Sum and Substance:

Thumbs Up:

Nothing in particular.

Thumbs Down:

Cheap plastic feel, bad quality speakerphone.

Inside the Trunk:

Technology: CDMA2000 1X
Band: CDMA2000 1X 1900/800
Phone design: Clamshell
Caller ID: Yes
Other features: Bluetooth, camera.

The Whiz Kid Speaks:

The 2 inch display of the Nokia 2705 Shade has a 176 x 220 pixels resolution and 18-bit (262000 Colors) while the display on the lid has 128 x 160 pixels resolution. The phone has 1000 memory for storing contacts.

The 1.3 mega pixel camera of the phone can take resolutions of 160 x 120 , 320 x 240 , 640 x 480 , 1280 x 960. It has 4x digital zoom. Special effects for the camera are black & white, antique, normal, negative. The phone has a 2.5 mm head phone jack, micro-USB port on the sides. The phone is 64 MB internal memory.

Lithium ion battery of the phone has talk time of 300 minutes and the stand by time is 360 hours. Ringtones of the phone are stored in formats of WMA, MP3, AAC and WAV.
Recognized video formats are MPEG-4 H.263 video and AMR audio H.264 RealVideo and RealAudio (RealMedia) and WMV (Windows Media Video)

Other features include – stopwatch, calculator, reminder, calendar, alarm clock, currency converter. You can download games, applications and ring tones on the phone.

Razzle Dazzle:

Nokia 2705 Shade is a typical clamshell phone and it definitely isn’t downright sexy material. We would have appreciated if Nokia made out better looking phones. The phone is a bit tiny though, so it will fit in your hand pretty well, but there is a cheap plastic feel on the exteriors. We doubt if this phone can take much shocks, it doesn’t feel sturdy at all. You need to take very good care of this if you are planning to buy this. The tiny phone will go well in your pocket and will occupy very little space.

Inside Dope:

Nokia haven’t been too busy in the market, it is been a while since they launched a high end phone. If you are a Nokia fan, there is nothing much exciting for you, so you will have to do with these entry level phones like Nokia 2705 Shade.

The Nokia 2705 Shade doesn’t have much of a tech drooling from it is a pretty basic phone for calling and sending text messages.

This is a clamshell phone, so it has two displays on it, the other one being on the lid. The display on the front has a resolution of 160×128 pixels and has 262,144 colors. The lid display will do everything which you expect from an external display. It has photo caller ID and it is also a view finder for images of self-portrait.

The display inside the Nokia 2705 Shade is two inch big and has a resolution of 220×176 pixels and 262,144 colors. The display is a little dull and Nokia could have done better. The display is good and text can be read easily from the screen, but it does sound a bit off color. You can change the font color and font size and also the backlighting time. You can also change the wallpaper, display themes, banners and formats for clocks.

The Nokia 2705 Shade opens up to reveal a keyboard, which has keys, lied quite flat on the surface. There is a four way directional button, two soft keys, speakerphone button, a camera button for clicking pictures, call and call end key, the clear key and below these are the numeric keypad buttons. You can assign four short cuts to the applications that you use the most for the four way directional keypad. The keypad is good for typing but it has the cheap plastic feel on it. You won’t complain when typing much in terms of ergonomics but the build quality could have been better.

The Nokia 2705 Shade has a generous 1000 memory phone book for storing your contacts. A single entry can take two email addresses and four phone numbers. We were surprised to see lack of room for entries such as company name and address, birthday, notes, etc which most of the Nokia phones are known to posses. Don’t forget the SIM card can store additional 250 contacts. You can pair a contact with a photo and you can also give a unique caller ID to a contact. There are 12 polyphonic ring tones for you to choose from.

Other features on the Nokia 2705 Shade include text and multimedia messaging; vibrate mode, calculator, alarm clock, calendar, stopwatch, notepad and world clock. On the sides of the phone there is a 2.5 mm phone jack and port for Micro-USB.

There is a 1.3 mega pixel camera on the lid of the Nokia 2705 Shade which takes below average photos. We do understand that this is a basic phone but Nokia could have put at least a 2 mega pixel camera. The highest resolution that the camera can achieve is 1,280×960 and the lowest is 160×120. There are options for camera such as brightness meter, self-timer, three color effects, four white balance modes, three shutter sounds and silent option. The camera is just for clicking pictures and it can’t shoot videos. You can store the photographs that you have shot in the 64 MB internal memory of the phone.

The Nokia 2705 Shade doesn’t come with any built in games but you can download some if you want from Verizon. We didn’t try downloading any titles but we think this entry level phone is only for light gamming. Other advanced features on the phone include voice commands and dialing, Verizon chat, USB cable support, voice recorder and POP3 connectivity. You can also use this phone as a modem to connect to the internet and VZ navigator is available but it comes at a price.

The Nokia 2705 Shade was tested for call quality and it is acceptable. The phone volume is loud enough and you can hear quite clearly in places with noises in the background. We could the voice clearly and our friends could also hear us quite well. Speaker phone calls were of poor quality as compared to other models. We know that speaker phone attracts a lot of background noise but the quality was pretty bad even after ignoring that. Voice will also distort if you push the volume to the highest level.

Nokia says that the 2705 Shade can give five hours of talk time on a single charge and 15 days of stand by time.

Nitty Gritty:

Nokia 2705 Shade is good for people who need a phone just for talking and sending text messages but it doesn’t have any of those high end features. We wouldn’t recommend this camera even in the entry level phone range owing to its poor exteriors. They are very delicate and can break easily if not handled with care.

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