Phoney Wars (Nokia 5210)

Member Name: kfingleton

Product:	Nokia 5210
Date:	29/11/02 (2688 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Small, durable, attractive

Disadvantages: A couple of gimmicky features

I hate using the phone, whether it be a landline or a mobile, having a conversation with to what others see as a piece of plastic seems unnatural to me. My first mobile was a Pay and Go Philips C35, a big loud brick, which didn?t help my phobia (I was forced to get it when I left home for university). However, I countered this by leaving it in my flat in the same place 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, therefore rendering it somewhat less ?mobile? than a mobile phone should be. When I got my first Nokia (a 3310), I was finally able to have a phone around with me, just in case I ever needed it for communication on the move. But I wanted something smaller, more aesthetically pleasing and with a wee bit more than just ?what you need? in a mobile. The Nokia 5210 is what I chose.

Because I hate using a phone for what it?s actually meant for, it makes perfect sense to get one that does a few other things too. I wanted a few decent games to pass the time on the underground (Snake 2, Pairs 2, Space Impact, Bantumi and Bumper). A ringtone composer seemed like a good idea to me. I don?t ever take my phone off the extremely handy ?Silent? profile (there are 6 preset profiles for differing volumes and tones etc), so a ringtone composer may seem a bit of a stupid accessory for me. But I can sleep safe at night knowing that if I ever put my phone on the ?Loud? profile, Music Is My Radar by Blur would bang out on it to the annoyance of everyone else within a radius of 30 miles. Along with the various preset ringtones, you can add about five of your own. My advice is to not waste your money paying for them, but to find a site on the internet that shows you how to compose them for free.

Other features on the phone include such handy additions as the Calendar, which allows you to add notes and reminders if you?re a scatterbrain like me. The calculator is useful for quick sums, but not quite good enough for advanced geometry. You can draw (very basic) pictu
res with the picture editor, although patience is needed. Or you can take a woefully inaccurate reading of the temperature with the thermometer. Countdown timer and stopwatch are useful for such diverse activities as timing school sports runs or drinking games.

Another potentially very useful feature is the Infra-red device, allowing you to send things like phone numbers and ringtones to Infra-red enabled phones. The other phone has to be beside you at the time, but it beats paying 12p for the privilege. You can also communicate with desktop PCs and laptops, well infra-red ones anyway. Connected to this line of technology is WAP, which the 5210 does indeed have. I don?t have WAP as part of my package. What can I say, I?m not an idiot!

Aesthetically, you may think the phone looks a bit garish in orange; I opted for the blue cover. The covers themselves are pretty durable and ?almost? water proof. Mines withstood half a pint of lager being knocked onto it last week. The Orange screen is not only good to look at, but easy to read and the phone allows for four lines of text. If you don?t want the usual frontage on your phone, you can have a screensaver, this is very useful if you opt for the clock screensaver, emblazoning the time in a large font. The phone itself only weighs 92g with a very slim battery (itself with a battery life of a credible 130 hours at idle, I seem to find.

Boring technical details include the space for 250 contacts in your phone book if you want to look extremely popular, speed dialling (useful), voice dialling (a bit of a con), automatic redialling, call waiting, conference calling, hold function and a very useful timed key-guard for those more absent minded folks (like me).

All-in-all the Nokia 5210 is a pretty durable, rugged phone. It?s not too big, but not so small that you?d lose it amongst a pile of drawing pins. Reliability has not been a problem for me and the battery seems fine after 6 m
onths. It?s not quite a student phone; it?s not quite an executive phone. It?s a happy medium that comes at a small price on most contract deals. I?d recommend it to anyone who wants slightly more out of their phone, but don?t want to pay a premium.

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