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November 01, 2006

Nokia 6131 mini-review

I've been living with the Nokia 6131 for around three months now, so here's some thoughts if you're looking into buying this model.
This is my first new phone in 3 years, so bear in mind I don't have that much experience with many recent phones. I like to use my phone to talk and text, but I plumped for this one primarily based on its web access (through T-Mobile's Web 'n' Walk) and its combination of MP3 player and expandable memory (using a MicroSD card).
On the whole I love this phone. Its clam-shell design means the keypad is protected most of the time, with reasonably large buttons which respond positively. The clam-shell itself features an external button which springs the phone open. This makes the phone useable with one hand - an absolute must in my opinion - and also makes using it feel a bit like using a Star Trek communicator.
Battery life is fine once you have cycled charging a few times. The camera is pretty good in daylight conditions but goes grainy pretty quickly once light levels begin to fall.
The killer app for me is the web access. The 6131 uses EDGE technology on top of '2.5G' connectivity to deliver quite reasonable download speeds. T-Mobile's Web 'n' Walk charges you 1p per KB up to a maximum of £1 a day, which seems pretty reasonable to me. Bear in mind that the data is pre-processed before it gets to your phone which cuts down a lot on the file sizes. If I'm away from my PC I regularly use the web access to access Gmail, the HTML version of which it copes with admirably (I actually use this in preference to the dedicated mobile Gmail site). The 6131 will run any Java phone apps and even .swf (Flash) files, though I haven't tried any yet.
The on-board music player is simple but sounds good. I purchased a 1GB MicroSD card (those things are tiny!) specifically to hold music. The player will only display a list of every track that is on the card - there is no organisation by playlist or even directory. If you have a lot of tracks on there it can be a pain to scroll through this list to find what you want. My biggest gripe is the proprietary headphone connection. Why couldn't they just stick a 3.5mm socket on there?! The supplied phones are actually very good quality and deliver deep bass and a sparkly top-end, but that connection means you're tied into using them, and limits you if you wanted to plug your phone into a car stereo or whatever. You can get an adaptor gizmo, but it's one more thing to carry around. The phones incorporate a necklace-type loop that works well in supporting the in-ears and helping prevent them drop out, but you just have to look at the thing and it's in a tangled mess. Bank on a few minutes untangling time every time you take them out your pocket. There is an in-line switch for volume up/down and a single button for going to the next track (or radio station in FM radio mode). I have found that if you're wearing this under a heavy jacket it is easy for the button to be pressed accidentally. The radio is very good and has user-definable presets for your favourite stations.
My final 'extra' purchase was a CA-53 data cable for uploading files from my PC. It uses the same connector as the headphones which seems to be very dodgy. I have had numerous problems with 'USB device not recognized' messages when using the freely downloadable Nokia PC Suite, and these seem to be due to bad connections between the cable and the phone. File transfers aren't very quick - about the same speed as with my USB1-equipped Rio Sport MP3 player. You can also stick the microSD card in an adaptor and use a PC card reader which may be quicker, but bear in mind this entails removing the phone back-cover to get the card out.
So, overall I like this phone. It gives me music and internet on the go in addition to the usual phone functions. There are a few more features like video camera / player, games etc. that I rarely use. In my opinion it's much superior to the Motorola Razr V3 which was also on my consider list early on.
I'll give it 9 out of ten - a point lost for the basic music player (maybe I can get a better Java-based one? - might look into that) and the proprietary headphones.

Posted by Jez at 01:33 PM | Comments (0)