Good at first, but not without its problems (Nokia 8310)

Member Name: muffet_king

Product:	Nokia 8310
Date:	02/05/03 (641 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: features, compact size

Disadvantages: switching off, power button breaking, unreliability

I decided to get this phone on contract last year sometime, and was very excited about playing with my new "toy!" I decided to go with a contract, so I didnt actually have to pay the hefty £300 for the actual phone.

At first this phone seems great. Its an upgrade from the 8210, but much nicer looking, and with loads more features. The 8310 is rounder, nicely layed out keypad, and the backlight is light blue, which is very bright in the dark!! It is slightly smaller than the 8210, and not so square.
The features on it include a radio, which is cool at first, but you have to plug in the earphones, doubling as a hands free kit, which you soon get fed up with. This phones also features WAP, a waste of time on any phone, but good if you need or want it i guess!!! Voice recording is also another feature. You can record short messages, or one long message up to three minutes long. Can come in handy. You can also activate voice commands, so you can go to any name in the phonebook by using a voice command, or certain features can be activated using them. Depends on how lazy you are, as to how often you would use this!!!!!! The calendar on the phone i found very useful indeed. You can enter birthdays, meetings or phonecalls that need to be made on certain days. You can put an alarm on to remind you at the time, or at anytime beforehand. A very useful tool. There are also all the other features standard on nokia phones, games, phonebook, alarm, stopwatch etc.

The phonebook is easily accessible by pressing the up or down button in the centre, instead of going to a "section" It had the added benefit of being able to copy phone numbers from an old sim card, great thing to be able to do!!! You can also add more than one number under a persons name, so instead of having several entries, you can put a persons home, mobile and office number under one entry. It saves 150 entries, and you can also add text to peoples names, to store other i
nformation. Mobile, home and office each have their own little symbols, so you know which is which!!
Text messaging is as easy as with any other phone. This phones features predictive text, has picture messsages, and other benefits. The storage space for text messages is also 150. You can set up folders, to organise your messages, and get them out of your Inbox. Surprisingly,that 150 messages soon fills up. If you keep a lot of messages in your Inbox, it becomes very slow to open.

I have had this phone since last July, and recently got fed up with its problems. I was told shortly after I got the phone that there was a software problem with these phones, and they had to be sent back to sort it out. The software problem caused the phone to constantly switch off. VERY frustrating, especially when you are trying to make a phonecall, or send a text message. The power buttons on these phones also have a tendancy to break very easily. I was talking to someone about how difficult it has become to find fascias for this phone, and he told me the reason was that when changing the covers, people tend to break the power buttons. The phone became very unreliable, and I never knew when it was going to switch off next. Also my power button became broken, so I was unable to switch it on or off, and had to keep it charged so the battery never run down low enough for it to switch off.
I dont know if this problem has been sorted, but if not, i would advise against getting one of these phones for this reason alone. The features are great, but compared to the hassle it will give you, its not worth it!!

Summary: