NEC 343i

...that's the trouble with the NEC 343i. When my contract with Three came up for renewal I wanted to move towards Pay As You Go (simply because I just don't use the phone in that way any more) and I wanted to move away from the slightly chunky, uber-complicated Motorola E1000 that I was using. Looking around on the market for something suitable to my needs, I eventually came across the NEC 343i.

God it's good looking, in a way that reminds ...
...their predictive text software, but NEC are obviously down there with them for making texting as complicated as they can. The system just doesn't feel * natural * when it comes to using it, even though it looks relatively simple to start with. Often, typing in a word will result in the phone not recognising it, even if it is a relatively straight-forward lexeme from the English language. Then you have to spell that word and, despite it being mid-sentence, ... more

There's an element of me that really wants you to like this mobile phone. I want to tell you how great it is, how easy it is to use, how the features are exceptional and how strong the reception is. I want you to know it's as good a phone for beginners as it is hard-core mobile users from the days of the Yuppie, and I want to tell you all this because it really looks like it should be a great phone.

The trouble is, it just isn't.

There are three types of mobile phone: Nokia, who make fashionable phones for the teenage market and those that need something that is dead easy to use; Motorola, who make sexy looking phones for the trendy urban adult; and Sony Ericsson, who make phones for the business person. The de facto rule is that you should not stray from this ideology. If you're a teenage text freak the Nokia is perfect; if you're an up-and-coming banker wanting to look the biz in the trendy London wine bar, buy Motorola; if you're an international company representative looking for something full of business applications, go with the Sony Ericsson. You won't be disappointed.

But you will be disappointed if you stray from these three giants, and that's the trouble with the NEC 343i. When my contract with Three came up for renewal I wanted to move towards Pay As You Go (simply because I just don't use the phone in that way any more) and I wanted to move away from the slightly chunky, uber-complicated Motorola E1000 that I was using. Looking around on the market for something suitable to my needs, I eventually came across the NEC 343i.

God it's good looking, in a way that reminds you of the super-successful Apple iPod. It looks simply stunning when you put it down on the bar next to your colleagues. The shiny silver edging and back reflect the lighting, the fascia is a simple white (like the iPod), the screen is a good size and extremely bright and clear to read, and the buttons are large and easy to push, even with the clumsiest of thumbs. In the dark, the buttons glow a neon blue making them large and easy to read, which might be slightly annoying to the person sitting next to you in the cinema but great if you forgot to take a torch with you.

With a flourish I produced my cash and the deal was done. I was the proud owner of a new shiny mobile phone, the latest on the market. I took it home and was surprised to discover that the battery was already fully charged even though it was apparently untouched, so I decided to play with the features on this incredibly seductive phone.

It has a camera and, well ... actually, that's about it. It has a camera. And not a very good one at that, to be honest. There's no light, which on a modern phone is unusual, and the resolution is ridiculously poor - this camera daren't boast as it only has a 300k resolution.

Oh, it has something called i-Mode, too, which is O2's mobile Internet service (huge in Japan and sponsors of the Renault F1 team), hoping to rival the content provision of 3G phones and expected to completely replace WAP. Except, like WAP, it's crap. Not to mention farcically expensive. The phone is devoid of any data communication so you can forget sharing your poorly taken photographs with your mates via Bluetooth or InfraRed because the functions simply don't exist and there is no obvious data connection with your PC, so the only way to save the photographs to your computer is to e-mail them with your i-Mode account... which costs you money.

So far, then, it's not a very good phone despite the good looks. Admittedly O2 class it as their entry-level i-Mode phone but by today's standards, and compared to just about everything else on the market, it's incredibly lacking. How, then, does it stack up as a mobile phone?

Well it's not bad, but it's not great, either. When you dial a number the digits are displayed large and clear on the bright screen and when you're connected the call quality is very good. You can hear and speak clearly with whomever you wish to chat and, thanks to O2's fairly broad coverage of the UK, it's rare that you find yourself unable to get a signal. Try and find somebody from the phonebook to call, though, and you could get in to a muddle. At first, the NEC's menu system is reminiscent of an entry-level Nokia, until you try and find your way around the fandangled thing.

Despite my best attempts, you can't just scroll down page-by-page to find who you want. You either have to scroll through each contact individually or attempt to type in their name and hope that the software will bring them forward. Find their name and hit the green call button and hold the phone to your ear... and wait... and wait... and wait. Thinking the signal might have dropped you glance at the screen to see the phone is waiting for you to confirm that this is the number you want to ring.

So it's not that easy to use, but as it appeals to the younger market because of its looks, how about the text function? Well, Motorola aren't renowned for their predictive text software, but NEC are obviously down there with them for making texting as complicated as they can. The system just doesn't feel * natural * when it comes to using it, even though it looks relatively simple to start with. Often, typing in a word will result in the phone not recognising it, even if it is a relatively straight-forward lexeme from the English language. Then you have to spell that word and, despite it being mid-sentence, the software will insist on capitalising the word even when it's not necessary, and even if you tell it that it's to stay in lower case, the newly spelled word will still appear with a capital at its beginning.

What about the rest of the functions, then? Well there's a calculator, and a clock, and a countdown timer all in the menu somewhere, and there's the option for playing Java games that you download from your i-Mode account. Of course, there's no option for you to download and keep on your phone for playtime whenever - instead, you download and play on your phone, paying a fee to the i-Mode account each time you wish to enjoy yourself, or paying up front for, say, thirty plays of that game before you need to pay again.

With the bright screen, big buttons, Java games and standard phone capabilities, all built in to a great looking phone that is disappointingly poor in function you might expect the battery to be poor, but at last you can be pleasantly surprised. The battery life is actually extremely good. It can sit unplugged from a power supply for up to five days without any worries and talk time is equally impressive. So at last there's a good side? Sadly, no. The danger with long battery life is that you quickly get out of the habit of charging up your phone regularly and so you need to rely on the gadget itself to tell you it's getting ready for a recharge. The 343i, like all phones, has a battery-low alert - if only it actually warned you in time for you to get to a plug socket. Even with charger and phone to hand, from the first warning that the battery is going to finding a socket to plug it all in to, the phone will have died. And then you have to go through its rather elongated boot-up procedure when you switch the phone back on.

But I still really want to tell you it's a great phone, because it just looks like it is, so I find myself desperately seeking out great things to tell you about, and here's one - if you ever want to take it to America, it'll work there too. 

...less