What's the time, I'll just check on my NEW PHONE... (Nec 338)

Member Name: reddragonflame

Product:	Nec 338
Date:	18/10/05 (497 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Small, light, and attractive. One of the smallest 3g phones to date.

Disadvantages: Expensive for such an under featured phone

Well, this is it. The forth phone I have owned since September '04. From the lowly Trium 110p to the NEC e313, on to the Motorola A835, I have a habit of getting cheap phones that break down easily. From this, I decided it was time to get a decent phone. So off I trotted to the City Centre.

Four hours later, and I am lost, cold, hungry, and slightly frightened at all the shoppers running round muttering to themselves. I have searched everywhere for a decent phone, and have only one place left to look... The Link.

Now, my budget was considerably higher than it has been in the past, due to a very nice payday. I had already planned that a hundred quid was the maximum I was going to part with. But for some reason I could not find a good, affordable 3 mobile phone anywhere. Then I spotted this little phone hanging from a shelf.

(Why do they attatch them to a little bolt? They aren't real, and I couldn't even open this one)

The first impression was very good. It was attractive, stylish, and small which was something I did not expect from a 3 phone. It was in my budget range, but still a bit expensive at £85 pounds with £15 worth of credit. Checking the features, many of the nowadays standard functions were missing, such as bluetooth, infrared, pre-installed games, and internal antenae. I was dubious, but I wanted to get home before I became one fo the zombified shoppers and I hadn't found any cheaper phones. So went for it.

The one I bought has a black shiny bit (There really is no other word for it... it is the area below the light that takes up some of the cover that contains a speaker) although you can buy silver and red. I have not seen any other colours yet, but they might be some. There are not any changeable covers from what I have seen, but you can buy cases and all that jazz.

Parting with the money was hard, but then it always is, right? After handing over a thick wad of cash (Well, four twenties and a fiver) I walked out of the store £85 poorer but one phone richer than before.

Aftre getting it home, I emptied the box. Inside I found a phone (obviously, I would have been worried if I didn't), a battery, a charger (which seems universal to NEC phones), a hands-free kit, and a pack containing a sim card, manual, and leaflets for 3. The only disappointment here was that most NEC phones come with 2 batteries, whereas this phone only had one. The battery is different though, and I will mention this later...

The phone looks nice enough with its little shiny bit, and silver-surrounded light. The aerial is a bit ugly, but nothing too important. It is a nice little clam shell / flip top phone to look at, and small and lightweight too.The colours work together well, and the shiny bit has little flecks of silver in it which kinda shimmers in the right light. The clam shell is slightly stiff, so the infamous "flick" is almost impossible to do. Also, the hinges feel slightly unstable to me, although this may only be my phone. Still, they don't seem to be getting any worse, and I haven't owned any clam shells before, so it might be standard.

Inserting the sim card is easy. This suprised me, as I was used to the A835 hit-and-miss door system. The position and positioning is clearly marked, and it fits snugly and tucked away. The battery is slightly harder to insert, and needs to be lined up correctly. The battery does not have a cover, as it is one of those batteries fitted with a cover, if you know what I mean. It fits very tightly, and doesn't come off unless you want it to meaning it won't come loose in your pocket.

Charging it is equally easy. Connecting the charger is simple enough, and a little green light comes on to tell you it is charging. The charger comes as two pieces, but it doesn't take long to put it together. Anyway, I decided to play about with the phone while it was charging, so I turned it on.

The phone almost instantly flashes to life. The bright, large colour screen lights up immediatly, and the logo of 3 mobile flashes across the screen in a "mercury" effect. Soon after the animation is shown, the main screen comes up.

The icons in the menus and on the home screen are very clear, and leave no doubt as to what they can be. Extra buttons can be added to the home screen for faster access. All the icons are full colour. Also, the icons on the home screen can be rearranged, and a wallpaper can be added. You can even add a calender, so you can really go all out to customise the phone.

First thing to do with ALL 3 mobiles is to ring 444. This basically activates the phone. Ok, that was easy enough. While doing this, I decided to check the speakerphone.

The sound quality through the speakerphone is very good, as clear as it sounds through the earpiece. It is a bit tricky to put it onto speakerphone, as you have to access a menu to do so. But since the chances are you will rarely use the speakerphone, this doesn't matter.

The thing that hits out most about the phone is the speed with which it charges. I had only made the call to activate the phone, plus gone on to the browser to download a game to my new phone and played it for a bit, when it finished charging. Took about an hour and a half in total. I was slightly put off by this, as my old phones charged fast but died quickly, but I just got on with playing.

Next stop was the ringtones. Keeping some of the same tones as other NECs, the also change some. I missed the James Bond tone, but was happy enough as I simply uploaded my own. The problem that became apparant here is the biggest fault in thsi phone.... the sound quality.

The speaker on the phone is small, I know, but never the less this is no excuse for such bad sound quality. My 313 seemed good enough, and the A835 blew me away, but this is horrible. MIDI files are too quiet, and MP3 sound very scratchy and annoying. This is definately one for MIDI only. Another thing that kinda bugged me was that it does not support true tones, or MP3 ringtones. Even though few phones do, for such an expensive phone I would have liked it to play my good old Crazy Frog tone.

Then I went on to the camera. The quality is absolutely fantastic! The video can record anywhere up to a minute in low quality, and 25 seconds high quality, and it looks smoother than on any other phone I have seen. The photo quality is good too, although the pictures are small, about half the size of most phones. This is fine though, unless you plan to upload them onto your PC. This also presents a problem with sending picture messages. Most phones support much higher resolution so these pics will appear very small on screen. A nice little feature, however, is the ability to edit pictures on your phone. Although nothing huge, it is a nice addition that I had not seen in any other phone to date.

Texting is an important part of mobile phones, and people prefer it to be easy. On this phone there are many options available while texting: Standard press-button-over-and-over format, T9 format, number format, capitals, all caps, no caps.... the list goes on! Also you can email or send pictures, sounds, and videos via MMS. The characters are easily laid out as well, so texting is very fast.

The battery is brilliant. It can last for a long time from a short charge. Mine has lasted as long as 3 days without being charged, and only being used for short calls and texting. This is great as most other 3 mobiles have atrocious battery life, simply because they have so many features packed into them. As I already mentioned, it is also considerably slimmer than most batteries and as such is much more lightweight than initially expected.

For those seeking furthur customisation than just ringtones and wallpapers, you can change the vibration, and even the pattern which the light and keypad flashes! There are also four customisable "profiles", whereby you choose the volume, brightness, vibration, ringtones etc. of the phone, and then select the required profile at the right time. It is easy to make this phone completely suit you.

All in all, the phone does come across as very good. The functions are easy to get used to, although the keypad is a bit wierd (What is up with the 5 button?), and aside from the ugly aerial it is an attractive and sleek looking phone. However, a considerably large price and a distinct lack of features just knock it off the 5 star rank.

For ease, and skim readers, I will now list good and bad points:

Good
-High quality camera
Seriously, the camera is fantastic. Just thinking about everything I can record, snap, edit.... it's great! You can be the one everyone pesters for "THOSE" party pics!

-Easy to use
It is fast and easy to set up and use, and texting is faster on this brand of phone than any other I have seen.

-Small, light, and stylish
It is far smaller and lighter than most other 3 video phones out there, although not as small as some of the more expensive phones on other networks. Never the less, a nice phone to look at.

-Fantastic battery
The battery is quick to charge and lasts for ages! This is one of the best parts of the phone.

-PC transfer
You can use old NEC cables to link it to your PC and transfer sounds, pictures, and videos to and from your phone. You will need to find the software yourself though, through a search engine, a forum, or an online store.

Bad
-Poor sound quality
It is truly atrocious. You need to have vibrate on unless there is no noise around, else you won't hear it.

-External aerial
This looks a bit ugly. It isn't a huge thing, just some people may be put off by this.

-Expensive yet lacking features
For a phone that costs £85, it is lacking many standard features. Bearing in mind that cheaper phones have bluetooth and infrared, it is a bit disappointing that this one doesn't.

-Small memory
The memory is 17KB which is good for standard, but not as good as other phones for lower prices. You cannot even buy a memory card for this phone, meaning PC transfer is important.


-=-=-=UPDATE=-=-=-
Well, I did not break this one, but I have a new phone. The reasons for this include the O2 Genie simcard I recently acquired, which is not compatable with this phone (which apparantly, can not be unlocked) and general boredom. The lack of features did get wearing, despite the nice appearance and suprising durability. It just lacks the oomph that most phone have. I guess what I am trying to say is, this phone is very much reccomended for business use, but I certainly would not reccomend this for social purposes.

I have also updated most of this review, hopefully making it a bit easier on the eye! Aside from this, not much else left to say.

Look out for a review on my new Sony Ericsson T630 soon...

Links

www.mididb.com - Some MIDI for ringtones

www.winmx.com - File sharer, for MP3s and the like

www.google.com - For images, or for searching for the software

Also check out - My other phone reviews!

Summary: I really wouldn't bother. Get the Sony Ericsson T630 instead

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