Nokia 7705 Twist (Verizon)

Nokia 7705 Twist (Verizon) uses Verizon's standard menu system. That means it's familiar, slow, and kludgy, and requires too many key presses for most tasks. The Polaris 6.1 browser displayed HTML pages well given the smallish LCD. But pages were stiff and slow to navigate using the on screen cursor, and the USA Today home page took more than two minutes to load fully. Verizon loads its instant messaging applications, which hooks into AIM, Windows Live, and Yahoo Messenger accounts, but counts each transmission as a text message on your bill.

For e-mail, the Twist connects to Web and ISP accounts, and offers RemoSync for corporate messaging; all cost extra monthly fees, which is a disappointment. The A-GPS radio works with VZ Navigator 4.5 for voice enabled, turn by turn directions. The Twist locked onto my position quickly and spoke loudly and clearly a surprise given the Twist's poor speakerphone performance. You can also use Nokia 7705 Twist (Verizon) as a laptop modem with the appropriate Broadband Connect plan.

The non-standard 2.5 mm headphone jack was a downer. At least there's a side mounted microSD card slot my 16GB SanDisk card worked fine, and there's 119MB of on board memory as well. Verizon's music player was difficult to navigate, with too many button presses required to cue up songs, and the usual annoying requirement that everything is in one specific folder on a microSD card. AAC, MP3, and WMA tracks sounded excessively bright and tinny on a paired set of Motorola S9-HD Bluetooth headphones.

Nokia 7705 Twist (Verizon) displayed album art when available. Sometimes, incredibly loud, ear piercing static occurred whenever it stopped or restarted tracks over the S9-HDs and .3GP videos played back OK, though I heard distorted audio on one pass. Stopping and restarting the video seemed to fix it, although it never quite sounded 100 percent clean. V CAST videos were poorly organized, tough to sift through, and looked pixelated, but played smoothly enough provided stucked with the standard thumbnail sized window.

You can also sign up for V CAST Music with Rhapsody for subscription and over the air music downloads. The 3 megapixel camera was a disaster. The slow shutter speed, poor resolution, and lack of detail contributed to a series of useless photos that were either too dark (flash off, or flash on in a dark room) or completely blown out (well lit indoor room, flash off). Recorded videos were useless at 176 by 144 pixel resolution. Moving pictures to and from an SD card was clunkier than it should have been, and changing the default storage location for pictures was buried in the phone's main settings tree instead of in the camera applications.