Nokia 6070

 

I have been out of touch lately, but its time to start getting back into the groove. I will start with a review of a cell phone I just bought.

Choices
I had been searching for a good mid-range phone and had been on the lookout for the new series of phones Nokia launched – the Nokia 6070 and 6080. I was undecided about buying a new phone but when my old 6100’s loudspeaker started malfunctioning it become a necessity.

I had already done my research regarding my choices and they were limited to these two sets (6070 & 6080). I was not going to go for Sony Erricsson, Motorola or Siemens.

After spending hours searching the internet and downloading official user manuals I was not able to find out the difference in 6070 and 6080 except for the visual appearance and slightly more battery life in 6080, and mono vs. stereo headset (and of course, the price). The rest of the features were exactly the same. So I had to see the two phones in the market to help me decide what to take.

In the market
Off I went to Sakhi Hasan mobile market (did not have time to go to Saddar). Some bad news for me there, 6080 was not available yet. The price difference between 6070 and 6080 was about Rs. 2000/-. You don’t get any extra features for it, so it was not worth the price. I went for the 6070. The best deal that I got for Nokia 6070 at Sakhi Hasan was Rs. 7000/- and that was the one I took.

The 6070 experience
I like the features that the set has and its good value for your money. The specs of this set are not that high (remember that it’s a mid-range phone) but the feature-set is good. It has a bigger screen (65k colors, 128×160), camera (VGA), FM radio, 3.2 b user memory (hey, its no walkman player), mp3 ringtones and lots more (you can always look for the detailed specs at the Nokia website: http://mea.nokia.com/A4204147).

Navigating in the menus can be a bit slow at times. For example, the user interface becomes sluggish at times when you are scrolling through the contacts. This could have been due to graphical themes that you can install. I reverted to the minimal ‘Basic.nth’ theme to avoid this and felt a lot of improvement. Menu navigation speed can also be improved if you use the following settings: Options->Type of View->List. This one problem is definitely quite irritating. Maybe if a firmware update for this set might solve the problem in future.

The set comes with a mono headset “Nokia Headset HS-5”. It’s not very good for listening FM. I would be upgrading the headset. I wish 6080 was available though, like I said, it comes with a Nokia stereo HS-23 headset.