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Nokia Surge photos

Check out CNET's hands-on photo gallery of AT&T's budget-friendly messaging smartphone, the Nokia Surge.

Bonnie Cha
Bonnie Cha was a former chief correspondent for CNET Crave, covering every kind of tech toy imaginable (with a special obsession for robots and Star Wars-related stuff). When she's not scoping out stories, you can find her checking out live music or surfing in the chilly waters of Northern California.
Bonnie Cha
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1 of 10 James Martin/CNET

Nokia Surge

Specifically made for the North American market, the Nokia Surge 6790 is geared to a younger audience and offers easy access to social-networking sites and a full QWERTY keyboard for messaging.
2 of 10 James Martin/CNET

AT&T offering

The Surge is available from AT&T for $79.99 with a two-year contract, but you will also need to sign up for a qualifying data plan.
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Surge's display

On front and slightly off center is Surge's 2.4-inch QVGA display. It shows 16 million colors at a 320x240-pixel resolution, and while it's clear and bright enough, it's definitely not as sharp or vibrant as some of the recent smartphones we've seen. The built-in accelerometer, however, is quite responsive.
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4 of 10 James Martin/CNET

Pocket friendly

The Surge measures 3.8 inches tall by 2.2 inches wide by 0.6 inch thick and 4.3 ounces, so it's pretty easy to slip into a pants pocket. However, we weren't so fond of the plasticky and slick feel of the phone.
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Navigation controls

Surrounding the display are a handful of navigation controls and shortcuts. To the right (when the phone is held horizontally), you have the standard soft keys, Talk and End buttons, and a four-way directional keypad with a center select button, and below, there are shortcut buttons to the browser, main menu page, and messages.
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6 of 10 James Martin/CNET

QWERTY keyboard

To expose the full QWERTY keyboard, just push the screen to the right. The sliding mechanism is smooth and securely locks into place.
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7 of 10 James Martin/CNET

Happy thumbs

The Surge's keyboard buttons are nice and large and don't feel too squishy or flat, so the typing experience is great.
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Expandable memory

The Nokia Surge only has about 120MB of internal memory, but there's a microSD expansion slot located behind the battery cover that accepts up to 8GB cards.
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9 of 10 James Martin/CNET

Say cheese

On back, you'll find the Surge's 2-megapixel camera. There's no flash, but you get standard options, such as white balance settings, video recording, and a self-timer function.
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10 of 10 James Martin/CNET

Fuzzy quality

Picture quality wasn't particularly great, as images looked fuzzy and gray.

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