Too cool by half (Nokia 3410)

Name: merv

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Product:	Nokia 3410
Date:	21/01/03 (1869 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Incredibly good deal, Small and Light, Loads of Features

Disadvantages: More features than I will ever use or need

I must start by telling you that I don’t own Martin Dawes, I do not have shares in Martin Dawes and none of my family have any connection with Martin Dawes, which you may find difficult to believe after all the advertising I’ve been doing for them recently. Having said that they’re a really good television rental company with a treasure trove of bargains.

You may have read my recent review on the free DVD player they gave me when I called into their Shrewsbury branch, a handsome addition to my £32 a month Panasonic TV and video rental package. This week’s visit ended up with me leaving with a mobile phone deal at an incredible price.

The deal was that I subscribed to T-Mobile’s ‘750’ package (750 free off-peak minutes and 100 text messages a month) for £13.99 a month and they knock £10 a month off my TV rental, meaning that I get a ‘pay monthly’ rental with an up to date, state of the art mobile phone and more free minutes and texts than I need for £3.99 a month + vat or less than £57 per year. At the end of the contract I can either renew the deal or keep the phone to do with what I want. Sounds pretty good to me! The only catch is the high cost of peak calls and calls to other networks but as I’m a pretty low user anyway this is not likely to have much effect.

But what I really want to tell you about is the phone they give you; a Nokia 3410, which makes my cumbersome Phillips Savvy look like something out of the Flintstones. It really is very good and definitely not a run of the mill entry-level phone.

It has features, which make my daughter jealous, the same daughter who used to cringe with embarrassment when I used my ancient old mobile in public.

Here are some specifications to give you an idea what
I’m talking about:

·Weight: 114g (lighter than your average mobile)
·Size: 115mm x 49mm x 22.5mm, 100cc volume
·Talktime: betwee
n 2 hours 20 minutes and 4 hours 10 minutes
·Standby: between 55 and 260 hours
·Java support for new applications and games –
·Included Games: Space Impact, Bantumi, Snake II, Bumper, Link5
·Ability to download all sorts of new things for your phone to personalize it, e.g. new levels for the built in games from Club Nokia, ringtones, new graphics, animated screen savers
·There is a tune composer and a picture editor, and there are also options for downloading the tunes and pictures directly from the appropriate settings menu (you must be registered at Club Nokia first, though). You can still get new tones and logos via normal SMS or WAP pages, too.
·WAP
·Predictive text messaging
·Picture messaging and picture editor
·Mobile chat
·35 ringtones plus 7 customisable ringtones
·High resolution 4-line display
·Speed dialling
·Downloadable Java games and applications
·Animated 3D screen savers
·Phonebook (200 names)
·Changeable front and back covers
·Calendar, stopwatch, alarm clock, currency converter

The 3410 is a very cool aqua-marine in colour, and features an updated front panel design; it is the same size as the older Nokias, but much lighter. The buttons on the Nokia are painted-rubber which feel very nice to the touch. The 3410 allows you to change the look of your phone by purchasing new Nokia Xpress-on accessory covers. Some of the currently available covers are based on themes like Nokia's Snake and Space Impact games.

The 3410 can store tunes, images and loads of phone numbers - up to 200 names and phone numbers in its internal memory and as many again on the sim card, more people than I will ever probably want to contact. It can however only store one phone number per name. This means you have to enter things like "Dave- mobile" and "Dave - work" when you have multiple numbers for a person, which is often the case.

You
can store a voice tag to make finding them easier. After you have recorded the voice tag for a contact you can dial them just by holding down the right menu softkey and saying the name after the tone. I’ve experimented with this and it seems to work OK.

New pictures for the SMS messages can be downloaded from Club Nokia and the phone also has predefined "smileys", i.e. character combinations meant to look like a face. You can edit or add your own and easily enter them into the message editor when you are creating a SMS message. There are 5 predefined, and 3 empty slots.

The 3410 supports SMS profiles, too, allowing you to configure a profile with a specific SMS service provider. The profiles also let you define which of the animated screen savers to use, or to not use one at all if like me you use your phone to tell the time.

The Nokia 3410 also has a number of simple productivity tools. These include a timer, an alarm, a stopwatch, a calculator, and a reminder. The reminder is like the alarm except that you can enter both a date and time for it and you can also enter a text description that will show up when the reminder triggers. Up to 10 reminder notes can be entered at a time.

You can adjust the ringtone for both calls and SMS, set volume, the vibration alert, keypad beeps, etc. One original feature is the ability to have the button and screen backlights blink in time with the ringtones. For some ringtones the flashing is random, but with others it can be really effective.

Apparently the most impressive function of the phone is the ability to download java games. The phone comes with some well-known Nokia games and has had one Java game downloaded. Munkiki is a 3D game where you guide a monkey around a 3 dimensional castle while trying to collect musical notes. It is an entertaining game that shows off some of the 3410’s gaming features. As well as Java games, you can also download application
s like personal assistants, travel and information tools. It's too early to know exactly what applications will become available, but this would seem to be a real growth industry and I would imagine there are Java developers all over the place frantically creating applications for the new Nokia phones. The Nokia 3410 has 150kB for storing Java applications, enough to store several in the phone at any time.

WAP allows you to subscribe to information services like news, sport and entertainment - you will then receive text messages, which contain a link to a WAP page, so you can browse in more detail if you wish. I’ve not yet personally tried downloading anything and I’m still experimenting with WAP, I’ll have to update my review when I’ve mastered it.

Overall, I am very impressed, unfortunately so is my daughter who is teaching me how to use the 3410 and is responsible for explaining to me most of the technical parts of my review. I have a feeling that in a couple of months, she will have sole use of the 3410 and I will be back using my trusty ‘Savvy’.

Summary: