I've had this phone for two years. It was my first phone, and apart from an old Nokia I use sometimes, it's my only phone.
I'm obviously very happy with it. My parents bought me it as an entry level phone for about £50-£60.00 with Orange Pay as you go.
Good points
Sturdy phone. I've had it for two years and dropped it so many times. It's survived everything. It even survived a swim in the bath - it kept worryingly overheating for over a week afterwards, and I thought it would not last. It did though.
Battery life remains excellent. Over 2 years since I got it, it's still on its original battery, and still holds a charge for about 3-4 days (with little use) or about 2 days of heavy use (I'm approximating!).
Reception is great, the phone usually has full signal strength. On a trip to Wales where most other phones couldn't get reception mine could. This is probably due to the Network I was on rather than the phone, but still, it never lets me down on reception quality or signal strength.
With its colour screen and menu's, it's fairly easy to use. Texting is
simple once you get used to it. It allows up to 120 texts in the Inbox and many hundreds more in the Archive. I thought this was excellent.
It has a nice set of basic features. Profiles allow you to choose how loud you want the phone to ring, whether you want it to vibrate or ring, etc. It has polyphonic ringtone capability, and WAP.
Below is the structure of the main menu on the phone so you can see the features:
Main menu
...Phonebook: add/delete names, edit them, add users to different groups (Friends, Family, Workmates, etc - then you could choose to send a text to a whole group of people, or have a different ringtone for each group)
...Call records: missed calls, received calls, total duration of incoming/outgoing calls, calls dialled, erase records.
... Surf & Fun: Internet, Games (my phone came with two basic colour games: Stack Attack and Magic Picture), Bookmarks, Homepage.
... Ring tones: Change ringer setting to beep or ring, enable vibrator, select a different ringtone for texts, phonecalls and alarm clock. Select a different ringtone according to which usergroup the caller is in (so you could have different ringtones for friends and family). Change default volume.
... Messages: New SMS (write new text), Inbox (capacity: 120 texts, assuming Outbox is empty), Outbox (you can choose whether to have texts you send automatically saved to the outbox, or not). SMS Archive (where you store important texts on a more permanent basis - very large capacity (for a basic phone) of 553kb!)
... Profiles - set up differnet profiles e.g. Silent, Quiet, Loud... you can switch between these depending on the situation you're in e.g. in the Library, indoors, in the bath)
... Own stuff: Pictures, animations, sounds. While it has a colour graphical screen, the pictures and animations are not clear and not good quality. Obviously nowhere near the photo quality of newer phones.
... Setup: Lets you set up the screensaver, background image, colour scheme (choice of 2 schemes!), call divert, clock, and other general things.
Bad Points
One bad thing with this phone is the keypad lock feature. All you have to do is hold down the '#' key to lock or unlock the phone. This is frankly rubbish. The '#' key is on the outside bottom of the phone and often gets pressed in accidentally while in the pocket. Often I get my phone out, only to find it's rang someone or added random entries to my addressbook e.g. '####.;###". It's easy to tell, from all the #''s on the display, that the phone was locked and has unlocked itself. With my Nokia you have to press two different buttons, in order, within a short time period before the phone unlocks. This is much more sensible.
Anither bad thing is the embarrassment this phone causes me now. I'm perfectly happy with it overall, I think it's a great phone, but it's very old, outdated and tatty. I'm sick of having to defend myself and my choice of phone when I'm with friends and I often try to hide it whilst using it in public!
Another bad point is that, after the phone has been on a long time, operation can become slow. When you're writing a text letters may appear on the screen about 5 seconds after you type them. This is easily fixed by turning it off and on again.
This phone is also supposedly very hard to unlock. After I researched in to getting it unlocked (I wanted to move from Orange to O2), I concluded that I couldn't, because several sites stated I would need to modify the circuitboard of the phone. This is something to bear in mind, this phone is hard to unlock.
One more bad point, which you might only pick up after using the phone a while: if the phone is locked, and you get a call or text causing the phone to ring or vibrate (if it's not set on silent mode of course), you can't quickly shut it up by pressing a button. You have to hold down the 'unlock' key for a second (which seems like longer, when you're desperately trying to shut your phone up with everyone staring at you...) and then press the red button (to quieten it).
Not really a bad point in itself, but this phone lacks the features of newer more expensive phones. No camera (obviously), no picture messaging, no mp3 music ringtones and no lots of other things. It's a good basic phone though that does all the things you'd expect a good basic phone to do.
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Nice review. 2 years?! Don't you think is time too swap? lol :)
coolaskaha 02.04.2006 13:29
Review could do with a bit more info on things like: where can you buy it from, what networks is it available on etc. Let me know if you add anything to it! Sarah
Feb 28th, 2006
very helpful by (82%):
helpful by (18%):
