Nokia 7500 Prism

Conventional, Candy-bar, two words oft used to describe what a majority of cellphones look like. Well the Nokia Prism 7500 is a candy-bar phone, but with a twist. My first opinion was that this is a phone designed for the woman who loves to flaunt the latest fashion accessory.

With triangular keys all over, cropped corners at the bottom and an overall beveled shape-the Prism seems to want to reduce right angles at any cost. Flip the phone over and you'll see the 2 megapixel camera and the LED flash, also peeping through a triangular opening. A downer to the good design of the device is the glossy surface which is quite prone to fingerprints and smudges.

For that little dash of customization and color matching the band on the sides of the phone is interchangeable and you get three colors in the box: blue, green and pink. The clear and bright 2-inch TFT screen was quite good to play all those pre-loaded Java games on. The music player was good too, with equalization options and a darn good loudspeaker. Even the supplied earphones were good, though I would have liked to have the option to use my own earphones. This functionality can be enabled by buying the adapter that comes bundled with the Nokia music edition devices.

The camera didn't impress me much, either in photo or video mode. The photos were, generally speaking, a lot worse than what one has come to expect from newer 2 megapixel camera phones. There was a new pre-loaded app that I liked very much-the size convertor. It can help with converting clothes and shoe sizes according to different standards all over the globe. You also get Bluetooth, 30 MB internal memory and thankfully, a microSD slot for expansion next to the SIM card (though not hot swappable).

Battery life was a tad less at about 2.5 hours (continuous talk-time), which probably means that you'll have to charge it everyday and you should steer clear if you're a heavy user. But if you're someone who wants a bit of innovative design in an easy-to-use device, then this is for you.