Nokia 7380 review

The biggest upgrade from the Nokia 7280 to the Nokia 7380 is the 2-megapixel camera, a far cry from the 7280's VGA camera. Not only does it have up to 4X zoom, it even has a flash and a self-timer function. You can also select up to four image sizes (320x240, 800x600, 1,152x864, and 1,600x1,200), three different image-quality settings (High, Normal, and Basic), and three different modes (standard, portrait, and night); name image titles on the fly; and choose whether to have a shutter sound. Despite the higher image quality, it was difficult to note the difference when capturing an image because of the phone's screen size. As mentioned, the camera can also record video at 176x144 pixels in 3GP format. Resulting images were surprisingly clear and detailed for a camera phone, and the captured videos were good enough, considering its low resolution.

A new feature on the Nokia 7380 is the addition of a music player that supports MP3 and AAC file formats. While you can't create your own playlists, the track list is easily accessible, and you can place it on shuffle and repeat. There's also a unique feature that lets you play audio via a Bluetooth connection to an external audio device, though we don't see much use to this. Music can be uploaded to the phone via software or via music downloads if the service provider supports it. However, the phone's meager 52MB of memory barely holds the images and videos, so there's probably not enough room on the phone to store more than one or two songs, thus making the music player fairly useless. The Nokia 7380 also features radio functionality, along with the ability to set preset stations.

While there aren't any games on the Nokia 7380, it's rife with personalization options. Not only can you choose from seven themes and eight different color schemes, there are also 11 included wallpaper patterns, with an option to download more. You can change the tone settings for message alerts, incoming calls, warning alerts, alarms, and the keypad tone volume. You can also activate a light-effects setting, which makes the middle OK button flicker occasionally.

We tested the triband (GSM 850/1800/1900; GPRS) Nokia 7380 world phone with Cingular in the San Francisco Bay Area. Call quality was good, and even though callers on the other line knew we were on a cell phone, the sound was still crystal clear, as was music sound quality. The speakerphone was nice and loud too.

As for battery life, we got 2 hours of talk time on a single charge, compared with the rated time of 1.5 hours. The rated standby time is three days; we came away with a solid five days. According to the FCC, the Nokia 7380 has a digital SAR rating of 0.83 watts per kilogram.