Count me in the growing list of Nokia fans. The Nokia 2600 is a delightful new phone with nice features and a palatable price tag. Coming from a design background, I must say that the form factor of this model is very classy and timeless. It may not appeal to the youth, as it’s devoid of any frills. But I use my phone more on purpose then for fashion. So let’s dive straight into the features:
The package contains the Phone, Battery, Charger, and Manual.
The Pluses:
Amazing battery life – runs for 3~5 days on a single charge. Has good talk time too, I’d say a minimum of 3~5 hours continuously. I have chatted for 3 hours with just two notch of the battery indicator going down. That’s amazing! Also charging time of the battery is pretty fast. It takes about 1.5 hours to charge up. But I have noticed some anomaly here. At times, it’s taken over 2 hours to charge and showed full charge. But the battery drained in no less then 20 minutes of talk. This could be due to fault of the plug point or because of the slim contacts of the charger resulting in improper connection.
Lightweight and compact – the phone is really light, largely due to the improved battery technology using a Li-Ion cell. The overall shape easily fits into ones palm. The plastic side panels are matt finished. This acts like an anti-slip grip and feels nice to touch. A steel frame around the display adds brilliance to the looks. Keys are large and well grouped. The tactile response is very pleasant (better then all my previous phones!)
Display Screen – the color screen is vibrant to say the least. It’s rich and bright when indoors, very good to look at. But the moment you are in sunlight, the screen fades and is hardly readable. All color mobiles suffer from dimming contrast under direct sunlight, but this one is a tad too bad. Themes offer variations and are provided in plenty. But no download supported for images. Another great thing is that the call duration is available on screen during the call.
Ringtones – Again a clear winner. For phones of this segment, this one offers crystal clear polyphonic ringtones that are loud and clear. The built in tones are great. Though you cannot download or receive ringtones onto this handset. There’s a built in composer for monophonic tunes.
Software – I am pretty satisfied by the software package that comes in this phone. Features are largely common to any Nokia mobile. A few added touches are:
a) You can arrange your menu either as icons – nine of them (nice touch), on your ‘desktop’ or keep them as scrolling list. The right key of the 4-way navigation key can be customized to shortcuts of one’s own choice.
b) The ‘boot-up’ time is fast and the phone allows at least 50 SMS storage space.
c) Calendar feature with reminders that can be sent via SMS. Once can also set repeating Alarms (across a week).
d) Spreadsheet functionality is a real steal! This is a nifty utility. Those who take down expenses on a notepad will love this feature. Can be further improved but I wont complain of what it offers now. Great thing to have.
e) Converter with built in ratios for weight etc. and a section of currency converter where the user can feed the exchange values.
f) Timed Profiles. Another cool touch. Here you can specify when should a profile expire. Great when going for a meeting for a fixed duration. Just specify the time when the meeting gets over and your phone will return to the General profile automatically.
g) There are 3 games available on the phone. Bounce, Mobile Soccer and Millennium Mission.
h) Screened numbers. Users can specify numbers as screened one that will ring silently. A cool feature to keep away all annoying calls from service providers or your bank.
i) Speed dial feature can be assigned to send SMS to specific users. Again a neat extension of a common feature. Oh, how can I forget, you can also SMS in Hindi. I don’t think I am inclined towards that… no T9 anyway and its clumsy.
Speakerphone – aha, that’s a good feature to have in a budget phone. But then the sound quality in not that great. So don’t expect your family to sit happily around your dining table and get to talk over speakerphone. Instead you’ll need to get pretty close to hear it clear.
Build Quality – there’s not much to doubt Nokia’s build quality. The phone is pretty sturdy. I have been using this phone for about 3 months without any cover and still have no scratches (I do like to take care of it!). A hard fall may result in the phone switching off and the covers coming off. That’s not a bad behaviour at all.
The Minuses:
Guess what, the phone does not support MMS! That’s bad for a colour phone. Come on, I want o customize the desktop with my recent tour pic or that crazy image I could download. Nah, this one is disappointing.
No support for multiple numbers per contact. So my dear friend, I can’t keep your cell, office and home number within one entry. Again a bad omission for today’s phones.
No minute reminder! I dunno if you find this such a necessary feature but I do. Great when you are on roaming and you want to be alerted of the minutes that you are speaking!
Poor speakerphone quality. Agreed it’s a low end phone. But if you have the feature then why not give a decent one. Well, I won’t crib much as I think it’s going to get better in time.
Inability to change the font size across the phone. You can vary the font size while typing an SMS but not for the menu items.
That’s more like it. The Nokia 2600 has more pluses then minuses! Comes in two colours – steel gray and off-white. Go for the steel gray shade, its beautiful. Presently priced around Rs4500. I would rather rate it as 4.5 out of 5 but the options here don’t allow that. So it’s 4 out of 5 for the new entrant in the low end colour mobile section, and incidentally is the best in the segment so far.