Kabootar ja ja ja. Review on Nokia 6210

Kabutar ja ja ja. Pehli pyar ki pehli chitthi saajan ko de aa….

Will the letter be really delivered? How many days will it take to reach? When will I get a reply?

So do I feel lucky that I am in these times where a time difference of a second is called delay!

For long I had this thought, that cell phones are only a CEO’s boon and a salesman utility. For others, especially non-business people, it is just a frippery. At least the way people carry it around and feel their ego pumped to hold one and say “Hello” and look around for gawking neighbors gives me that impression.

But on second thoughts, I think it is a state of technology item, which everyone must own as it has a feature of “contact me anywhere”. Now parents need not worry about their grown up kids being late, as they now have the kids location (if the truth travels through radio waves i.e). But telecom today is a revolution with SMS, GSM, I-Mode, 3G and such other technologies.

I like this technology and carry a calculator, a personal organizer, an alarm clock, a fax machine, a pager, videogame, a net browser, an electronic diary and a mobile phone to my office everyday and my profile does not permit me to wear cargo pants to my office. Actually I am talking about a single product here that is just slightly bigger than my palm and weighs only 114 g. It’s my NOKIA 6210.

Nokia 6210 is priced steeply at $390 in India, though I got mine at $260 at gray market.

The NOKIA 6210 comes at a steep price of Rs. 18,100 in Maharashtra (as mentioned on my box dated Nov 2000). It could be Rs 12,000 to Rs. 15,000 now since Nokia is aggressive about its new 8000 series phones (seen the ad with blue screen). I got mine from gray market at Rs. 12,000 (boxed piece). The NOKIA 6210 ships with a Nokia charger (ACP-8), a PC Suite CD (software for modem installation etc) and an owner’s guide.

So the question lurking in your mind now could be “Well mobiles are now available at Rs. 3000 to Rs. 6000 and also includes WAP enabled phones from Triump and Siemens C35i or Alcatel 500 and 700 or even the NOKIA 3210 or 3310.

So why the big tag on this one? Is it worth the price?

I strongly put a “YES” opinion. The reasons are as follows:

1)CLARITY: Old Mobile phones ships with Half rate (HR) and Full Rate (FR) codecs. But 6210 ships with an extra Enhanced Full Rate (EFR) codec. What it means is better clarity of speech even in a significant interference.

2)BATTERY LIFE: I mention this because it is the prime factor that decides the performance of cell phones when you need it most. People land up buying C35i because it is slim and small, but repent due to poor battery life. I can carry my Nokia 6210 for 6-7 days without charging, though I admit that my phone usage is not that high. But a standard NiMH 900 mAh battery has 4h 30 min of talk time and 55-260 h of standby time. The expensive BLS-4 extended battery and Li-ion 1500 mAh claim 7 h of talk time and 95 – 430 h of standby time.

3)HUGE MEMORY: Though the SIM cards can hold upto 250 numbers, what does one do when he/she has to change SIM card. Retype all numbers? So a phones memory is next important component. My friend says he can store 200 numbers on his Triump model and another claims 300 numbers on Nokia 3210 (extinct already). So naturally I feel proud of 6210 as it can hold 500 names with 3 numbers and a single line of text and upto 150 text only messages, 50 picture messages and 220 calendar notes.

4)LARGE DISPLAY: 96 X 60 pixels and illuminated by traditional green light (not blue like the 8250)

5)PREDICTIVE TEXT: SMS services is yet another feature and messages long as 160 characters can be sent. But keying a word on mobile phone is a boring and painful job. This is possible using the predictive text technology from Nokia and activating the T9 dictionary. For slangs or words that do not exist in this dictionary (eg. Kaise ho), one has to necessarily follow the traditional painful process.

6)ORGANIZER: So your task lists for the day, week and month, appointments, reminders, birthdays and anniversaries can be fed into the phone and you have a secretary with you now. This feature is compatible with MS Outlook and such tasks etc can be downloaded from your PC. Then there is a phone book where one can store names of contact persons, their phone numbers, e-mail ids, short notes on each. Mails can be neatly organized into folders

7)CALCULATOR: A good utility but lacks precision and may result in errors due to rounding of digits.

8)WAP 1.1 BROWSER: Now this allows surfing the WAP enabled sites like Bplmobile, Yahoo and Rediff too.

9)DATA AND FAX COMMUNICATIONS: This can be done after installing the software (modem drivers etc) and is possible in two ways – IR port and Serial cable. NOKIA 6210 is the first ever-mobile phone to boast of new High Speed Circuit Switched Data (HSCSD) technology, which doubles the data transmission speed (28.8 Kbps as against 14.4 Kbps for other makes). For Internet downloads it claims speeds of 43.2 Kbps though it is largely dependant on network conditions and ISP. Well still not like the future 3G technology, but good enough.

10)GAME: There are 3 games. “SNAKES” is quite common and PAIRS is a test of our memory but the one I like is OPPOSITES as it is really mind taxing and impossible to win at higher levels, second only to chess. These games can be played between two Nokia 6210 owners via the IR port.

11)VOICE DIALING: As many as 10 numbers can be dialed by using this voice tag feature where slightly long names can be spoken to the phone and if it matches with recorded voice earlier, it dials the number in 1.5 seconds.

The list of features just goes on like

1. different tunes to identify different group of contacts.

   
   




2. picture messaging

   
   




3. 32 ringing tunes and more can be downloaded.

   
   




4. Vibrating alert

   
   




5. Security in terms of pin code, pin2 code, call barring code, security code.

   
   

6.Keypad lock.

Well I think I have already crossed Rs. 20,000 worth of features.

Anything more than 6210 is a communicator.