The Nokia 7900 Crystal Prism is a fashion phone with a truly unique style the likes we haven’t seen anywhere else. The Crystal Prism is special edition of the 7900 Prism phone that has been designed in partnership with French designer Frederique Daubal who designed special accessories and wallpapers especially for the Crystal Prism. Like most of Nokia’s other model running Nokia’s S40 5th Edition, the OS on the Nokia Prism is easy to use, fast and responsive. The 7900 also features an OLED 240×320 display that is really easy on the eyes, very colorful and is very much a pleasure to use. It even makes watching videos and viewing pictures bare-able despite the screen being relatively small for that sort of thing.

Multimedia:
Listening to music with the supplied earphones is a pleasant experience with good sound quality. The phone also supports Bluetooth with A2DP so alternatively you could pair with a wireless pair of headphones. The music player on the phone supports MP3/AAC/eAAC+/WMA formats with skins and album art, is compatible with windows media player, and promises to last for up to 9 hours. The phone has 1GB of internal memory which makes the Prism a capable music phone as well. As for video playback, the Crystal Prism supports a nice selection of QCIF, 3GPP, H.263, and MPEG-4 codecs and formats. Playback was smooth, but it’s no iPod Touch experience.

Camera:
Inside the Crystal Prism is a 2 megapixel camera which takes pictures that are ok, pretty much on par with your standard camera phone photography. Notably the camera does have a 8x digital zoom and even a flash, which many phones do lack. The phone is also capable of recording “DVD Quality” video using the H.264 codec. Again, the quality of the video recording was pretty average, really more suitable for outdoors where there is sunlight. DVD quality really means that it is high res enough to be put on a DVD without distortion. Unfortunately there is no dedicated camera button, so taking a photo will mean that you have to fumble through menus first. However, that isn’t a deal breaker for me personally. You have to remember that this is a fashion phone, not a Nokia N95 power machine. And as a fashion phone, it is overall well rounded.

Applications:
Although the 7900 Crystal Prism is a long call from a smartphone, it does sport a nice feature set and even comes preloaded with great mobile apps like Yahoo Go and Widsets. The phone also comes with standard apps like an alarm clock, stopwatch, a calculator and you a few good games like Golf Tour and Snake III. Of course you can always download more at your leisure.

The 7900 Crystal Prism has Opera Mini running on it which is pretty much the best web surfing experience you can get on a non-smartphone. The phone is 3G capable so if you have access to 3G service, browsing is sure to be a good experience. Unfortunately we tested it on T-mobile’s network which is limited to Edge and complex web sites did take a while to load. But at least you aren’t limited to old fashioned WAP! The 7900 Crystal Prism also supports SMS, MMS and Email (POP/IMAP/SMTP). This ain’t no Blackberry service but it does the job well and pulls each of your email accounts in to a separate box.

What’s in the box:
Inside the box, headphones are included as well as a matching shimmery purple carrying case, a poster, and a matching scarf. Yes, a scarf / shawl / bandanna of a sort - Looks like they went all out.

Call Quality:
Reception on the 7900 Crystal Prism was spectacular. In areas where my iPhone could only pick up one bar or no bars at all, the Prism had full bars. Call quality was very good as well. Even the speakerphone quality is great. I was told by people on the other end of the line that they couldn’t tell the difference when I was on or off the speakerphone. Unfortunately the Prism lacks dedicated volume buttons which you do miss when you need to quickly change the volume according to the environment. Battery life was also good. The phone lasted for a few days, albeit with relatively light use. The phone is Quadband GSM and supports wCDMA which means it will work well as a phone for globe trotters.

Construction:
The phone is slim, and weighs just the right amount at at 101 grams 93.6 ounces), making it comfortable to hold and carry around. Unfortunately the keypad on the 7900 is a bit disorienting because the keys are made of triangular shapes. However it’s really not that bad and is far from the worst keypad we’ve ever used, it just takes a bit getting used too. I guess you can say it’s the price you pay for fashion, since its very original keypad layout is done in such a way to match the unique design of the phone.
We do have another gripe with the construction of the phone. While the phone does appear to be well made overall, removing the battery and sim card proved to be an arduous chore. Once you slip in the battery and sim card, you can’t remove the sim card without removing the battery first. And it gets worse - removing the battery is super frustrating. There is no way to easily slip it out. We had to use a thin piece of plastic to pluck it out whilst holding it over a mattress so that the battery would land on a soft surface.

Special Features:
The 7900 Crystal Prism boasts a special feature called “living wallpaper” which is wallpaper that is supposed to change dynamically according to the time of day, battery life and signal strength which is supposed to result in a unique color scheme for each individual phone. We weren’t so impressed with this feature but we loved its special keypad backlighting feature which lets you choose from 49 colors. Match the keypad color with wallpaper and you have one hot fashionista phone.

Pricing:
The Nokia 7900 Crystal Prism is somewhat pricey at around $499 to $550 USD. Unfortunately we don’t see it available yet in many US stores - even ones that sell unlocked phones and imports.

Conclusion:
The Nokia 7900 Crystal Prism is a well rounded fashion phone that with the exception of the somewhat oddly designed keyboard and lack of dedicated volume and camera buttons, doesn’t sacrifice much form over function. For those looking for a leisure phone for nights out on the town, or those not in to smartphones but you value good looks and a solid feature set, we’re confident that you’ll be happy with the Nokia 7900 Crystal Prism.

The Good: Very stylish, easy to use phone, well rounded feature set, great reception
The Bad: Unique keypad layout is a bit disorienting, Removing the battery and SIM Card is way too difficult, lack of dedicated volume and camera buttons