Nokia 7260

Discontinued
9th September 2004

You'll either love or hate the Nokia 7260, and we'll be honest with you..  we hate it. Had the 7260 been launched by itself and without the supporting 7270 and 7280 models, we would say that the 7260 is so bad that it would have a negative impact on Nokia's share price.

Where shall we start? Well, let's talk about the looks. Nokia claim that the 7260's design is "art deco meets high tech" or something, but to be honest we think that it's a complete mess. And with a phone this poorly specified from a technical point of view, this is something you really, really  don't want to draw people's attention to.. it's like putting white wall tyres on a Yugo.

Let's look at the 7260's technical specifications next. Well, that screen is still only 128x128 pixels, and on the back in a VGA resolution camera.  In addition it has a FM radio and that's about it. This is a terrible specification and Nokia should be embarrased about releasing such a low-tech phone into their 7000 series. Perhaps the designers of the Nokia 7260 have still not yet realised that it's 2004?

Other specifications are pretty bland too. As you'd expect it's a tri-band GSM phone with GPRS and Java. The phone has an XHTML browser, email support and supports MMS. One of the big selling points of the Nokia 7260 is that it has a shoe size converter. Oh yes, it has Digital Rights Management (DRM) built in, to stop you having any illegal fun with downloaded media.. which is odd, because the 7260 doesn't support MP3s or really any other media playback of note. In any case, the poor quality screen will make an applications difficult to use, so it's probably best sticking to making phone calls in a dark corner where nobody can see you.

The Nokia 7260 weighs 92 grams and measures 105x45x21 mm, so it's not particularly small or light, but at least you won't hurt your back when you chuck it in the bin. Talktime is up to 3 hours with 14 days standby.

In our view this is a truly terrible handset. Luckily for Nokia they can bury this in PR terms because they've announced the rather good 9300, the competent 7270 and the radical 7280 at the same time. Although photographs of the 7260 have been circulating for a while, many people had written the phone off as a design concept that would never reach production. What a pity it did. Should you lose your mind and actually want to buy one, then the Nokia 7260 will be available in the fourth quarter of 2004.

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