I have been using this handset for around 10 months now. I got this for 13K with the next handset in my consideration set being the N70 which was 18K then. The major difference between the two feature-wise was an incremental 0.7 MP along with flash in N70. I thought the price differential wasnt worth that little bit extra. Adding some extra money over the price differential a digicam can be bought, if imaging is the main consideraion, was my idea in going for this handset.
Overall its feature packed and the performance is smooth and fast with my 512MB additional memory card. EDGE works really well and the speeds are real fast on my Hutch network in Bangalore.
The main advantage is the Symbian Series 60 2nd Edition OS which had a wide array of applications and games compatible with it available on the net.
The interface is quite the usual and not the jazzy N-Series types. But its user-friendly at the end of it.
The camera takes good quality images under proper lighting conditions. But the colours are not reproduced and pictures do tend to look a bit dull compared with those taken in Moto RAZR’s same 1.3MP cam. This nokia cam also lacks features like exposure controls, white balance though using other compatible softwares this can be overcome. In the dark, the pictures do not come out good and the shutter speed is really low increasing the capture time while using the night mode.
The video recorder of my phone(I dont know whether this problem is only with mine though) doesnt provide seamless recording in the sense that the video recording software attempts to copy the video to the Memory card and in the process, the recorded video freezes every second. This can be overcome by seeting the memory to the phone memory and thats when that 8MB of phone memory makes you feel that its not enough as you cant make use of the software’s 1Hour video recording as the internal memory is low. Changing the memory card(BTW, I am using the original Nokai Memory card)and firmware upgrades did not help.
The sound of speaker output is quite low, considering that earphones are used, the sound is quite good and clearly audible. For some reason, the inbuilt music player refuses to play tracks longer than 6mins. This isnt really significant as free music players like OGG Play can be used.
With around an hour of talking, some 30 odd snaps, 80 mins of music, some games, some video recordings everyday, the battery lasts for aound 2.5 days which I feel is quite good. The battery drains faster if one is usinf themes.
For some reason the phone once switched off and then turned on starts in SAFE mode and has to be turned off and on to get it in the normal mode.
Overall it is a good’Value for money’ phone with almost all features that any other mobile provides. The OS compatibility helps overcome some problems with the pre-loaded softwares. Its quite a good buy at its price.