The Nokia 7900 Prism delivers features that are not to be found elsewhere. While it lacks the all around functionality of the Nokia N95 or the HTC TyTn II, the 16M color OLED display lets you know this is not your everyday phone.
Features I liked:
* 2" 16M color OLED QVGA display (great in low light)
* 1GB internal storage
* Support for 3G and EDGE
* USB charging
* Configurable backlighting and light effects
* Nice music player
Things I did not like:
* Low quality camera
* Inadequate video resolution
* No slot for a memory card
* No dedicated camera key
* Poor legibility in sunlight
* Easy to slip
* No FM radio
Nokia 7900 may not be the most feature-packed phone on the market but it does bring a number of innovations to the table, the main one being the 16M color OLED display which is a first for Nokia. The second one hit the shelf just one month later - the 8800 Arte. Also unique is the configurable keypad backlighting.
The Nokia 7900 has few market rivals, perhaps the closest ones being the Samsung Ultra line and the more visually oriented Sony Ericsson mobiles - for example S500. If you have your heart set on an OLED screen, than the BenQ Siemens S88 and the Nokia 8800 Arte and Sapphire Arte are your only real options. Of course, there are quite a few clamshells with OLED external displays, including the overly large Nokia N93.
Design and construction
Nokia 7900 is only 11.3mm thick, 112 mm tall and 45mm wide, all of which serves to make it a relativly compact model. The Nokia 7900 Prism weighs in at just 101 grams.
The phone design represents true minimalism, with a very low number of controls, lacking many of the expected jacks and controls one has come to expect. Functionally, the Nokia 7900 Prism is identical to the Nokia 6500 classic.
At the top of the phone we find the earpiece at dead center, adjacent to the ambient light sensor and both are just over the 2" display. Under the display are the control and navigation buttons, as well as the alphanumeric keypad.
There are no controls on the sides of the phone, while the bottom has the microphone pinhole and opposite it is the microUSB slot and the two horseshoe shaped indicator LEDs. The back of the Nokia 7900 has the 2 megapixel camera, the LED flash and the loudspeaker grill. There is no lenscover and the lens is slightly recessed to save it from scratches.
The battery cover is near seamless, so well is it designed. Under it is the BL-6P battery and the SIM slot. With the cover removed, the 7900 is near identical to the Nokia 6500 classic. Nokia quotes 3 hours of talk time and 240 hours of stand-by time for the battery, but in reality, it lasted about four days of light use.
Overall, I am quite impresses with the construction of the 7900 - obviously much more care went into the construction of this phone than was the case with the Nokia 7900.
The Keypad
The keypad of Nokia 7900 sure leaves a lot to be desired. The keys are flat and it's difficult to find the borders between them by touch only. Attempting to press the "1" and "3" keys often results in a miss and you press the hard surface next to them instead. However, the diamond-shape D-pad is quite comfortable, as the directions are clear-cut and wrong presses are out of question.
Another thing that takes the Nokia 7900 to the head of its class is the customizable back-lighting. You can pick between 49 different colors for the keys and the light effects of the horseshoe LEDs on the top of the body. Yes, the colors are not very precisely rendered, this is the first time we have seen this since the Ericsson R600, which offered three backlighting colors.
Display
The display of Nokia 7900 is one of its best features. The OLED technology lowers production costs and better power efficiency and makes the screens thinner,with a far greater viewing angle, brighter and higher contrast image and faster response time. However, all this is at a cost: when exposed to direct sunlight however, the display is totally illegible, making the phone almost impossible to use.
Another flaw of the display is its size. For a phone in this price range we find 2" inadequate, OLED or else. Then, on a second thought, the luxurious Arte has the same screen size and - by far - a juicier price tag.
Telephony
Signal reception and call clarity are everything you hope for with the Nokia 7900 Prism. However, the lack of video calls can be considered a real disappointment. With 3G on board, one wonders why Nokia missed it. I know that video calling is not frequently used but it would be nice to have. For example, the Nokia 6233 didn't have a video calls camera but it allowed making video calls with the primary one.
Nokia 7900 has no surprises in its user interface. It employs Series 40 5th edition user interface. Navigating and controlling the phone are almost the same as with the previous UI edition and identical to the Nokia 7900. The phone still offers a vast number of configurable options but at the cost of a little complicated menu structure and naviation.
In stand-by, the display shows the pre-selected wallpaper plus signal strength, battery status and time in the top bar. Under the top bar is the operator logo and the date. The bottom bar is reserved for the labels of the navigation key functions and the two context keys. The center of the navigation key opens the main menu, while the context keys can be assigned a function of your choice. The font on the main display can be of any color.
Active standby consists of several configurations that can be edited or relocated according to the user's preferences. In the most common case, the top area is reserved for instant access to favorite functions indicated by their respective icons. The central area provides instant access to the music player. At the bottom are events from the calendar set for today.
The main menu in Nokia 7900 can be displayed in four ways: a grid of icons with or without captions, a list of items, and tabs. While each has pros and cons our choice remains the typical grid view with legends. If you prefer more icons to appear simultaneously, you can go for the grid view without text, as it displays a 4 x 3 icons grid. The icons of the main menu can be reordered to suit the user's taste.
One source of frustration is the sub-menus follow no consistent pattern. Some items have captions, others do not. In some cases you will be able to see the selected item described in small font, so you will not need to descend further into another menu level. As usual, the menu items are accessible through keypad shortcuts.
Phonebook
The phonebook on Nokia 7900 is great, offering space for 1000 contacts and has many configuration options. Each contact can be assigned a variety of fields but the phone numbers are limited to five. First names are in a separate field from last names, helping with synchronization.
Ringtones, personal pictures or videos can be assigned to each contact. The picture displayed is different for incoming and outgoing calls, as it fills the screen when you are on the receiving end of a call, and only take a small part of it when you are calling one of your contacts.
Editing a contact
There are three view modes for your contacts list: List-of-Names, Name-and-Number and Name-and-Picture. You can see the SIM card contacts, the phone memory contacts or both at the same time. The font size can be enlarged, helpful for people with sight problems.
Searching is done by the gradual typing of the name of the contact. Contacts can also be organized in groups and these can consequently be used as call filters. Another neat application is voice dial, which requires no pre-recording of the commands and phonebook names. It is equipped with a training application that helps for better results when using voice commands and/or dialing.
The Nokia 7900 classic Call Log is typical of a Series 40 device. It will display Dialed, Received and Missed calls separately or together. Every submenu can hold up to 20 call records with their date, time and duration.
Messaging
I have to say, the message menu of Nokia 7900 is organized near perfectly. In addition to standard text messages, the handset is capable of receiving and sending multimedia messages, audio and flash messages via MMS and email.
The SMS and MMS use the same editor and to turn a regular SMS into an MMS merely insert a picture or any other multimedia content. When you activate the editor, it displays a field for entering the number of the recipient, which you can do via typing, select from the phonebook, from the caller groups, or from the list of the most recent addressees in the call register.
The editor is intuitive and is organized in a practical manner. After you have inserted the relevant number, a single click will shift to the message body where you can begin typing. Naturally, the phone also offers a rich T9 dictionary.
Message length is limited to 1000 characters, with the count of typed characters and the number of parts the message will be divided into constantly visible. All messages use the shared memory, regardless of their type.
Nokia 7900 works with POP3, SMTP, and IMAP4 protocols and supports multiple email boxes. When a message is to be sent, it finds the email address of the corresponding recipient in the phonebook. Sent attachments are not limited in size.
The client downloads the headers automatically and then offers to download the entire body of the messages you need. However, you can set the messages to be automatically downloaded in full if you want.
Music player - nice!
The music player in the Nokia 7900 is an upgraded version of the one in the Nokia 6500 classic. There is improved looks and a new theme, but no real difference in terms of functionality. In addition to all the typical functions of a music player, it sorts songs by artist, album and genre.
The player plays MP3, MIDI, AAC, AAC+, and WMA formats. The supported A2DP profile allows Bluetooth wireless earphones. The player is customizable through a number of eye pleasing themes at your disposal.
In the retail package includes a wired headset. I will warn you that there is very little chance that you will fall in love with it but if you are only an occasional user it may just do the job. Unfortunately, the handset uses a microUSB jack for connecting the headset, so using another set of headphones may just turn out impossible without a suitable adapter.
The sonic experience of the player is enhanced by an equalizer and a stereo expansion function. The equalizers do deserve attention, as they perform very well and have nice graphic visualization. Nokia 7900 has only one loudspeaker located on the rear, right next to the camera.
Sadly (and confusingly) there is no FM radio on Nokia 7900; the other Prism has one. If music does not do it for you, all that is left is the video. The video player is compatible with the 3GP and MP4 formats. Videos can be played in fullscreen mode, as well as fast-forwarded or rewound. The option to remove the soft key captions is nice and generally improves video watching.
mediocre camera
Nokia 7900 is has a 2 megapixel camera with image resolution of up to 1600 x 1200 pixels. As expected with Series 40, camera settings are not the richest you can imagine, but there is enough. Included is white balance settings, three quality settings going form basic to high, and various effects. Sequence shots and shooting in both portrait and landscape mode are also among the available extras.
The flash can be manually set to on, regardless of the light conditions, and used as fill flash. Naturally, an automatic mode for the flash is also available. In terms of performance however, it is sadly lacking. It is a little better than the LED flash on the Nokia 7900 Prism but fails to achieve decent quality pictures on most occasions.
That there is no dedicated button is another disappointment in operating the camera. It is quite uncomfortable to use the confirm button of the D-pad to operate the shutter.
Photo quality is average for a 2 megapixel camera;if everything is going your way, decent images can be produced, with less artifacts and more precise colors. Noise levels are high in areas with no detail like the sky for example.Since there is no autofocus, you'd rather not take a picture of a closely situated objects or text, as they will surely be blurred. To have any chance of reading captured text the photo has to be taken from a distance.
Finally, about the camera speed. Nokia 7900 is not nearly as slow as Nokia 5310 but isn't setting the world on fire, either. It won't take ages to save a picture but it is much slower than you will want it to be.
Yet another disappointment is the QCIF video capture resolution. Inadequate is the nicest thing I could call it, as video clips made in that resolution are simply unusable. That the length of videos in 3GP format is limited only by the free memory comes as no consolation. Zooming is also available but that cannot stop us from calling the video capturing a utter and total failure.
Connectivity: USB
Connectivity is another aspect of Nokia 7900 where more is expected. To be fair, the USB connectivity is seamless. After connecting the USB cable you are prompted to select the connection mode. You can then alternate modes by only a few keypresses. Mass storage is available, allowing your phone's memory to be accessed from a computer.
However, the microUSB is not as widely supported as the miniUSB, but as it seems to be more and more common. The Bluetooth is version 2.0 and supports the A2DP profile, which allows stereo wireless connection. The rest of the connectivity options include the network support - luckily Nokia 7900 Prism supports 3G for faster data transfers, as well as EDGE and GPRS should 3G support be missing.
Organizer: time-proven performance
The organizer of Nokia 7900 is excellent, as is to be expected in a S40 device. Month, week, and day views are available for the calendar. The week can start on your choice of Monday, Sunday, or Saturday. There events are broken into five types: reminder, meeting, call, birthday and memo. In addition, each event has its own specific fields, such as start and end time, type of alert with various advance intervals, daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly repetition.
There is also a handy to-do list manager that lets you categorize tasks in priority levels. Tasks can be alerted of, as well as marked off when accomplished. They are easily synched with the calendar application. Text notes are possible as well, limited to a huge 3000 characters.
Other organizing functions include a 60-minute voice recorder, a stopwatch, a countdown timer and a calculator. This calculator offers two different versions - a standard easier to use one and a scientific version with far more functions available. An elaborate loan calculator is also available.
Conclusion: to be unique
Overall, the Nokia 7900 offered quite pleasing performance. It was fun and easy to use and provided very good user experience in most cases.
Whether you should buy it or not is a tougher question.Without a doubt, the Nokia 6500 slide would be a much more reasonable buy in terms of value for money. If you are after better looks than the slide, perhaps the Nokia 6500 classic with its seamless case of anodized aluminum is the way to go. Certainly the price of the Classic is lower than that of the Prism.
However, for a certain segment of the marketplace knowing that you have the unique OLED screen is enough to make you stand out in the crowd. For some people, that is enough.
  
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