Despite its distinct orientation towards the mass market, Nokia 7610 Supernova has no direct competitors, which is a very intriguing combination. Talking in advance let's note out that the solution is rather controversial; yet an active advertising campaign planned for Supernova handsets and a scarce number of highly functional fashion slider models from other manufacturers are the two factor that are going to overcome any possible criticism and further bring the product to the top of popularity. Nokia now have at their disposal a full set of variations of the same platform: 5610 stands for music, 6500 Slide stands for business, 7610 now stands for fashion. Marketing seen in action.

Design and Ergonomics

Nokia 7610 Supernova is a mid-sized, lightweight slider, entirely made of plastic. Two color versions are available ?the dark and the bright ones, each coming with two changeable panels. The dark variant comes with blue and turquoise panels, the bright ?with blue and red ones. These the Xpress-on panels, a standard element of design customization which has been used by Nokia in a number of earlier products. The moment is especially actual for a youth audience. Theme Colourizer is the company's next move catering to the youth tastes. It changes the splash screen and Navi backlight to match a specified color. This unique feature will be discussed a bit further in a special section of this article.

The style of Supernova's design is intentionally kept very neutral. It is likely to attract both female and male audiences. Unfortunately the compromises, simplifications and concessions introduced to reach this goal make the handset's exterior look a bit plain, at least too plain for a top-ranking fashion-oriented solution. The only original thing around is the mirrorlike pieces reminiscent of Sony Ericsson's emotive solutions. However even these elements look slightly out of place. 

The side edges of the casing host a number of slots and buttons. The hardware platform of 6500 Slide and 5610 imposes a number of unfortunate limitations like a 2.5 non-standard headset jack, the storage expansion slot hidden under the battery cover and so on. None of these is critical though, especially in a fashion phone. On the upper edge, neighboring the headset jack, the power button and the charger jack are located. The right edge hosts a two-position camera button, the volume rocker and the player button (pressing this will de-pause and pause the current track. The left edge has a microUSB slot covered with a protective flap.

The speaker is sunk into the back surface, though sound distortions are minimal even if the phone rests on a surface. The sound volume is enough to hear from a distance, so no problems on this front. The upper part of the slider's bottom is the habitual residence of the camera lens. It is left unprotected, so careful handling is strongly advisable. Building the camera into the top part of the slider would have been a more reasonable decision, apparently.

Theme Colorise

 function was briefly mentioned above, but this section of the article dwells on the topic more thoroughly. The feature is simple yet very effective, especially as seen by the female half of the audience - now it's a matter of seconds to make your phone fit the color of your evening dress or handbag.

Here's how it works. The right virtual button on the main screen conjures up the primary menu of the application. For a couple of seconds, you see a splash screen which can be skipped by pressing OK when it appears but can't be totally gotten rid of in the options.

After that, you find yourself with a viewfinder window and a semi-circular palette displaying different shades of the currently selected color, a total of sixteen. This is done dynamically, so you don't have to press the shoot button each time you want to update this palette.

Once you have captured the required colors, a second push of the shoot button confirms the choice, after which you are prompted to select one of the three effects: Soundflora, Waves, Globetrotter. Keeping the chosen palette intact, each of this effect mixes the colors in a unique way.

In about 99% of cases the color recognition is done correctly, the application never lags during data processing. This application may have varying grades of importance to different people, but personally the male testers of Smape.com considered it a one-shot toy. This goes contrary to our girlfriends' opinion - they spent a lot of time toying around, trying to find color matches for their latest wardrobe additions.

Not only the menus and the main screen are affected by Theme Colorise, but the backlight color of the navigation button as well. Unfortunately the keypad remains unaffected, which in a way breaks the perfection. Still a great fun for the fair sex.