The Nokia 1208 is a chunky little spark plug of a phone which boasts superb battery life, simple, generic design and intuitive menus. Surprisingly enough, the phone was actually designed quite recently with older generations in mind, specifically folks who prefer basic functionality over fancy bells and whistles.

Given its basic nature and design, one would expect the phone to be more durable than it is. In fact, when dropped from pocket height onto a concrete floor, it's liable to shatter into its component parts. The screen also is easily scratched, and the sim card is held in place by the battery in a way that could potentially damage it after extended use. The sound quality also isn't too clever and the speaker is awkward to hold to the ear.

It efficiently sends texts, though they frequently fail to send when the inbox is full, and when this happens, no error report message is given, so you can often end up losing entire texts, having not been given the option to save them to drafts. This is incredibly frustrating. Also, the battery wears down after time, and for some reason, my 'end call' key was mapped to switch the phone off after pressing it once. I had two of these phones and this happened to both after around 6 months, a blatant design flaw.

This is a phone which makes calls and sends texts and does pretty much nothing else. It doesn't come with any games, apps, WAP or browser access. It's very much bare bones. One thing I feel this product could've done with was a flashlight, like many earlier Nokia models, so that's a shame.

It's fat and pretty ugly in design. It looks cheap, unreliable and very, very old fashioned, which it undoubtedly is. Still though, it is exceptionally user-friendly, despite its myriad technical faults. Nonetheless, for the price (around £8-12 in most supermarkets) it can't be beat for an emergency or 'between-phones' phone, and is ideal for older users who want a simple phone which they would only use for calls and texts.