Digital Trends

NEC 525 July 8th, 2004 | by Ian Bell

The NEC 525 uses a 100K pixel camera and features a 2X digital zoom. You can choose to adjust the brightness level of the picture depending on your surroundings. There is no integrated flash, so you will need a good light source if you want to take a good picture. CCD opticals are notoriously bad performers in low-light situations. The internal screen on the 525 is gorgeous as long as you do not have a lot of light shining on it; there can be a horrendous glare if you are not careful. So while you are taking pictures with the camera, if you are in the direct sunlight and cannot see the screen that well, the pictures should still come out looking good. All pictures are taken in a 352x288 resolution regardless of the image quality. Once an image is taken you can choose to send it via e-mail, MMS or to save it to the phone's 1MB of storage. Most images are no larger than 8K in file size, so there should be enough internal memory. One thing we liked about the Motorola MPx200 phone is the memory expansion slot; it would have been nice if NEC added this to the 525.

Pictures taken with the 525's camera (actual size)

On the gaming side, as we mentioned earlier, the 525 has a processor dedicated specifically to the Java games. We were surprised to see that NEC is not bragging about this feature a whole lot, and we could not even find a mention on their website. It's a shame because this is a major selling point. While the 525 comes preloaded with a few games (Star Diversion is our favorite), you may have a difficult time finding your own games. The 525 uses DoJa (DoComo Java) apps straight from Japan instead of the more widely used J2ME games which are common here in the U.S. The games look and play great without any slowdown, and you can download more from the NEC website.

The battery performance on the 525 is relatively good; we were able to get just over 4 hours of talk time out of the 800mAh battery and about 7 days of standby. 800mAh is a huge battery for a phone (the Gateway 200XL laptop comes with a 1000mAh battery), but you have to keep in mind that the high-def screen is sure to suck up the juice.

Conclusion

NEC has a wonderful phone on their hands and we are curious as to why they are not putting the resources behind it to push a stronger marketing effort. The phone reception is certainly above average and because the 525 uses two processors, phonebook and menu navigation is extremely fast and easy to use.

On the downside, the volume controls take a while to get used to and the high-resolution screens are prone to wash out in direct sunlight, but other than those downfalls, the NEC 525 is a solid phone. That being said, this is not a small phone by any means so those willing to give up features for a more petite phone should look elsewhere. The NEC 525 is sure to garner a lot of looks, and those looking for a multimedia phone will find the 525 should feed their digital hunger.