Size matters !!! (Nokia 8210)

Member Name: mickm9

Product:	Nokia 8210
Date:	23/02/01 (960 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Too many too mention

Disadvantages: Poor bettery life maybe ???

I've worked for Orange for nearly 11 years and in that time have been lucky enough to own most of the phones in the range (and a few that didn’t make it) thanks to some of the jobs I've had in the company. Out of all of them I can honestly say the 8210 is without doubt the best I have ever had the pleasure of using. I’ve now had this handset for a good few months so I decided it was time to update the initial review I did of this excellent handset as the first one didn’t really do it justice.

First of all I’ll give you an overview of the handset and then I’ll go into a little more detail where necessary of the various features.

It has got everything you could possibly want in a handset, its light, comfortable to hold, excellent sound quality and it’s numerous features include vibrate alert, profiles, voice dialling, calendar, alarms, reminder notes, calculator, games, downloadable ringing tones, removable fascias, the list seems endless.

For me though the most important feature is the predictive text function. I know several other phones have this and it is by no means exclusive to the 8210 but for me it is the icing on the cake.

PREDICTIVE TEXT - I realise most people will have heard of predictive text but for those of you who haven’t I will give you a “brief” outline of what it is and how it works. It is basically a dictionary in your handset which recognises what word you are trying to type by analysing the keys you have pushed and then matching them against this dictionary to try and predict what letter you are wanting to appear on your next key press.

It is not some magic programme that can “predicts” what word you are typing after just a couple of key presses and then type it out for you. No, you still have to type out the word fully, it simply does away with the multiple pressing of keys to get to a specific letter.

The above m
ight sound a little bit confusing so I’ll explain it a bit more simplistically below giving an actual example, lets say you are trying to type “sausage”, in a normal handset this would be achieved as follows;

Press 7 key 4 times = S
Press 2 key 1 time = A
Press 8 key 2 times = U
Press 7 key 4 times = S
Press 2 key 1 time = A
Press 4 key 1 time = G
Press 3 key 2 times = E

So there you go, 15 key presses to spell a 7 letter word, so how does predictive text help better that?

To start with you still have to press the 7 key to get the S but the difference being you just press it once. Now the “S” doesn’t necessarily show on the screen straight away because as far as the handset is concerned you could be wanting to spell any word beginning with a letter related to that key, i.e, “PQRS”. It will therefore show any one of these. You then press the next key (in this case 2) and the handset will start to try and predict what word you are aiming for. Don’t worry, at this point what’s on the screen may not look anything like what you want as I’ll explain later.

You would now press each key that you pressed in the original example but in this case only the once, this means your key presses are as follows;

Press 7 key once
Press 2 key once
Press 8 key once
Press 7 key once
Press 2 key once
Press 4 key once
Press 3 key once

Now if you’ve followed the above to the letter you will have the word “sausage” on your screen. However, if you’ve been watching the screen as you press the keys it will have looked like gobblygook until the word has been spelt out completely, this is because the handset is simply trying to predict what the next letter is you want when you press each key. The best thing to do here is just totally ignore the screen and concentrate on the keys.

To give you an ide
a of what actually happens on the screen I’ll show what my handset shows when I type out the above key sequence.

Press 7 key once = S
Press 2 key once = PC
Press 8 key once = SAT
Press 7 key once = RATS
Press 2 key once = SAUSA
Press 4 key once = SAUSAG
Press 3 key once = SAUSAGE

So there you are, 7 key presses for a 7 letter word, a saving of 8 presses.

Of course you would only get this if "sausage” was in your dictionary to start with, if it wasn’t the handset would simply show gobblygook on the screen. It would though give you the option to spell a word and add it to the dictionary so the next time you used that sequence of key presses it would show it.

I am going to do a more detailed description of predictive text as a separate opinion because it is something that does still confuse a lot of users, however, hopefully the above will have helped lift a bit of the mystery surrounding this excellent feature.

So to continue, as far as text messaging is concerned I have read some of the opinions where users complain of the compactness of the keys for large fingered users but in actual fact the is on the standard issue 8210 are very well spaced out. So as long as the normal amount of care is taken while typing these shouldn’t cause any problems.

I know I don’t have any issues with this, in fact I actually find it one of the best handsets I've used for text messaging. I have noticed though that some of the fascias you can buy as accessories have key spacing that are a little bit more cramped together and these sometimes cause problems.

PICTURE MESSAGING - Within the text messaging features there is also “Picture Messages”, this is as it sounds, rather than sending simple text messages you can also send a picture. I’m not sure how valuable an option this really is though and I found that this was only a novelty for a short
while.

Oh yeah, I would also warn you here that these types of messages cost 3 times the normal text message charge AND they can only be received on a handset capable of displaying picture messages. But anyway, setting aside the above drawbacks and if your that way inclined the 8210 will hold 10 of these messages in its memory.

What else has it got, there’s the profiles and calendar functionality. This is for me one of the most useful elements of the 8210.

It’s not a feature though that’s limited to the 8210 but is also available in a few of the other Nokia’s (although notably absent in its full form in the 3310) and is by and large the real reason why I have always used Nokias as my main phone.

The way these works is as follows;

PROFILES - You basically get 5 options to set your phone up in different ways, the default names for these are;

General
Silent
Meeting
Outdoor
Pager

All but the first of these (General) can be renamed as you feel fit.

Within each profile you have the option to change the phones set up for any calls that come in when you have that profile active, these settings include;

Incoming call alert
Ringing tone
Ringing volume
Vibrating alert
Message alert tone
Keypad tones
Warning and game tones

I wont go into further detail of these settings as they are self explanatory, suffice to say that you can set any combination of the above and apply them against whichever profile you want. So an example could be “Silent”, as the name implies this could be set so as to not to have any audible alerts. This would be set up as follows;

Incoming call alert Off
Ringing tone Doesn’t matter
Ringing volume As above
Vibrating alert On
Message alert tone Off
Keypad tones Off
Warning and game tones Off

If you now activate that profile via the main men
u the only way you will be alerted to a call is via a vibrate alert …. get the idea ?

Although I said earlier I would not go into detail on the settings there is one that needs further clarification on the “incoming call alert” setting. This is called “Caller Groups” and it can be a very useful feature, basically this works by allocating any names and numbers in your directory into specific caller groups.

These caller groups are accessed via the “Names” menu on the main screen and are by default called;

Family
VIP
Friends
Colleagues
Other

These can all be renamed as you see fit but for the sake of this exercise lets assume they are staying as they are. What you could do now is put the following into these categories;

Boss - VIP
Mother - Family
Best mate - Friends
Work mate - Colleagues
Other - Girlfriend

You can now set the phone to have a different ringing tone for each of these groups and whenever they call you the relevant tone will alert you.

Although this in itself is a very useful feature you can also take it a step further. In one of your profiles you can set the phone up in such a way that if say your girlfriend rings you the phone will actually alert you by whichever ring tone you have allocated her. However, if any of the others ring you the phone will not alert you at all. This is done by simply setting the profile to alert by Caller Groups instead of turning the alert off. The only other thing you have to do is go into the Caller Groups and mark the groups you don’t want, the phone will then simply ignore them if they call whilst you have that profile active.

The above can prove to be very useful if say you are busy working and don’t really want to be disturbed by anybody not work related. In these situations you would simply set the phone to only alert you when your Boss or Colleagues rang y
ou and ignore any other calls.

CALENDAR - As the name suggests this is a diary type function, this is another very useful feature that I personally use a lot at work to remind me of meetings and the like, the way it works is simple.

In the calendar menu there is the option to “make note”, these notes can be either;

Reminder
Call
Meeting
Birthday

There is no real difference between these other than a different icon shows on the relevant date you allocate it to. Basically all you do is go to the date you want to set an alarm for and enter the details. For example if I have a meeting at 10.00am on the 20/04 I will go to that date on the calendar and set a Meeting reminder for 9.45am.

The alarm will then alert me on the 20/04 at the appointed time with a note explaining why, in this case it would say “Meeting 10.00am”. You can set up to 50 of these types of alarms before the memory is full, it will then ask if you would like to delete any old entries.

The other features this phone has are mostly self explanatory although some do deserve a bit more detailed description as they are not as clear cut as they initially seem;

VIBRATE ALERT – obvious really, switch it on when you don’t want to be embarrassed or disturbed by a ring tone going off, i.e, in a restaurant or a meeting. You can even set this as a profile so that you simply switch profiles when you’re in this type of environment.

VOICE DIALLING – This sounds like an excellent feature, in practise though it is only useful in quiet areas. You can pre-set up to 8 numbers with this which can be dialled by simply pressing one key and saying the relevant name you have attached to the number. As I say earlier though you do find that this feature doesn’t really work too well if your in a noisy environment.

250 NAME MEMORY – Obviously only useful if you have a lot of conta
cts and your SIM card is full. (By the way SIM simply stands for Subscriber Identity Module)

On this note and this applies to just about any phone I would recommend to anybody that it is not a wise move to rely on your phones memory to store lots of numbers. If you have capacity in your SIM store them in there, this is because if something happens to your phone, i.e, it dies, you smash it etc you will lose the numbers stored in the phones memory. The SIM’s contents though are safely stored on the network and can in most cases be retrieved by simply putting the SIM in another phone.

INFRA RED – This allows the phone to communicate wirelessly with compatible PC’s or printers, not to mention other compatible phones so if you wanted to transfer names and phone numbers between these you could. It also allows you to play a 2-player game of Snake with these compatible phones. By the way, in case your wondering, the infra red port isn’t at the end of the phone as you would expect, its on the left hand side.

GAMES – I must admit I’m not a big fan of the games on any phone, although they do have a novelty value, but if you are the 8210 has 4 in it – Snake, Logic, Memory and Rotation. I’m not going to bother detailing them as they are pretty basic anyway.

REMOVABLE FASCIAS – As is the case with most of the Nokias (apart from some of the earlier models) you can individualise the look of your phone by swapping the fronts (and the backs on the 8210) for customised fascias with any number of weird and wonderful designs. I have to admit that I am not a big fan of these as I think some of them are a waste of money, however, each to their own.

I would say though that you should be careful about what you buy as there are some really second rate covers around which can do more harm than good to your phone. For example some of the cheaper ones have a very brittle on/off button mechanism
which easily snaps on the inside of the cover. You are then not able to switch your phone on or off and if you don’t realise it is the cover itself that is broke you may think you have got a faulty phone. Obviously putting a new cover on stops this problem.

RINGTONES - The phone has over 30 ring-tones already stored in its memory with space for another 5 that you can download from the internet, this gives you more than enough options for allocating different tones to different caller groups, hence even more opportunities for annoying people in trains and restaurants !!

DUAL BAND – although this is at first glance a pretty obvious feature there is a lot of misunderstanding as to exactly what this gives you. A lot of people simply think this means you can use the phone abroad. This is in fact true although your current service provider has to either have a network in the country you are visiting or an agreement with that countries network to allow visitors access to the foreign network.

This is further complicated by the fact that the actual frequency that the network uses can be either GSM900 or GSM1800, this is where the dual band phones have the advantage as they can operate on either. Single band can obviously only operate on one so your options are limited to that frequencies availability in that particular country.

The other benefit of a dual band is closer to home as you can in theory use a dual band handset on any of the four networks in the UK. To do this though you have to have the handset “unlocked” so as to be able to accept any of these networks SIM’s.

Unlocked is simply a technical restriction that most networks have programmed into their phones to prevent users jumping between networks and therefore keeping them “locked” to one particular network.

Although it used to be difficult to get round this it can now be done by anybody with the relevant software
and a data cable, both of which are easily accessible. The networks themselves will actually unlock them for you, however, they will charge you for this privilege.

This means that you could, if you were so inclined, have a SIM for each network and be able to use it in your unlocked dual band handset whereas a single band will only be able to utilise 2 of the networks.

Incidentally the networks frequencies are;

Orange 1800
One2one 1800
Vodaphone 900
Cellnet 900

Phew, that was a bit complicated wasn’t it? If I’ve lost anyone just drop me a line and I’ll got through it in a bit more detail.

I’d best get back to the review hadn’t I ?

As you can see from above the phone has a lot going for it, however, it does have a couple of drawbacks which I’ll outline below.

BATTERY LIFE – I have found the talk time for the battery is limited. I can live with that by just making sure I put it on charge every night, besides I do use the phone probably a lot more than your average user so this may have a bearing on the fact that it seems to run out most days.

DATA SPEED – It only has 9.6kbs data speed which as far as I’m concerned is not enough for internet browsing so I don’t use it for this. However I am not overly impressed with the download speed from mobiles anyway at the moment so I think this is a minor drawback.


All in all I love this phone and it never leaves my person, even on a night out I’m sad enough to carry it with me because it’s that small it can slip in my jeans pocket without anyone knowing its there. Try doing that with some of the other models on the market !!

Oh yes, the price. Well I said in my original review that that it was a bit expensive for a handset but I also said that as with all new technology, the price of this would come down in next to no time. Well, sure enough it
has, you can now pick one up on a standard contract for £79.99, in fact I am sure if you shop around and take advantage of some of the deals various retailers are offering at the moment you could get one even cheaper.

Ooopss, nearly forgot, final bit of info for those interested in this type of data, the phone itself is a massive 101mm long by 44mm wide and is only 17mm thick, it also weighs in at an horrendous 79g.

OK, that's it, THE END ... honest!!

Summary: