Once upon a time I fell in love with a dwarf. (Nokia 8210)

Member Name: yhwman

Product:	Nokia 8210
Date:	04/05/01 (182 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Small

Disadvantages: None really

New information regarding T9 text at the bottom.

This dwarf is a small little minx, wrapped in a skin tight little blue number. Ooooooh, someone give me a cold shower.

(One Cold shower later)

Righty then, on to the phone. The Nokia 8210e is a tiny little phone at just over ten centimetres tall, three centimetres across and at it’s thickest one and a half centimetres deep. Also neat is it having an internal aerial, which means you don’t poke yourself everytime you bend over with the phone in your pocket. It’s a phone of many features, more than would be practical for me to go wobbling on about until the cows come home (Or is that cool down?). First up.


* Ergonomics *

There’s two ways to look at this. Get a phone that’s a couple of bricks big and weighs about the same and everything can have it’s own button, maybe a couple in case you lose one but that you need a special bag with wheels on to take round with you. Or you can get a really small phone that can disappear into any pocket (Including those stupid ones that are only supposed to be for decoration) but is a bit fiddly to use. The Nokia falls into the latter category, which is just what I wanted because I have had a brick (or heaven forbid, a two brick) phone I’d never take it anywhere which kinda defeats the object of having a MOBILE phone. The digit buttons may be found a bit fiddly by people with large hands or poor motor skills but the menu controls are fine. My main grip is the power button, it’s recessed to avoid it being turned off at the wrong time but when I cut my nails it’s a bit of a mission to press it.


* Ease of Use *

Here the Nokia does well, as I already mentioned it’s at a bit of a disadvantage by being so small so a good job has been done. Once you manage to get the flipping thing turned on. The menu controls consists of an up/down rocker switch, dial, hang up and
two other context sensitive buttons. It’s the latter two that are the clever ones. At the bottom of each menu screen on the phone there will be two commands. For example, on the address book there’s detail and exit. Detail being on the left and exit on the right. Press the left context key and you get the details of whomever you selected with up/down. Press the right one and you exit the phone book. Very clever and used through out the phone. Another nice touch is that when you’re not on a call, pressing hang up acts like a panic button and cancels whatever stupid thing you’re in the process of doing and returns you to the first screen you see when you turn your phone on. Also handy if you’re feeling lazy.

Once you start getting used to the phone there is a handy shortcut mechanism. On the first screen you press left context to get to the menu, but if you press it and then some numbers after you jump to a specific location. Menu 4 5 4 for example tells your own phone number. Sounds daft but with my memory of numbers totalling to a grand total of… Anyway, it’s useful.

For the most part the phone is intuitive and does what you think it should do when you press something. The only annoying thing is the missed calls notification. Do anything on your phone and you appear to lose them, they are there buried away in the menu system but I had a bit of a panic the first time it happened to me.


* Predictive Text Input *

Someone somewhere is making a lot of money out of this. Comedy is big business it seems, because this feature is just useless! It only remained on for the first few times I texted people. The final straw with it was when it refuse to let me type ‘look’ in and instead kept inexplicably changing it to ‘Justin’. I just began learning to touch type on a phone instead.

Normal text input is OK though, you have the usual cycling through letters on the
digit keys with # acting as capslock. Commonly used symbols, such as !.,?’ are cycled through by pressing 1 while more interesting symbols, such as :)&% are accessed from a menu brought up by pressing * and using up/down to choose your symbol.

Once you’ve got your message composed you can send it to several people without having to retype it, which sounds really useful though I’ve only used it once.


* Features *

OK, so what features does this phone have that make it more than just average?

Well, you’ve got several games, Memory, Snake, Logic and Rotation. None are much cop to be honest, I don’t understand the obsession some people can get with Snake.

Infra Red Modem. Surely that must be top on the list of features that look good on paper but you never actually use. At least I can’t see me ever using it.

On phone address book. This is a godsend if you have selfish friends with long names, as the sim card will only hold short names I it’s phone book. This phone has it’s own memory but the only time you actually notice is when the sim card moans and the phone asks if you would like to save to the phone’s memory. The rest of the time it’s a transparent process.

Downloadable ring tones. While you can’t compose your own ring tones (Sob, no Bungle for my phone!) you can have them sent to you from the net. My phone currently plays a mixture of Metallica and Jimi Hendrix!

Downloadable icons. The little ‘orange’ logo got very old very fast, so now I have an F1 logo instead. Obviously!

Caller groups. For every entry in your phone book you can tell the phone what they are. Friend, Family, VIP etc. Then for each group you can specify a different ring tone and what picture appears on the phone when they call! The picture thing may not sound useful, but when the phone is in silent mode it is.

Profiles. This i
s another handy feature. There are several profiles on the phone, general, headset, outside, pager etc. Each one contains different settings for the phone. Outside has the volume cranked up and vibrating mode on for example. However, you’re not fixed to anything. You can change everything about the profiles, even the names (Apart from general). I have one called Roaming, which is like outside but doesn’t vibrate. I use it when I’m in the house but not in the same room as the phone.

Volume control. Falling nicely to hand when you’re on the phone is the speaker volume control. No longer do you have to ask the person calling to speak up, just turn the volume up on the phone. It doesn’t sound like a particularly useful feature, but believe me it is! I’m always using it.

Those clip on cover things. Well, you can change the front of this phone but I really don’t get the point. It’s so small and everything is so tightly packed that you wouldn’t fit much on any cover.


* Summary *

This is my first mobile phone and I think I’ve had a pretty good start, nothing really bugs me about the phone, although the battery life does seem a bit random. Sometimes it seems happy to go for days without a charge sometimes it’s bone dry after two. Probably just me being an erratic caller. Value wise I really don’t feel I can comment, as I got it for free on a contract! One thing I would like to see on the phone would be a timer so you know how may of your free minutes you have used.

Oh, one useful thing you may want to know if you own one of these phones. Type in (but don’t dial) *#06# and get told the phones serial number. Write it down and if the phone gets stolen you can get it deactivated so it won’t work with any sim card.


* The Truth About Text *

OK, I don’t know what it was – maybe I was half asleep or maybe the manua
l was poorly written but I’d got it into my head that T9 worked liked auto complete, it doesn’t. Instead it you just press each button with the letter you on once and when you’ve finished the word it does it’s best to figure out which letters you would have chosen. It works pretty well but don’t trust it 100% - one time I didn’t look what it had typed on my behalf and sent a message to my friend telling him that “if he bought curly crisps, the ant would smile upon him”. Hal for phones!

Summary: