The Nokia 6100 is worth looking into for just making calls (Nokia 6100)

Member Name: Dando83

Product:	Nokia 6100
Date:	16/06/06 (231 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: small, good colour screen, loudspeaker, java games, polyphonic, tri-band

Disadvantages: dusty behind screen, cannot sent multimedia messages

I keep looking for new free deals on phones but for £5 worth of communicating every month, there aren't any pay monthly plans. I'm not brave enough to risk one of the cash-back plans. Do I want to pay £50-100 on a new pay as you go phone for the sake of £60 of calls a year? No.

A friend whose contract expired gave me his Nokia 6100 (yes, like many Nokia phones, it's easy to make network-free via a code). The very first thing I noticed was the size. It's as compact as most phones get except for maybe the Motorola razor series. Nokia states dimensions of 102 x 44 x 13.5mm. Weight: 76 g including the battery. Despite the small size, the buttons are sturdy and raised to allow you to quickly find them by feel.

The screen does over 4000 colours and is a sizable 128x128 pixels. I appreciate finally being able to read a whole text message (8 lines) instead of only a sentence like on my previous Nokia 3510i.

Texting is what I use this for the most. Nokia's standard predictive text is useful. The ability to add special characters is easy. I can add my own words to the dictionary. When my text is done, I send to multiple recipients if needed. One feature I like is that if I have to come away from writing a text, the phone remembers it when I return later.

I can speed dial a number from 1 to 9. When talking, the sound is loud and clear. There is a function to enable loudspeaker if you're on hold and it is QUITE loud. I've only ever had reception issues when standing next to a particularly old computer monitor. Otherwise I've never dropped a conversation (on Virgin or Orange networks). As a tri-band phone, it's okay to use in North America.

I've been able to buy a data cable on Ebay for this phone and use Nokia's own software. This setup allows you to move your own MIDI files to the phone to use as polyphonic ringtones and your own tiny JPEGS as wallpaper. It pays for itself if you're used to spending money to buy the latest ringtone from Jamster.

Bear in mind that storage is capped at 2/3 of a megabyte. MIDIs and JPEGs are small, so don't worry but as the phone lets you run basic JAVA games and applications as well, these can quickly eat up your memory.

Without the data cable, IR connectivity is the only other option for data transfer. There is no bluetooth.

I can start a GPRS connection and use the built-in WAP 1.2.1 browser to check basic news stories and check movie times. I have to admit though, that even on the best phones, surfing the web on a mobile phone is crap. I avoid it.

Charge time is ever so quick. In an hour I have full battery. This can last me a week with light call usage.

Other typical functions that I wouldn't write home about include: screen saver: digital clock, clock, alarm clock
calculator, currency converter, stopwatch, countdown timer.

Finally, for those into customising... I think you'll find a variety of coloured shells that will fit this phone. Mine is currently a light grey-blue and white colour scheme.

I have only a few niggles for this phone. There's a load of dust that's managed to get behind the LCD screen. I suppose I could pull the phone apart and try to clean it, but still, I've never seen this on a mobile phone before. I'm also not too happy that the ability to forward multimedia messages seems restricted to sending only the built-in cartoon images on the phone. I just can't see how to send

Summary: Probably one of the best of the old generation phones.

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