The blue screen that doesn't mean death (Nokia 6310)

Member Name: Morgenhund

Product:	Nokia 6310
Date:	20/12/02 (4954 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: triband, feature-laden, robustness - this is a serious business phone, blue screen, and loads more

Disadvantages: my number feature superfluous and not editable

Having had my Nokia 6310i for 3 months now, and having resisted the temptation to share my latest mobile phone with a review up until now I have finally succumbed, having been chastised for my op on the 3410 that I bought at the same time for a friend to use, and of course for consumer purposes thought I ought to play test. Until I encountered the blue screen of the Nokia 6310i, I had always equated a blue screen with the "Blue Screen of Death" with is of course best remembered when your computer crashes and you haven't saved your work for ages... However, the 6310i's blue screen is a far more welcoming sight than the Windows Blue Screen.

Having been very satisfied with the Nokia 6210 that I bought in September 2001, I decided when the guarantee ran out, at the end of September 2002, that I would buy another one, but was stopped in my tracks when I saw that the 6310 and 6310i were available for a tiny bit more, being the follow-up phones to the 6210. Having parted with EUR 99 and 4500 One For Me points (the rewards scheme from One, the mobile operator that I use in Austria) I got the 6310i, with it currently retailing at EUR 49 and 4500 points or as a new phone (first time subscription for the same price. Off contract it currently retails at EUR 519 here in Austria. One of the biggest attractions and something that I will go into later was the fact that I didn't have to replace my data cable, and was able to use the data cable (DLR-3P - RS232 Serial Cable) to download my entire phone book, SMSes, user groups etc. from my 6210 to the 6310i. By similar dint, the 6310i will also fit the same desktop charger and the same car kit.

Admittedly I have posted this op in the category for the 6310 - this is therefore the ideal opportunity to explain what the "i" stands for. Unlike the "i" that Siemens used in their phone series back in 2000 - there was the S35 and the S35i for example (I owned the latter), with the &q
uot;i" merely indicating that the phone was an "Internet Phone" i.e. was WAP enable, the Nokia "i" means that the phone is Java-enabled, enabling the user to download Java Applications for the phone, either being games or business applications. Hopefully I'll soon be able to program my phone, and have a price quotation calculator program making it possible to give on the spot quotes to my customers for translation! (Dream on!)

Furthermore there is a charger upgrade from the 6210 - with the 6310i being supplied with the ACP-12 charger rather than the ACP-8 charger, with the former being the fast travel charger and the latter the normal travel charger - with a full charge of the battery using the ACP-12 taking only about 1 hour 40 minutes rather than 2 hours 30 minutes.

Whilst running through the various features of the 6310i, I'll compare it with the 6210 to put the phone in perspective, and also to highlight the various "upgrades", "nips" and "tucks" that the phone has been given compared to its predecessor.

The exterior:

The weight of the 6210 and 6310 is more or less identical, as is the size of the phone. The screen is the same size, and you'd be exceptionally hard pushed to tell them apart from the back view. The keys on the 6310 are however markedly larger, which is a welcome relief for me, with the 6210 keys being just big enough, but the 6310 keys being a lot bigger and making it therefore a lot easier to use. To give an idea of the difference in key size, the central keys i.e. 2, 5, 8 and 0 are the biggest, with the keys on the sides (the other numbers * and #) being the same size on the 6310 as the centre keys were on the 6210. The call buttons and up and down (or forward and back) buttons are also larger, as are the menu buttons.
The 6310i, like the 6210 is only available in a relatively limited number of colours, and there are no Xpress-on covers, w
hich have been a hallmark of Nokia phones since the 5110 appeared in late 1998. The phone is available in beige and silver, all silver, bronze and silver, or black and gold and looks a bit more gaudy than the 6210 did. Once again the "toe" can be personalised - members of Club Nokia can get a free personalised "toe clip".

The screen of the 6310i is blue, whereas the 6210 has a green one - I find the blue screen easier to see in the dark, with the contrast being better on it, although there is otherwise no difference with the display than on the 6210. The battery indicator and the signal indicator now have a whopping seven bars, compared to the 5 bars on the 6210 - this is only really a superficial difference in terms of signal.

Features:

As with a lot of Nokia models, there are all the basic features on the phone, but they tend to be tucked away in a different set of menus with each phone - this takes a while to get used to although the logic in each layout is there really... I am not going to run through all the menus and submenus - the review would never finish if I did! Instead I am only going to pick out the features that are new to the 6310 - after all nigh on every Nokia in Christendom has had a calculator, an internal aerial and predictive text input in several languages.

As with the 6210 the phone has been able to hold a 500 entry phonebook, which each entry allowed up to 3 phone numbers and an e-mail address for it, and with no restriction on the length of the name used. Of course this can prove troublesome if you then copy the contents of your phone to a SIM card as the entries are either truncated or they are made into separate entries where there are multiple phone numbers. For backup purposes I would recommend using the data cable, as the supplied Nokia Data Suite (my phone was shipped with Version 4.81) can be used to make a copy of your phone's memory - including the ring tones and profiles a
s well as the numbers in the address book and the SMSes in the memory.

There is a feature called "my numbers" which is useful on the one hand, but a pain on the other. Whilst it is useful to be able to store your numbers in part of the SIM card for easy reference, the phone only supports calling these entries up - you can't edit them. Well what is the problem? Well the problem is that the numbers have been set using an old handset (the Siemens S35i certainly had this feature) and if you no longer have any means of changing them, then you might have entries that are a bit on the old side (e.g. in my case the GB mobile number that I had in late 2000 - I have had two British mobile numbers since then!!! And my home number and fax number here in Austria have also changed...). I would suggest having your own name in the regular phonebook and sending it via Infrared / as a business card (only recommended to other Nokia users - from memory some Siemens and Sony Ericsson phones can't understand Nokia business cards).

Concatenated text messages (i.e. being able to send up to three linked SMSes) are a pleasant addition to have, and certainly useful if you need to send something over 160 characters, although of course the feature is dependent on whether the recipient also has the feature, otherwise they are delivered in separate chunks.

The call register has a useful addition for data users, namely that there are counters for GPRS data sent and received (in terms of packets and for those connecting to GPRS over WAP for the connection time), which is useful if you are a heavy user of GPRS, or if like me you get a certain number of data packets per month for free so you can see about your allocation and whether you have used it.

There have been no refinements of the profiles menu - one of the most useful features, as you can alter a lot of settings at the same time and can use it to effectively not ring for non-business call
s during business hours - or at least not having them ring! You can also time a profile so that it is possible to automatically change back to the default profile at say 17:30 (or whenever you leave the office) without haven't to think about it. I wish more people would use the "profiles" feature on their phone a bit more often - it is a great way of ensuring that your phone is set correctly for the surroundings (e.g. only rings for business calls when in meetings or is silent when on the train, so that you don't disturb others whilst on public transport.

The 6310i, being as previously mentioned a Java phone, has a number of expansion possibilities, which both the games menu and the applications menu taking advantage of this. The games supplied are the staple Snake II, as well as horizontal scrolling space shoot-em-up Space Impact, and pinball game Bumper. The instructions for each game have been given a polish - and illustrations, and there is now support for vibration in games (the Nokia attempt at force feedback or a rumble pack!). There is also the option to download games to your phone via WAP, with some dynamic phone memory set aside for this purpose. The extra game that came with the phone is Racket, a bat and ball game somewhat akin to tennis with table tennis scoring...

Further games are available for download from various sites although the phone is not as supported as other Nokia models with similar features (e.g. 3410 and 3510i). Beware that downloading the content either requires a call to a premium rate number, or payment via credit card and then a WAP link to follow - a lot of games here in Austria are ?3-?5 to download. Similarly you can also download applications, with a World Time clock and a conversion program being included by default. Current web searches have not proven that fruitful in the search for software, although if I can learn Java (Java SDK using J2ME is available from the Nokia Developers Forum),
I intend to start writing applications for my own personal use - e.g. a translation quotation charging database, with a few other ideas for applications that I'd like to implement.

The applications are useful although I find that for the currency conversion, e.g. between Euro and Swiss Francs or Euro and Sterling, that I still tend to use the currency converter that is built-in in the calculator (as it has been since time immemorial!).

Having had a Palm to use as a diary and notepad, I had not really use the "to do list" on the 6210. The 6310i has got a re-done version, with it now being possible to assign priority to items from 1 to 3 (in descending order of priority) which is great for then syncing with a Palm, which uses the same system. Previously entries have only been allowed to be 30 characters or so in length whereas the 6310i allows 256 characters per reminder. Similarly the calendar entries are also allowed to be this length.

Nokia vaunts the improved "connectability" of the phone, and by this they mean, that as well as Infrared and via data cable, the phone is Bluetooth enabled. Unfortunately I can not comment on the Bluetooth mode, as I have not yet purchased a Bluetooth headset - that might follow once they have come down in price a bit - £100 for one is still quite hard to justify. There has also been a lot of debate about the frequencies used for Bluetooth being more harmful than traditional mobile radiation - so I'll pass until this has been substantiated or disproved.

Nokia have also added a menu of extras, which consists of a Voice Recorder - something I missed from my Siemens S35i owning days, and the phone can store up to 2 minutes of speech either as a single file or as several sound clips - which is far more advanced than the S35i voice recorder was. There is also the facility to program voice dialling - although I have never been that great a fan of this - after all initial voice
dialling attempts used to ensure that I ended up calling someone completely different, and unintended. However, since owning the 6310i I have been convinced of its virtue - and the fact that you can also use voice activated commands to dial your voicemail or to change your profile is quite a nice added feature although certainly one which having been so used to living with out is not one that I use that often. Unfortunately you can only store three voice commands so there is scope for improvement.

The next major addition, which is designed for those who shop online a lot, is the "Wallet". The wallet is used to store your credit card details, bank card details, log-in details etc. These are saved in a protected part of the phone, which requires a separate pin to access the Wallet. The information is kept safe, and you can hold info for up to 5 cards including logins for netbanking for them, as well as a number of notes. It is possible to turn off the request for entering your code every time but I would recommend that it be left in place - it would be madness to leave your credit card details on your phone in an unencrypted manner... If your phone got nicked, then that would be bad enough, but if your credit card details were nicked as well, then that would be devastating... The countdown timer and stopwatch feature have appeared on other Nokia phones - I can't imagine that I'll ever use them.

The services menu is, as has been the case with previous Nokia phones the place where you access WAP sites, with the only addition being the possibility for GPRS access via the phone. Setting up the GPRS access and the WAP access was very easy - the ease is usually more a question of how your network operator configures your phone (in my case all done via SMS) and then you are free to surf the mobile internet. I only use it to get cricket scores and sports scores with, but have noticed that GPRS had been a lot quicker than WAP - which from e
xperience has been painfully slow.

So what can't it do?

Being so feature-packed you'd expect to find a kitchen sink lurking somewhere in one of the menus. There are some things that are lacking in terms of features, which are on other Nokia phones, namely:

MMS Messaging: admittedly it is very early days, and the majority of people still aren't using MMS - after all cross-network MMS is patchy and the cost is still very high once the introductory offer expires. Related to MMS there is of course no digital camera attachment - but the quality is still not really that great and it seems a slight white elephant to my thinking at the moment. When and if 3G takes off, sure this will be a lot more used, but for the moment who needs it.

FM Radio: Other handsets e.g. 8310 have FM tuners built-in but of course these are to the detriment of standby time, and are not really that important.

Colour display: Other than for MMS there is very little point in having a colour display on a mobile - Siemens tried a few years back, but it has only really become a reality in recent times, and the cost of TFT active matrix screens is bound to put the cost of the phone up. Given the fact that phones tend to often go wrong because the screen breaks, and the repair can be very expensive, and can simultaneously invalidate your warranty unless the phone is returned to Nokia (often a chore!), this is probably a blessing in disguise of the 6310i rather than a genuinely lacking feature.

Conclusion:

Other improvements are the fact that this phone is a triband phone (although this is only really of use if you travel to the US a lot) and the battery life is a marked improvement over that of the 6210. The battery indicator now has a whopping seven bars, and the standby time on the battery is often closer to ten days with about three hours talk time in that time, as well being quicker to charge, as alluded to earlier in the op. F
or me the larger keys are a welcome improvement on the 6210 and whilst people might say the p hone is very large and quite heavy, I would point out that its robustness and wealth of features and usable keypad are good reasons for this.

Ultimately this is a serious business phone - the 8310, whilst being a "cute and sexy" phone, is certainly put in the shade by this one. The speech quality is as per all Nokia phones very good, and the phone is ultimately reliable. I would recommend the 6310i as it is tried and tested - as with the 6210 I stayed away from it until it had been out for a while - software stability is very important and often lacking in the initial release versions of the phone. Also the phone is instantly more affordable by not buying it the minute it is released, and this phone is stylish, yet serious, and not a poseur's phone. Prices vary so much depending on your contract and network provider that I have chosen to omit any pricing information, other than saying what I paid for my 6310i.

Summary: