very smooth in playback. Overall we’re very happy with the experience.
- Dedicated YouTube client – nice to have dedicated one.
- 8MP sensor – lack of autofocus definitely biggest eyesore. More fuzzy on close ups due to fixed focus. Low light , a little bit of noise, but with LED flash does oK job illuminating scenery. 720p at 25fps a little bit choppy – lack of autofocus it doesn’t provide sharp details (well, no not if you’re filming macro stuff like things up close but it’s fine for friends, scenic stuff, most of the things people film).
- On a good note the call quality is fantastic, the voice quality is clear and distinct on both ends.
- Little bit of noise on our earpiece but doesn’t take away from the overall great experience.
- Speaker is strong in its tone and isn’t distorted in any way.
- Handset retains a pretty good amount of signal strength. We didn’t have any problems of dropped calls or losing connectivity to network and it didn’t fluctuate that much.
- As for battery life, you get two solid days of normal use before requiring a charge. Pretty nice. You’ll get at least a solid day use without the worry of having to charge it again.
- All in all for $79.99 on contract, you really can’t knock on the Nokia astound. It just offers a pretty wide set of features such as the 8MP cam, 720p video recording, video chat support , stellar design and hardware with it. Also the gorgeous looking AMOLED display which definitely gives that well rounded appeal to it.
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They really seem to have fixed pretty much everything, but the browser is still a disappointment.
agree… thats why nokia should include the opera mobile browser in the firmware…
obviously , people who aren’t tech junkies (about 95% of people) , dont know that such a solution exists!
Yes, and Nokia told us earlier that they will make the browser a separate part of the Symbian operating system to make updates easier.
Why not put in Opera instead. I think that the Opera company would love that there browser would be shipped with and be default browser on millions of Symbian mobiles. Operas market share would rise alot.
Browser and that camera.
have to say its slippery without a case
anyone knows what is that intranet app in the phone?
will it be like symsmb?
it’s a sexy phone i held it a few months back .same screen size as n8 but different body that’s all
Uhhh, NOPE! N8 screen is way smaller!!!
Ehh, say what? You’re wrong.
It’s actually almost identical to the C7.
not almost identical = the exact same screen
The final score was an 8 out of 10. Overall positive review with a slight tinge of condescending tones here and there. They only listed 2 cons, and neither of them were about Symbian^3. They didn’t mention the GPU, unless I missed it.
Considering the usual Nokia related reviews, this is a 10 of 10 for me. I am excited to help people get their hands on this wonderful device.
If I don’t have to upgrade to the smartphone data plan i’d get this phone.
Hey Americans ! This is a great great phone that you can get at a very very good price … Don’t miss it !!
If you want a serious equipment with good voice quality, good battery life, stylish and robust hardware, this is a NO brainer…
There are still some minor things that annoy me
im using n8
1.
Everytime I install or uninstall apps, my phone just freeze.
Dont tell me this is only my problem, my previous symbian devices had it, also my friends nokias
2.
browser, even though I have opera mobile 11, it’s still unacceptable for a hell slow stock browser.
As u guys know, many apps open links with the stock browser. So it HAS TO BE GOOD
3.
homescreen
The time and date widget cant be removed. It doesnt hurt too much really, but I dont like it.
4.
bottom nav bar
It wastes so much spaces
The one that should be static is the top status bar, not the ‘options’ and ‘exit’.
I’m bored of this.
Hope Nokia will fix these .
Thanks for a great review! Nokia Astound of Nokia is a high quality smart phone with eye-catching design and consisting couple of advanced features like gaming, music app and video downloading apps
And the C7 Astound has some nice photo apps for its 8Mpixel cam like ’3DPhotoFree’ which makes the Astound into a 3D camera phone
Thanks for the auspicious writeup. It in truth was a enjoyment account it. Glance complicated to far brought agreeable from you! However, how could we communicate?