Review: Nokia's 7900 Prism with OLED Display and Changeable Backlighting

Nokia 7900 Prism

Nokia 7900 Prism

Nokia 7900 Prism

Nokia 7900 Prism

Nokia 7900 Prism

Introduction

The Nokia 7900 Prism is a fashion-oriented candybar cell phone designed to turn heads. Clad in all black with a diamond-cut design, this slick looking handset looks and feels phenomenal, but is it up to task of daily usage?

Physical Aspects

The Nokia 7900 Prism is a definitely a sexy handset. Coming in at 112mm x 45mm x 10.9mm (4.4" x 1.8" x 0.4"), it's small, slender, and feels good in your hand. The 7900 does have some slight heft, at 101g (3.6oz), but that serves as a nod to the high-quality feel, without feeling like a paperweight. The build quality is such as we've come to expect from Nokia's higher-end S40 handsets, with no creaks or squeaks from the phone during use. The 7900 Prism is available in a full black color scheme, with a newer Crystal Edition available with pink accents.

The 7900 Prism presents a very minimal amount of hardware buttons, with only a standard keypad, end and send buttons, left and right softkeys, and a d-pad available for input. The end key serves double duty as the power key, and there are neither volume buttons nor a camera key. The 7900 was designed to be fashionably minimalistic, and it does that quite nicely. The top of the device is where you'll find the multi-function micro-USB port, which is flanked by u-shaped light patterns that pulse to show when the device is in 'power save' mode.

The Nokia 7900 Prism uses its top-mounted micro-USB port for all connections, including charging, data transfer, and audio output via the included wired stereo headset. The front of the handset is where you'll find the 2" OLED display, which offers QVGA (240x320) pixel resolution. Thanks to the OLED technology, this display is extremely bright, easily readable outdoors, and doesn't drain the battery nearly as quickly as a standard TFT display would. I am really impressed with it and would love to see more handsets using OLED displays.

The back of the handset houses the 2 megapixel camera, the LED flash, and the phone's speaker. The entire backplate slides down to allow access to the battery and SIM card slot. The 7900 Prism does not have a removable memory card slot, but does have 1GB of internal storage available for music and other multimedia files. The back and sides of the handset are cut in a series of small triangles that not only look nice but also offer a more grippable surface. The front keypad features this same design, with each key being shaped like a triangle. I found this design to be very easy to use, albeit after a slight learning curve.