There is no denying it. The Nokia 7900 Prism cellphone is a head-turner...in both good ways and bad.

Friends adored its sheer black casing, while colleagues gawked in horror at the strange-looking prism-shaped keypad.

In the words of a colleague, the phone is ugly with a capital U.

But love or hate the prism design, the beauty of the device really lies in its size. It is just a tad longer than a standard name card.

The glossy black shell is also really pretty and the hot pink keypad light gives the gadget an edge.

In the event that you want to match the colours of the keypad to suit your outfit, this gadget also lets you pick and choose from a whopping 49 shades. Very impressive!

True to the phone's minimalist look, the device is very sleek - there is only one USB port and it is hidden away at the top edge of the gadget.

Nokia has even banished a protruding Power button, using the standard End Call button as the power switch instead. This caused some confusion initially, but I got used to it quite quickly.

But as there is only one USB port, you cannot plug in your headset to chill to U2, for example, while charging the phone, which is rather annoying.

On the features front, the 7900 holds its own weight. Boasting a two-mega- pixel and 8x digital zoom camera, most of the shots were sharp and clear.

This quadband handset also supports 3G and Bluetooth to let the phone connect to other gadgets easily.

Other standard cellphone functions like a Web browser, music player and two-megapixel camera are also found here.

The sound quality of the gadget is impressive - listening to the band Oasis was a blast.

The downside though, is that rocking to tracks using the stereo widening feature is terrible as the distortion and static were strikingly obvious - very unlike the surround sound effect that I was expecting.

Nokia has taken away the expandable memory card slot, something that would have been useful for those who want to jam their entire music library into their cellphones.

Also, the one-touch volume control buttons usually found on the edges of most cellphones, are missing. Again, annoying, especially when you want to up the music volume on the fly.

FINAL SAY

The phone's design will either earn you smiles or frowns. But camera phone features are decent, and will probably meet the demands of most.

Nokia 7900 Prism
» Price: $768 (without operator plan)
» Get it from authorised dealers