Best value phone on the market (Nokia 3210)

Member Name: GAThrawn1

Product:	Nokia 3210
Date:	27/10/00 (318 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Cheap, packed with features

Disadvantages: Not data and fax compatible, no vibrate alert

I have had my 3210 for a year now and it is a truly excellent phone, I have very little reason to fault it. Anyone familiar with the 5110 will instantly be at home with the 3210, the menu system is identical except for the little animations on some of the menus.

The phone itself is a good size, it's not particularly small or light but small enough that it feels good to hold, which is further helped by the internal aerial. As with the 5110 the phone has X-presson covers but this time front and back, which are great if you are bored with your phone, changing the covers makes it feel like a new phone. Plus if you manage to damage a set of covers (by scratching the phone or dropping it)you can just dump the covers and put a new set on. I found the phone to be exceptionally tough, I dropped mine accidentally several times (don't try this at home!) and it still works fine. My 3210 was also very reliable, I never once had to to take it back to the shop for any faults, it has worked well for the whole year.

One of the best new features of the 3210 is the predictive text input which is brilliant to use. I had my doubts before I bought the phone how good it would actually be but after using it for a year I wouldn't buy a phone without it. Even if you use a lot of slang it can learn words so that the next time you type in the word it will be recognised. The system works by 'guessing' what word you are typing, you only have to press each key once for a letter, so 'cat' is 2 2 8, as opposed to 2 2 2, 2, 8. Even if it doesn't get the word right the first you only have to press the '*' key to change it to the next most likely word. If you do a lot of SMSing this is an invaluable feature to have. Another handy feature this phone offers is that option to assign a different ringtone to different phone numbers in the phonebook, which is handy as you don't even have to look at the phone to see who is calling. To
back this feature up the phone also has a ringtone composer so that you can write your own ringtones although you can only store one at a time. The phone can also receive one ringtone by SMS, from another 3210 or you can download them from websites.

The 3210 also has all the 'normal' features you would expect; a clock with alarm, calculator, call logs for dialled numbers, received numbers etc. There are also three games, the traditional snake, rotation and memory. Unfortunately they have scrapped logic for rotation which I was a bit disappointed by as I don't like the rotation game; you basically have a grid of numbers and by rotating them as a set of four you have to try and put them in order. Snake is as good as ever and memory isn't too bad.

On the more practical side the battery life isn't bad, but it isn't exceptional and I found that I had to charge it up after a long conversation. Speech quality on the phone is good, both using the actual phone or a hands-free kit. The only problem I had with my phone was with reception, I was with BT Cellnet which meant that I got a lot of 'network busy' and dropped calls, but obviously this nothing to do with the phone.

On the downside the 3210 is not data and fax compatible, although this was not a problem for me as I didn't need the phone for data calls. The advantage of this is that you can plug a hands free kit straight into the bottom of the phone without an adaptor. You can buy a data cable with which you can upload ringtones or operator logos. The 3210 also lacks a vibrating alert, although I have seen adverts for devices or batteries that can make it do this but I never bought one. The other problem with the 3210 is that everyone has one, so owning a 3210 is not particularly unique.

Overall though for a phone that is now free on contract and around £80 on prepay the 3210 which is excellent value for money given the amount of features yo
u get with it.

Summary: