After having owned this Nokia 3125 CDMA phone for more than a year now, I felt I should share my experiences with you. I hope it makes it easier for you to make a smart purchase decision.
Well, to begin with, a cell-phone is a highly personal gadget and should suit your own tastes and requirements. And here are mine:-
Must-have’s
Small and light – for convenient handling
Long battery life – no need of charges in between long calls spaced well-apart in time
Loud and clear – making calls while driving becomes a breeze
Robust build-quality – Who wants to make frequent trips to the dealer’s?
Good voice clarity – A phone is a phone after all :-)
CDMA – Lower running cost when compared to GSM if you make volume calls
Good-to-have’s
Bluetooth – for hooking up your laptop on to the net, wirelessly!
Fm radio – I have mixed opinions about having FM on phone. It’s a handy feature while, say, commuting for long hours – think about jam-busters!But why not have a nice car-deck for that matter? During office hours too, it’s highly impractical to wire yourself up just to listen to radio; it looks clumsy if you ask me! The only positive is that FM phones ship with hands-free cords bundled with the package– this means more hardware at almost no extra price!
Features I was least interested in
Mp3 Player, Video recorder, Camera – Useless features on cellphone – invites scope of more bugs
Though 3125 does not come with Bluetooth and FM, it seemed to fit my bill quite right, so I went ahead with a blue colored model and after having used it for the last one year, let’s say I am not disappointed overall!
Dimension and build -At 84 gms, 3125 is one of the lightest phones around! It has a solid touch to it and fits your palm nicely when you hold it. The plastic is not flimsy at all. I would have rated it 5/5 if it were a bit slimmer though, ‘coz when you slide it in your jeans pocket, the bulge is noticeable. I think this extra flab could have been cut down, since there is a huge gap of space (around 4mm) between the outer shell and the inner core just underneath the screen. But maybe Nokia has intentionally made it this way to make it studier. And sturdy it is! I have managed to drop it from my hand, from the desk, in every possible way, at times even on hard concrete! But it has never formed a crack on the body. After a year of rough usage, there are few instances of peel-offs here n’ there, but I guess it’s rather me who is to blame J. Good job here, Nokia! 4.5/5
Call handling – The call sound-quality is simply superb. No trace of static at all! Maybe, that’s why I have stuck to this cell for so long. However, there is an unwanted bug that came free with my phone J. Whenever I would want to switch calls, say during call waiting, the phone would freeze for no apparent reason. This is bad, since at times I cannot attend to the more important call which is on wait, without undergoing a reboot. This is a very basic bug & I believe I am the only unfortunate one facing this problem. On the other hand, if it’s really a known 3125 bug, hopefully, it has been fixed by Nokia’s later firmware updates. Mine was one of the earliest released models.
The speaker phone is loud enough for all practical purposes. It is better or equivalent than most Sony models but lacks the top-notch clarity you’ll get on the likes of E50/ E60 -by far the best I have seen! To illustrate the point, let’s say when you are on loudspeaker while driving, you got to be really alert at times to pick up the voice correctly; however, it never gets to the point where it becomes downright annoying. Another downside is you cannot start a call in speaker mode. You have to wait till the call is connected to switch to speaker mode. This behavior is similar to 3125’s GSM sibling- 3120, but is unlike the rest of Nokia family. Unfortunately, I’ve failed to follow Nokia’s logic of making 3125/3120 the odd-ones-out in this regard.
An ongoing call does not get disrupted usually, except the rare occasions when I would get a “Call dropped” error. I am not sure whether this is a network problem or a cell-phone glitch. But as I said, this is very rare and I am not bothered much.
There is a peculiar behavior in the way 3125 shows call-duration. It is not the true two-way call duration, but includes the initial waiting time and ringing time as well. This is a minor error. But these are the stuff that tell a oh-so-good user-experience from a not-too-bad one, you know!
And oh yeah, concatenated long messages are not supported – Big disappointment here! Incoming long messages are just not delivered to your inbox. You do not even get an explanatory error / warning message in such cases. This means you never know when you have missed a concatenated sms. Plain stupid!
My overall rating in this department is 4/5 and I think I am being liberal here.
Other features – The normal goodies are present. Calendar comes handy during meetings to lookup a date/day. Calculator – nothing much to shout about. There is a calorie counter application I have never used and hence cannot comment on. Why would one need to calculate calories on a cell-phone in the first place? There is a voice recorder you could use to take down quick voice notes too.
Battery – Battery life is around 2-3 hours of talk and one day of standby time taken together. This is okay-ish since that gives you ample time to get it charged in between, unless of course you are on travel, in which case, it is recommended you carry an extra battery.
Overall conclusion – This is a nice reliable phone which could have been made better. Given it costs less than 4.5k and the running cost of CDMA is a shade less than that of GSM phones, you could very well go for this set. I am sure that by now, Nokia has nailed down most of the early bugs. That means you can avail yourself of this practical n’ reliable no-frills budget phone and look forward to increased savings on your phone bills.
Happy shopping, err talking!