i carried around a nokia 7250 for quite a few months, and i always thought, "the only thing this is missing is bluetooth." as it turned out, the camera to the 7250 was soon proven to be weak, but that phone was otherwise eclipsed by the appearance of the sony ericsson T610.
now, the 6230 comes along and is pretty much the answer to what i was looking for - a compact profile phone with the power of a brick smartphone. it's all here: a great phone, with bluetooth, a decent browser, a normal keypad, EDGE and GPRS, and decent camera to boot. in addition the 6230 packs a video recorder, and an MP3/ AAC player to complement the FM radio we've come to expect in nokia series 40 phones. this is also the only phone this size i know of with an external storage card. in short, there is a lot to like.
the phone
the phone itself sounds great and seems to have a great antenna compared to other phones this size. also included is a speakerphone, called "loudspeaker" which works especially well for normal conversations where the phone is sitting on the table, and you are speaking to it from a normal distance. the speaker is quite loud, and distortion is minimal. you can also record your call, and access the phone's menu during a call, which is actually useful on models with speakerphone. overall, nothing out of the ordinary, but nothing missing. it even seems to get along fine with most bluetooth headsets or both the headset and handsfree profiles, and even is one of the few models to work well with bluetooth enabled cars.
the size of this phone is perfect. it fits in your pants pocket, it fits in your shirt pocket, and just about anywhere else you might want to fit a phone. below is a picture of the 6230. that's our girl, second from the left, along with her older cousin, the 7250, her fatter cousin, the 6600, and an older competitor, the sony ericsson T610.
the keypad takes some getting used to as it has a square joypad where it seems a joystick might do better. the directional support is okay, but pushing straight in and "selecting" is tough and takes some practice to get right.
the camera/camcorder
let's face it, the phone is nice, but a good reason to buy the 6230 is the camera and the camcorder, both which i think are above average, but not necessarily the best on the market. however, for this form factor, the 6230 is the best choice on the market, especially since it has external, albeit the obsolete MMC format.
Here's a sample movie from 6230, taken at night at a carnival (requires quicktime):
and another during the day.
yes, that's right, i am a carnie in my spare time.
how about the stills? pretty good. the pictures look great, even in full sunlight, which some cameraphones won't even do. 640x480 is the maximum size however. Click for full size images.
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| Nokia 6230 | Toshiba VM4050 |
Really, mp3's on that phone?
yes, and AAC as well. they can be played either through the Nokia specific headset, via the loudspeaker, or via a bluetooth headset. mp3's are pretty easy to copy over to the MMC is you have a PCMCI adaptor, otherwise pretty slow via bluetooth.
AAC is a little more challenging, unless you keep AAC files laying around. even if you use iTunes - you don't get AAC natively anymore. you get .m4p files wrapped in a DRM envelope. then you have to use something like hymn to strip the DRM envelope into a .m4a file, which can then be converted by iTunes into an AAC. that's way too much work if you ask me. it's kind of a bummer since this is all fair use of the tunes you have purchased - it would be nice for apple and nokia to work on this together, but i guess that doesn't sell iPods.
messaging
SMS is pretty standard on the 6230, and a standard 3x3 keyboard helps.
MMS is a little better than some of the other series 40 phones. finally, SMIL slideshows are kind of rendered, but a slideshow still can't play automatically.
The 6230 UAProf says that it allows a 100K MMS, and a picture size of up to 352x288 - not quite as good as the nokia 6600, but acceptable.
Finally, the series 40 comes with an email client, that allows you to get email off of a POP3 server of your choosing. the app is a java MIDP 2.0 midlet that can only display text and the smaller of your messages. it's a bit difficult to setup, as both the send and receive require their own GPRS settings, but works well enough once you get through that exercise. this client still isn't as good as the one that ships out of the box on the sony ericsson T610, or even the T68, but it DOES allow for authenticated SMTP, which even the latest revs of series 60 do not support. in summary, the email capabilities are good enough to see if anything big is going on in the office, but not good enough to fire off a decent response. follow up requires using the phone.
games and MIDP2.0
the 6230 comes with a cool bluetooth enabled java games, Beach Rally II and a respectable Golf game that is a good time killer. the 6230 is MIDP2.0 capable so it supports the latest and greatest java downloads.
other MIDP2.0 apps seemed to run alright without modification, although platformRequest() doesn't work on this phone either.
other features
the 6230 also supports syncML and some other features that aren't supported by any carrier here, so i couldn't try them out. i've been using the phone as a modem with my powerbook G4 everyday on the train, and found it to be the most reliable in that area as well.
the net-net
in summary, this is proabably the best camera/videophone in this profile on the market. if you want to carry a bigger phone around, you can do better, but otherwise this is a great phone. it's the one i've been using exclusively for the last month or so, which tells me something. i think it's the functionality that has kept me coming back for more. it just works with everything so smoothly, i never need to change my SIM to another phone anymore.
i really like this because it's the modern one to mine and i really want a new phone
Posted by: christina at August 15, 2004 07:42 AM