Nokia N70 Long Term Road Test

There are many glowing reviews about the Nokia N70 either straight out of the box or just from the feature lists. I feel that a long term test is appropriate because in my history of mobile phones it is the small irritating things which stack up to make a "I'll never buy a XXX phone again" case. And believe me, I've bought several phones that held high promises, but have disappointed in the extreme. As long as the buying experience is comparing feature lists, looking at a mock up nailed to the wall and chats at the pub (where there is a tendency to gloss over poor purchases) the only way to avoid the trap again is to veto the maker.

Ok, back to the N70. This is a great phone. If you're not rushing to the shop now then you are surely holding out for the N80, N90 or beyond. Right? Sure. Well I hope this posting will see you make that decision with realistic expectations.

The N70 was great out of the box. It worked and there were enough toys bundled in to consume hours. There were no glaring user experience niggles- you know, the ones that really grate.

Now our relationship has cruised through the 100 hours of calls marker and there have been some wobbles creeping in. First of all, a Vivaldi track downloaded from my operator caused upset. This was not one of my first downloads by any stretch of the imagination, but every time I play it, after several minutes the phone has convulsions. The music stops, the screen goes blank and you are forced into a reboot. Odd.

The next irritation came last week when a bunch of preinstalled office apps (Adobe reader and the apps used to edit Word, Powerpoint and Excel files) just disappeared. I wondered if they had been on a limited time trial but low and behold they reappeared this morning. Very odd.

My 3rd quibble is that I started having network connection trouble- SIM rejection messages, no signal and no network messages. Really very odd.

My final moan is that the reception isn't great and seems to drop out during calls more regularly than my last phone. Whether this is symptomatic of 'overheating' or early 3G technology is unclear. Extremely odd.

Anyway, I'll conclude by saying that despite all this, you'd have to prise this phone out of my hand if you want to take it back. It's still a marvel, despite it's flaws.

Tags: technology, telephony, mobile, 3G, Nokia, N70, review