Launched in Hong Kong November of this year, the N7380 is purportedly an improved version of its predecessor, the Nokia 7280.

Mind you, this is a phone you don’t want to use for texting long messages or sending MMS. It is, after all, a fashion phone meant to impress friends with its sleek packaging and luxurious leather cover.

Clearly, Nokia designed this phone with the “well-heeled” in mind.

However, this is not to say that the N7380 is an altogether useless gadget.

In fact, this phone is replete with cool features and Nokia has quite successfully merged technology with design, form with function… and a few improvements added in.

For one, Nokia scrapped the “slide up” design of the N7280 which conceals the lens of the phone. With the new version, the 2-megapixel camera lens was placed on the back as well as a flash just beside the lens.

A SIM-card holder is inconspicuously placed on the left lateral face of the phone which is a neat idea since the car slot appears like it’s part of the whole design.

With a phone as small as an MP3 player, it is impossible to squeeze in a removable battery pack which explains why this unit has a built-in 700mAh Bl-8N battery.

Small as it is, Nokia claims that the phone works for 240 hours in stand-by mode (I have yet to experience this myself) with 3 hours talk time. Full charging of battery takes about one hour and 10 minutes.

I mentioned earlier that the N7380 (same with the N7280) is not for texting… not unless you have the luxury of time to get used to its Navy Wheel, the only means to navigate all the features including SMS.

In the absence of a keypad, rings of rubber (which playfully light up during a call) make up the Navy Wheel and operate by working your thumb in a clockwise direction.

As such, entering a phone number, for instance, takes longer than when you do it with a normal phone.

I suggest that the user should use a PC when transferring all contact information in the phonebook since it’s more convenient and faster.

Another feature of this phone is a media player which, in truth, is a simplified player for musical files.

The phone has up to 52.4MB internal memory shared between call melodies, recorded voice, files and photos thus using it as an MP3 player with the intention of storing more than a hundred songs is asking for the impossible.

Nonetheless, the radio feature compensates for this flaw. One is given the option to listen to FM stations using the headset or switch on to “loudspeaker” mode.

The loudspeaker however does not work unless the headset is connected to the phone since this piece of cable acts as the antenna that picks up radio signals. Either way, a headset is essential for this feature to function properly, and it saves up to 20 FM stations.

Another advantage of this phone is its realized voice dialing feature which doesn’t require the user to add a pre-recorded voice tag in phonebook entries unlike in other phones with the similar spec.

Surprisingly, the phone can process and “read” voice commands without preliminary training.

In such case when the system does not recognize the voice for a certain command, the phone displays a list of other possible commands which sounds like that of the voice.

The unit is likewise packed with other specs such as an Organizer, To-do list, Notes, Alarm Clock, Video, WAP browser which can view xHTML pages, a Phonebook that can store up to 1000 names and Bluetooth for its interconnectivity, a  2-megapixel camera and  65K TFT color display.