Gear Eye: Nokia 6230
posted Nov 17th 2004 4:48PM
Think about the Prom Queen, or the most popular girl in your school. We probably don't need to remind you about her much. She looked great, every guy wanted to have her. She defined trends, every girl wanted to be like her (well, almost every girl). All this popularity went to her head - she was a bit of a bitch, which pissed everyone off, although most of us put up with it just to be around her. She also acted like every trend was her idea, when in truth she was usually just following some other, less popular girl's, lead. Granted she did it as well if not better than the less popular girl, she "owned" it, but she never did it first.
But the Prom Queen's downfall was that she peaked too early. She was at the top of her game before the end of high school, and by Prom time, her reign was already fading. When she gets to college, she'll be one of 1000 pretty girls with average smarts. And if she still wants to rule the school, she's going to need to work much harder for it.
That, my friends, is the story of the Nokia 6230. It looks HOT, it has just about every desirable feature, and it implements most of them very well. But it certainly wasn't the first phone like this, and yes, it's a bit of a bitch as well. You might even get the sense that, like the prom queen, Nokia might lose its reign when it has to grow up and go off to college to compete with smart, sexy phones from young upstarts around the world. That said, she's still one of the hottest girls in school and we're not suggesting anyone would turn down a date with her.
Read on for the rest of our review.
Yup
The size and shape of the 6230 is perfect. This is classic Nokia design, from back in the days before wacky keypads and
crazy shapes, when people actually wanted Nokia phones. It is tiny - small enough to easily pass the Levi's change
pocket test. The shape is relatively rectangular, but is contoured enough and gets slightly wider about one third of
the way down from the top so it sits in your hand perfectly. There is no external antenna to ruin the lines or feel, of
course. And there aren't really any protrusions to speak of, just a small raised section to protect the loudspeaker and
camera, but it's not even noticeable.
The keyboard follows the simple design Nokia introduced with its flip phones. The keys are large and butt up against
each other, however they have enough of an edge that you don't hit the wrong number. The success of this phone (it was
so popular in Europe that they actually ran out of parts for it, further delaying the US launch), has convinced Nokia
to shift back to a normal keypad layout, and we can see why. It is easy to use, even for our large-fingered friends,
despite the phone's diminutive size. The D-Pad was surprisingly easy to use too.
The one thing holding back the physical aspect of the 6230 is the screen. Even though it's a TFT display, unlike many
other of its Series 40 cousins, it still is dim outdoors and has all the contrast of, say, an original Gameboy Color.
Like all other Series 40 phones, the 6230 only has a 128 x 128 screen, which makes the dim screen feel cramped as well.
Especially considering this phone has both a camera and a video recorder / player, the small, dim screen detracts from
an otherwise excellent physical experience.
Battery Life: Oh Yah!
There is one advantage to small, dim screens - they seriously rule for battery life. Nokia phones have always had
impressive battery life, and the 6230 is no different. We got a good four days of solid use out of every charge, maybe
three if we were especially heavy on the Bluetooth and audio player. It also uses the same battery and charger as most
every other Nokia being made today, which comes in handy in emergencies when you forget to charge up your phone before
going out.
Signal and Sound: Oh Yah!
After the disappointing performance of the 7610, the 6230 revives our faith in Nokia's internal antennas. It is
shocking just how tightly this dinky little phone can hold on to even the weakest signal. It rivals, if not surpasses,
the K700. Plus it has support for 850 MHz, the other American GSM band, which further beefs up its awesome
signal.
The speaker is loud and clear. The hard, flat surface doesn't feel great if you press it tight to your ear for too
long, but that's not really a problem, plus it has a good speaker phone, and since it functions as an mp3 player, it
comes with a stereo headset too.
Menus: Yup
No one can deny the simple beauty of the Series 40 menus for most simple tasks - the ones that have always been around
on phones. It's one of the reasons Nokia has sold so many phones, they're just so damn easy to use. However as you try
to do more complex or cutting edge things with the 6230, Series 40 shows its age. It starts to take more and more steps
to do obvious things or worse, it leaves you hanging wondering what to do. For instance to change the wallpaper, you go
to the phone Settings and select wallpaper, which takes you to the Gallery application with all the pictures on the
phone. But when you select a picture in the Gallery application, it doesn't set it as the wallpaper. It opens the
picture up and then if you dig through a list of options you'll find the wallpaper setting. Caller ID pictures are even
more obfuscated.
Issues like this, as well as many others, give us the feeling that Series 40 has jumped the shark. Nokia can either
play the aging prom queen and hang on to her former glory like Debbie Harry in Hairspray, or she can opt for the
Extreme Makeover: phone edition approach and overhaul the menus from top to bottom.
Calling: Yup
Like we said, the 6230 is adept at doing all the classic phone things. Everything works exactly like it should -
almost. We were this close to giving the 6230 an Oh Yah, but the first time we tried calling our voicemail, the 6230
told us no number was set up. WHAT? Apparently the 6230 doesn't read the voicemail ID from your SIM card, or ours had
an error while doing it. Which is weird considering three other phones we used that week, including two other Nokias
all worked just fine.
Politeness: Oh Yah!
Finally! A phone that lets you change the ringing volume with the volume keys when you're not on a call. Plus the
phone has the usual assortment of Nokia settings like timed profiles and whatnot. We could cry with joy. Instead we'll
just give this an Oh Yah and do a little dance.
Contacts: Oh Yah!
We love the fact that middle- to high-end phones today all share many of the most important features with smartphones.
The 6230 has a powerful contact application that can hold multiple phone numbers, email addresses, and even street
addresses. It even holds photos for caller ID, however, like we said before, adding a photo is a rather tedious
process, but that's not the fault of the contacts application. Nor is it the phone's fault that despite the fact that
it supports the SyncML standard, you still can't sync it to your mac via iSync, luckily
this nifty little app helps with that.
Messages: Ugh
We never expected to give any phone an Ugh for messaging, especially Nokia, especially after we wished we had a "Hell
Yah!" rating for the 7610. But these two phones are about as far apart as two phones could be messaging-wise. The good
news: hitting left on the D-Pad from the home screen takes you to the new text message screen. The bad news: 9 times
out of 10 that screen is still populated with the last message you composed, so you have to clear it out first before
writing a new one. Addressing that text message to a single person is fairly straightforward (though not as easy as the
K700), however addressing it to more than one person is rather complicated. The email is bungled up too. Setup seems
fairly straightforward until you realize that it requires a separate GPRS setup from the browser, which is a pain. Once
you actually get it set up, it's not too bad except that a 128 x 128 pixel screen is too small to make reading long
emails a pleasant experience.
Calendar: Yup
It may not be over the top powerful, but the 6230 still has a confidence inspiring, easy to use Calendar application.
Flicking the D-Pad left from the home screen brings up a month view. From there you can change the view or add several
types appointments. Although each type of appointment has some small differences, the only appointment that can repeat
is a yearly anniversary, which they call a birthday. As is standard on Nokias, both the calendar alarms and the
alarm clock will sound even if the phone is off, by default.
Browsing: Yup
For having such a small screen, the 6230 has quite a capable browser, making it easy to check WAP sites, and download
ringtones or games. It has well thought out menus and renders pages quickly too. We're not sure whether the speed is
due a faster data rating for the phone or because the browser is really just that much faster. Not that it matters
since faster is better no matter why it's that way. Still, the small screen cramps the browsing experience making some
sites downright unpleasant to visit, and others just tiring to scroll through.
Camera: Yup
The 6230 has a VGA camera built in. The software is fast and utterly simple. Simply switch to the camera app and snap
a picture. There is no flash, no fancy modes, pretty much nothing extra except for a video recording application.
Instead of making you choose from scenes or modes, the camera tries to automagically adjust the picture to the right
lightness and contrast to make it look like right no matter what it's like outside. When it's dark, the camera does a
fairly decent job of compensating, but the pictures still look like cameraphone pictures - they're dark and grainy.
When it's light outside, the camera continues to overcompensate though, pumping up the brightness until the pictures
are nearly colorless in many cases.
Personalization: Yup
The 6230 can play just about every type of ringtone imaginable, including MP3. And because it's got Bluetooth and
excellent data connectivity, and you can even get a USB cable for it, there's limitless ways of getting ringtones on to
the phone. But while the 6230 excels at musical customization, it stinks otherwise. Out of all the home screen keyboard
shortcuts, you can only customize the right soft key. Granted the other options are well thought out, but I'd rather be
able to change them to my own preferences. Visual customization is just as disappointing. You can switch the wallpaper
on the home screen (but as we've said, it's circuitous), and you can select from a number of pre-configured menu
colors. However none of the home screen items have borders, so it will take some work to find the right combination of
menu color and wallpaper that has a high enough contrast so that you can, say, actually see how many bars of signal or
battery life you have left.
Other Stuff:
There are a ton of small, quick launching games to amuse you, or even challenge you while you wait for the next bus or
train (or the toilets at your favorite club). Better yet, if you bring along the included headset, there's a radio and
an MP3 player built in to the 6230, with an MMC card (under the battery) to guarantee you won't have to listen to the
same songs over and over.
The 6230b is already available through Cingular retail locations as well as Nokia USA's website.
Wow thats the longest and most irrelevant intro to a gadget I have ever read! ;)
i sense some pent up issues in this review
I'm sorry but battery life 'oh yah!'??? My place of work recently issued these babies and while I agree they are great in almost every respect (they are *almost* perfect) the battery is *SO* bad, they die after only a day or so of decent use. Our old S/E T610 could go the three of four you quote, but not this one. It *REALLY* lets the phone down...
Here is my big question really. I've got a SE T610 with T-Mobile and I got the phone because I was sick of waiting for the first Bluetooth phone to come out on Sprint PCS...only to then find out that Sprint was going to totally hose the phones ability to be used as a data modem.
Anyways, the SE T610 is great at most everything I wanted it to do which was (in order of importance):
1. Make/Recieve calls well
2. Support Bluetooth
3. Sync contact info with my Mac through iSync
4. Act as a proper GPRS data modem for my Mac
It's biggest flaw? The antenna RF reception blows. I have to put the phone in *just* the right spot in my room at home for it to get signal and then use a BT headset to answer calls without moving the phone.
After looking around for a worthy sucessor its looks like all of them have some flaw?
K700 - Battery life blows chunks
6230 - Won't sync with iSync, BT compatiblity?
S700 - Too damn expensive
A630 - Might sync with iSync? Contact mgr might still blow?
What phone is out there that will:
1. Get excellent RF recption
2. Have a GOOD contact mgr
3. Sync with iSync
4. Act as a good GPRS data modem
5. Work with a BT headset like the Jabra BT200 or a Bluespoon Digital
6. Have decent battery life
7. Have a screen readable in daylight?
Optional
8. Play MP3s as ringtones
9. Support EDGE for when T-Mobile gets off its ass
10. Support a form of removeable storage
Any takers yet?
The S/E T610 rocks. If you have a mac you can make your computer your phone's slave with the Salling Clicker. You can control itunes, VLC, the mouse... etc. In short - it rules. Plus, now that they are dirt cheap - everyone is getting them - and you can play Minigolf versus just about everyone you hang out with that has ones durring meetings. Oh - and the BT remote control car for the T610 rocks my world.
Now - the question I have is which is the best BT headset for my GF to get me for christmas? The Sony one that is an MP3 player looks kinda cool - but the dangling mic thing has a tendency to piss me off.
I dig the extended metaphor.
Well, I don't have the phone, but I am hearing rave reviews about it. The Motorola v620. I'm contemplating buying it. $320 on ebay. Seems to be a good phone. It's stylish and looks to have better battery life.
6230 is allright
bluetooth is crap, its crippled
it does support EDGE
RF is good too
I think thats a very brilliant description of the current trends on the market the designers of Nokia are really making nonsense designed phones , where Nokia started really well on the phone market , now we have a heap of junk phones which really dont have anything inside or outside the chassis.I think they could do way better.
Finally! A phone that lets you change the ringing volume with the volume keys when youre not on a call.
both my Motorola v60s (one c, one ci) have let me do that; open the phone and then hit the side volume control buttons.
all i want is a verizon-capable phone that can do bluetooth and mp3 ringtones (and that has a good amount of space for those ringtones)
suggestions?
I've been using 6230 (I'm in Asia) for almost a month now, and I haven't been disappointed in the least. I love the professionalism it exudes as opposed to a phone that takes up your whole, full hand to fiddle around *cough* 6600 *cough*
Support for MP3 is great, with only damaged MP3s not being able to be played fully. I got in 50 or so tunes into a 256 MB MMC card through Bluetooth without breaking the connection, so I don't know why anyone would say it's crap. But I just advice you to use the latest Nokia PC suite, as later versions support Microsoft's Bluetooth drivers without having to resort to emulate a serial port through a Bluetooth connection. And for the video centric freaks out there, download Nokia Multimedia Converter 2.0 to get your videos in.
The Contacts application is the thing I love most, and coupled with the Bluetooth connection, I'm beaming my personal information to my clients with complete abandon.
Why does this review remind me so much of the "K700 is that Girl" piece on http://www.clubsonyericsson.com/en/index.shtml
Somewhat similar idea no? :-p
Hi!
Actually, this isn't really a comment, but more a question, I am interested in learning information about NOKIA 6100. I'm sure you probably wrote about it, but please could you just tell me something more in a similar way you described N6230.
You can just Email me, not to repeat yourselves if you already wrote about it,(sorry).
Thanx a lot.
J.
I use the phone since... 5 month and I have to say that I'm happy =)
Had to tweak the headphone to stick the thing into my car, but now its more then a dream.
Batterylife is okay for my. Nothing special, but okay.
Buy it! NOW! =)
I've had a 6230 since May and I think it's brill. The only problem is that despite having a reasonably good VGA camera there's no way to send an email from the phone and include the image as an attachment. Sure, you could send an MMS, but that's much more expensive than using a GPRS connection to send the pic.
I have a moblog with moblogUK and I really feel that this phone is let down by this absence of a feature. According to Nokia, the phone is 'optimised' for text-only email. Well thanks a lot Nokia.
Didn't Eric do another review a little while ago exactly like this one but with some other high school stereotype girl? Maybe a real girlfriend would help him get over it. In the meantime Eric - women read this magazine too. And no, I don't want to know which phone most closely resembles a jock.
Id bang her. Some of you may not remember, but this type of review hasnt been posted in a while. The idea is to post a review about a gadget that can be understood by non-techie types. The kind that may visit engadget. I thought it was pretty well thought out - but I think the whole metaphor points towards Nokia itself, rather than the actuall phone. But maybe thats what they were getting at - and its a perfect metaphor too.
I was thinking about the 6230 also, but the SE K700i better in every respect...
you probably CAN repeat events other than anniversaries on the calendar. I own a Nokia 3100, which is a Series 40 1.0 device, and I get the option to repeat calendar reminders every day, every week, every 2 weeks, every month, or every year. I don't see a reason why Nokia would have pulled this feature on Series 40 2.0 devices (as the 6230). You probably didn't find it because it is quite obfuscated. You have to create the reminder, then open it's options and choose "Repeat" from that menu.
I wouldn't say its a p.o.s. However I don't think it is a great phone. The battery life is too short. I get 2 days on a full charge. If the battery were better I would love the phone. The easiest way I found to send a picture is bluetooth. I've had no problems with sending then using it.
Every phone I've had (moto's, nokia's, sonyericsson's) allows for changing the ring volume via the volume keys, I don't see why that's a big deal.
What about mentioning the MMC card?
i've had my 6230b since May, and i think it's a far better performer than your review lets on.
Hi, i read the review of N6230. I have a N6230 its kinda nice except for the battery life another thing which is annoying me is, i'm not able to play .WAV or .WMV files. Does N6230 support these files? The phone is not able to recognise the .WAV music tones. What can be done? is there anything wrong with the phone i have or is N6230 like tat. I hope you guys can anwer my question. anyone can email me at rajbharat@gmail.com It will be a help. Thanx
re: the 6230- i just ordered 2 direct through cingular, switching from sprint for a VARIETY of issues- your review is thorough, but i wonder if you can post for me what i think is one of the most important features and is NEVER posted in reviews on the various aftermarket sites or on the manufacturer sites, namely this: How many calls does the memory retain in outgoing, incoming and missed? This is SO key, I think.
Also- since in Arizona, AT&T and Cingular are still "strange bedfellows," I can't avail myself of any third party vendor deals, since they all tell me Cingular isn't in AZ yet, and the 6230 isn't available through AT&T. Any suggestions?
Geo
Best. Phone. Ever.
Well, at least to me anyway. I've owned quite a few phones, and this one is the best I've ever had. My house is awful for RF and this thing gets a signal anywhere, unlike my T68i or my Sidekick Color.
It's not perfect by any means, but overall, it blows most other phones out of the water.
this is one of the best phones ever invented ! i highly recomend it. and if your into camaras, and recoding then you will adore the nokia 6230, just like me. it's perfect !
this phone is the best
This phone is one of the best I've ever owned, I've owned 6 so far, this is my 3rd nokia. I set it side by side my 3200, and the 6230 screen blows it out of the water. The whites are white, not yellow. I can't seem to find a way to adjust contrast however. Anyway, unless you're a hard core user this phone is perfect. Even for people that use data it's very functional compared to a good majority of nokias.
However if you want something that smokes, wait 6 months for a 6230i (drooool), 208x208 resolution on the same size screen and support for more file types, also about 4x the onboard memory.
Yep the 6230 is good and teh 6230i is slightly better, we use the 6230i in our work place and so far it is proving to be a great business tool....except for one gaping error..
When you try to synchronize the phone with your Outlook calendar the phone will drop repeating appointments if they occur on a different day of a month, such as an appointment that falls on the first Monday of every month or last Friday of every month.
We are using the latest version of PC-suite v 6.5.10.
Does anyone else have this problem and if so is there a resolution?
If this could be fixed it would make this phone one of the best on the market as it is priced well, the camera is fantastic (1.3MP) and you can get good quality sound and video recording to boot(5+ minutes of using both sound and video, longer for large memory sticks) and although some people don't like the battery life we get a good 2 days of solid use, 3 to 4 on light use before a recharge.
So if your not worried about calendar syncing then this is a really good phone.
www.NokiaSucks.org