Good, but not perfect (Nokia 8310)

Member Name: black sheep

Product:	Nokia 8310
Date:	23/08/02 (1208 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: tiny, radio, WAP

Disadvantages: scratchable screen, unergonomic button set-up

I've just upgraded from the Nokia 3310. This was a phone which I loved very much, it's main problems being that it was quite bulky as mobile phones go and I couldn't download ringtones.

Ah, the Nokia 8310, perfect I thought. It's tiny (it really is, I've searched my handbag for it a couple of times, come to the conclusion I must have left it at work only to discover the next day that it was in my handbag - and I don't have a big handbag. To be fair, I do have an abysmal record on finding things that are right under my nose). And it's so light weight you barely notice it's there. And...dah dah daah... I've already managed to download the theme tune to Mission Impossible onto it.

Not only that, but it lets you download your own picture or logo instead of the operator logo. I even designed my own, using the Club Nokia website (www.club.nokia.co.uk), and it was dirt cheap doing it through that website. It operates through credits. You can buy 20 credits for £2.79 or 50 for £5.99. Then ready-made logos cost 10 credits or your own design 5. Club Nokia also has ring tones you can buy which are much cheaper than the ones in magazines (which is where I got mine from before I discovered the site) or you can edit your own. Again its 10 credits and 5 credits, respectively.

But I've not even got to the best part yet: It has this fantastic little FM radio in it that barely seems to wear the battery down at all. You can save up to 20 radio stations in the memory (with names) or search through and stop wherever you like anyhow. It comes with fantastic little headphones that give really good quality sound, and which you can also use for phone calls. I've never heard such good quality sound on a phone call, even my home phone doesn't seem to do as well. The only annoying thing about the radio is that unless you lock the keypad it has a tendency to suddenly switch channels on you when you're walking along.
However, if you do lock it you've got to unlock it again to change the volume and go all the way back into the radio again, by quite a long route to turn it off - and nor will it let you switch it off after you've taken the headphones out, instead calling for you to put them back in.

The volume buttons, however (located on the top left of the phone) are a bonus. Not only do they control the volume on the radio, but you can also make phone calls louder or quieter, without any fear that touching those buttons will in some way break off the phone call and without even moving the phone away from your ear to look for an appropriate button on the front.

I had originally thought that there was only a small, boring and expensive choice of covers for it available from Nokia. Certainly, these were the only ones that the Carphone Warehouse had, however, at http://www.nokiashop.uk.com, not only were the covers much less expensive, but there's also a range of designs including ones with the Bacardi or Pepsi logo, South Park, a better range or colours and one that looks like a Cadbury's chocolate bar (£9.99-£11.99). I went for the chocolate bar.

The 8310 is also fully WAP enabled and has some sort of infra-red thing which I doubt I'm ever going to use, which, with the appropriate setting up, allows you to beam information from your phone (presumably your phone number) to other similarly set-up phones. Fantastic idea in theory, didn't understand the instructions in practice, and don't know anyone with a phone set up in that way.

However, there is a downside. The old 3310's buttons and functions were very ergonomically designed, and I found myself using them correctly without even thinking about it. There's rather more thinking involved in the 8310. For a start, the right hand button is the one you have to press to get to your list of stored names and numbers, but at all other times it means clear or back or ex
it, and it's my tendency to select Names and then press the right-hand button again to select the one I want, immediately causing me to exit the Names section.

Where the Nokia 3310 just had up, down, cancel and select buttons, the Nokia 8310 also has green phone and red phone buttons, more or less meaning dial and hangup, although the red button also seems to mean exit everything, and it's taken me a while to get used to that, instead of just repeatedly pressing the cancel buttonm as I used to on the 3310 (this, indeed, no longer works on the 8310 as you sometimes end up in screens where you need to use the up or down buttons and select rather than cancel to exit). Maybe it's just not been long enough, but it has been over a month now, and I still regret not having the option of exiting like I used to.

The next thing I was disappointed by was the fact that although i can replace the operator logo, I can't have a full screen image (known as a screensaver) like you see in all the ads for new phones. I can send picture messages, but it costs three times as much as sending a text message.

Also, when you receive a text message, instead of sending you to your inbox to see who it's from and press on their name first, it opens the text message straight away, not showing you who it's from until you've scrolled all the way to the end.

It also has a tendency to save new phone no.s directly to the phone memory rather than the SIM card, which I've not worked out how to stop yet, which doesn't bode well for next time I change phones.

My other major criticism is that the screen (which is admittedly a very decent size) scratches very easily. I keep it in my handbag with my keys, as I used to with the Nokia 3310, but unlike the 3310, which still isn't scratched, the 8310 got pretty badly scratched in less than a week. I've found that a good solution to that is to put a piece of sellotape of the
same width as the screen across the screen. Not only does that seem to stop the screen getting scratched, but the sellotape is itself pretty scratch resistant and doesn't need replacing (the bubbles that first occurred in the sellotape went down completely after a week and you can now barely tell it's there).

On the plus side, I did manage to get the phone completely free with Orange Talk 60 on a year's contract (I wanted to simply upgrade, but I'd have had to pay the full unconnected price, according to Carphone Warehouse, which was £299.99, and it worked out cheaper this way round).

Anyway, overall, I'm glad I've got it, and I can live with the faults. Although it's not as good as I'd come to expect from Nokia based on my trusty 3310, smaller is a very big plus.

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