The World’s Most Affordable GPS phone – the Nokia 2710 Navigation Edition
The world's largest mobile phone maker Nokia just unveiled early this month a new Series 40 Symbian mobile phone slated for release in Europe in the second quarter of 2010. It's the Nokia 2710 Navigation Edition, todate the world's most affordable GPS handset. Yup, it's an entry level handset with GPS. We start to wonder if Nokia really knows its markets. While the feature is welcome, it's doubtful that the targeted low end market has the data coverage nor its users have the financial muscle to afford one.
Navigation and Communication in One
The Nokia 2710 comes as your basic quad band GSMGPRS/EDGE on 2G. As a budget handset, there's no 3G for high speed internet surfing or video calls. There's also no WiFi for hotspot surfing. But Nokia seems to have found better wisdom to give you instead a full GPS and A-GPS navigation feature with Nokia Maps 2.1 and a magnetometer for its digital compass.
You get turn-by-turn spoken navigational guidance and a lifetime license to use the feature. Nokia seems to be starting a trend to bring this feature down to the low end with an emerging trend among tech savvy users preferring to have location-based services from communication and navigation technologies merged into one mobile gadget. It's a bit doubtful though if this same trend can spread in the low end markets with the high cost of data coverage subscription in countries where the phone is targeted.
Basic Features
There's a 2.2-inch TFT LCD screen with QVGA resolution that can make it a challenge to look at maps or even play video despite its auto-rotate accelerometer function. The handset only comes at 60 MB of internal storage for the user. But you do get a microSD expansion capability for up to 16 GB.
The sales kit comes with 2 GB microSD. Data connectivity gets local high speed support from Bluetooth 2.1 with EDR and microUSB 2.0. Multimedia starts with media players that support the popular audio and video file playback codecs out there. It comes with stereo FM radio with RDS and a 3.5mm headphone jack for using high fidelity headphones.
Imaging is average with a 2 megapixel fixed focus camera with 4x digital Zoom, self timer and QVGA video recording at 15fps, You get up to 12.5 hours of talk time, up to 20 days of standby time and up to 6 hours of GPS navigation with its 1020 mAh lithium-ion battery when fully charged.
Software-wise, the handset uses the Symbian 6th edition S40 platform and user interface. It comes bundled with OVI suite of apps that include Ovi Share and Ovi Store. It uses the Opera Mini internet browser supporting audio and video streaming, WAP 2.0, xHTML as well as Flash Lite 3.0. Email with Ovi mail and instant messaging is also supported.
Availability
The Finnish mobile phone maker plans to have the Nokia 2710 navigation Edition available starting in Asia and Europe within the second quarter of 2010. That's a good 3 months away, so there's no rush to get one. It is expected to fetch a SIM-free price of '110 with a package that includes a car holder and car charger that should plainly qualify it as an in-car SatNav device.
