Nokia 700 review

The thin Nokia 700 is certainly a tiny smartphone, but is it packing much hardware in that skinny frame?

Nokia 700
Symbian Belle is simple and Android runs well on the slim smartphone

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The Symbian Belle interface on the Nokia 700 is a nice step up from previous versions, released not long after Symbian Anna came through as an update to ^3. It still has the handy pull-down notifications bar, with shortcuts to connections - including Wi-Fi - and Silent mode. We like.

All six of the home screens are customisable - including changing background - and the scrolling menu is easy arranged to your organisational liking. Either swap icons around manually or throw them into folders. Easy, and indeed a little droid-esque.

Belle is definitely the best Symbian version by far, actually helping showcase the Nokia hardware and multi-touch screen for once, instead of being its liability. Flicking sideways through home screens is fast, multitasking is no problem and there's no juddering when casual gaming, thanks to the decent 1GHz processor.

Navigating is pretty simple, and will definitely be familiar to anyone with a fairly current Nokia handset. The menu is well laid out without having to dive in and out of subfolders, unless you choose to organise it that way. And on this gorgeous ClearBlack screen, the colours pop beautifully. The contrast is sharp and, as you might expect, blacks are deep. It's truly a delicious screen, despite the small size.

It may be small, but the user interface is actually very good and easy to use, meaning the Nokia 700 will finally give the cheaper HTC smartphones such as the HTC Salsa and HTC Desire a bit of competition.

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