Nokia 3650

Nokia has always pushed the boundaries with its phones but with the 3650 smartphone you would be forgiven for thinking that it has taken a couple of steps back.

The manufacturer has ditched the conventional keypad layout for a circular layout that mimics old telephones. However, this works surprisingly well and didn't take us long to get used to.

As with most new phones, the 3650 isn't just about making voice calls. Nokia has built this handset around the Symbian operating system and packed it full of features and applications.

These include a contacts book, calendar, to-do list, email and image management software.

Thanks to the provided Desktop software, you can hook up the phone to your PC and synchronise all of your data or install new applications.

As with most new smartphones, the 3650 comes with a digital camera. In this case, it's mounted on the underside of the phone and is capable of taking pictures at a resolution of 640 x 480.

The camera can also be used for recording short videos and playing them back on the built-in copy of RealOne player.

Many picture phones suffer from a lack of memory to store all the images you take and applications you add, but not the 3650 which has 3.4MB of internal memory and an MMC slot. Nokia is even kind enough to supply a 16MB card with the phone.

The 4,096-colour screen displays images and videos very nicely in a relatively large area (176 x 208 pixels) and the image viewer is well constructed too.

In fact, considering there are so many applications, menus and options, Nokia has done a good job of making it easy to find your way around this phone, thanks to careful attention to on-screen menus and the use of plenty of buttons, including a nice directional cursor.

But note that the phone is relatively large and weighs 130g. At £292, this is an expensive mobile phone but, if you are a fan of picture messaging and don't mind the bulk, it's worth a look.

Others should be careful, as if it looks like a bargain, you may end up getting charged a king's ransom for picture messaging.

Contact: Nokia 0870 500 3110
www.nokia.co.uk

Also consider: Orange SPV
A good stab at combining a phone with a handheld computer. £200 - Worth it.