Nokia Surge

Little could we have imagined when we first created the Budget Cell Phone category at TopTenREVIEWS that we’d be including a genuine, no-kidding smartphone on the list. But here it is, the Nokia Surge. While it certainly won’t gain the broad following enjoyed by Apple’s iPhone, garner the enterprise respect of BlackBerries or earn a place among harbingers of the future afforded to Google’s Android OS based phones, it is a fully functional smartphone in every sense of the word. It’s not likely to appear at many corporate board meetings…nor was it intended to…but for consumers who want more functionality than the typical messaging centric phone at a very low price, the Nokia Surge is well worth consideration.

Standout Features

• Slide out full QWERTY keyboard
• Full HTML web browser
• 3G, GPS and Bluetooth
• Good media player

 

The Nokia Surge has the general look of most of today’s touchscreen cell phones, i.e. a rather bare face with a small number of navigation buttons that is dominated by a relatively large screen. Admittedly that screen at 2.4 inches, measured diagonally, is pretty small by current standards and its 320 x 240 pixel resolution is on the weak side. But the big surprise is that it isn’t a touchscreen. Now we’re not saying that a touchscreen is the only way to go. Quite the contrary…many of the best smartphones don’t have a touchscreen. Still, it’s a surprise given the Surge’s appearance. Instead, there’s a pretty reasonable physical QWERT keyboard that slides out. Accelerometer equipped, the display on the screen changes from portrait to landscape when the phone is rotated.

Probably the biggest downfall of the Surge is, strangely enough, the way one places a simple phone call. Now if the number being called is in the address book everything is fine. Just select it from the address book with the phone in the portrait orientation. Things get interesting, read: awkward, when calling a number that isn’t in the address book. Doing so requires opening the keyboard and dialing the number from the QWERTY keyboard. Making the process a bit worse is that the rather basic keyboard doesn’t have dedicated number keys so dialing is from keys that are shared with letters. Press the send button on the phones face and slide the keyboard closed and you’re set. An unfortunate design to say the least.
On the other hand, the keyboard is reasonably spacious for a rather small device with well separated, responsive keys. It makes it easy to communicate via email, text (SMS) and multimedia (MMS) messaging as well as instant messages. Unlike most budget phones, not to many pricier ones, the Nokia Surge supports business email through MS Exchange in addition to all the popular personal email services.
The phone also comes with a full HTML web browser, putting it ahead of some great smartphones and connecting on AT&T’s 3G network renders web pages in a reasonably snappy manner. Display on the smallish screen isn’t the greatest but it isn’t catastrophic. The Surge operates on the aging Symbian S60 OS and seems pretty antiquated alongside the current crop of smartphones. Data can be transferred to and from a computer via a micro USB connection but, in another irritating twist, that doesn’t charge the phone. That requires a tiny, proprietary Nokia jack.
In the multimedia world, the Nokia Surge holds its own with many better known competitors. It has a 2.0-megapixel camera with 4x zoom but no flash. Picture quality seems to vary greatly from one shot to another but, interestingly, video recording seems somewhat better and more consistent. The phone has 128MB of integrated memory which can be expanded to 8GB with a microSD card.
The music player isn’t half bad and can be used while multitasking with other applications; however, accessing controls, except volume, does require navigating to the music screen since there aren’t any separate controls. The device also features access to both FM and XM radio for streaming content. Unfortunately, there’s only a non-standard 2.5mm headphone jack but, on the up side, stereo Bluetooth is available for wireless headphone use.
Among the many surprises on this phone is the presence of a built-in GPS/a-GPS receiver. Paired with AT&T Navigator, that affords voice guided turn-by-turn driving directions but, of course, requires a monthly subscription.

Summary:

The Nokia Surge packs an awful lot of features for a very low price. It’s not a competitor for the best of the smartphones on the market but it offers a terrific alternative for consumers who want more capability than the typical message oriented phone. It has several irritating shortfalls but if you’re looking phone that packs a lot of bang for the buck, the Surge is well worth considering.