Read Before You Buy the Nokia 2630

I have been using the 2630 for a month now, and I have to say it has so many features that until today, I am yet to fiddle with all of it.

Everything started when my 2-year old decided to snatch my trusty, archaic Nokia 1101, just so that I would chase him around the house, while morphing into a T-Rex that hasn't had a decent meal for a couple of weeks, at the same time.

His plan worked as I sent him screaming in laughter and running out of places to hide, I managed to corner him in my bedroom. With his backs against the wall, and in sheer desperation, he did what I think most kids his age would do - which was to hurl the poor, old phone as far as he could, acting as a convenient decoy for his wily escape!

I could only look in horror as the might of his sweet, right arm catapulted the phone a couple of feet into the air, and landed face first on the floor. The phone seemed OK at first, but after reassembling the battery and the cover, I realized that the buttons had stopped working and that was the end of that.

Now, I'm the kind of guy who likes things simple and functional, which explains the longevity of my old Nokia.

So, I dragged my wife to the Maxis Centre (a local Malaysian telecommunication company) and picked up the cheapest, simplest phone I could find. And at USD110, I was really pleased with the aesthetics. With the slim and light design, chrome trims and and sleek contours along the side and the keypads, it was really easy on the eyes.

Plus the fact that it has a nice and bright 128 x 160 pixels, 65K colors TFT screen. You should be able to view your contacts list under really bright sunlight.

With dimensions of 105 x 45 x 9.9 mm, 45 cc and weighing in at 66 g, you'd also barely feel it in your pocket (Which is why I always put it in my front shirt pocket as I was never able to do it before!)..

I mentioned about my fondness of things simple and straightforward. Things that make sense.

Like for example the Go To button above the Call button, which enables you to predefine shortcuts to all sorts of settings on your Nokia. This might be a standard feature on most other different models, but this I really like.

The fascia is logical with a main quad-directional joystick that brings you to the main menu. The left and right shortcut buttons links you to the contact list and the left, to the previously mentioned Go To menu.

Buttons are made of good quality plastic and are backlit really well. The alphanumeric keypads are smooth and shiny and there's normally no problem hitting the correct button while texting. In my experience though, I would always accidentally hit the Hang Up button above the number '3' when sending text messages, and this will annoyingly send the half-composed message to the Draft folder.

My theory is that while resting the phone in my right palm, hitting button '1' is easier and nearer to the turning thumb joint than compared to hitting button '3'. (Have a go with your own cellphones!). Which means that for left handers it would be the other way round.

Now, this won't really be an issue if instead of dishing my unfinished text message into the Draft folder immediately, it would actually pop up a confirmation box asking you whether you want to or not.

Or, you can make the face asymmetrical..

But I digress.

This breed of Nokia runs on GSM 900 / 1800 for the local Asia Pacific) version but as I understand it in the US version, it's GSM 850 / 1900. I found that out after spending a couple of weeks ago in Michigan and neglecting to RTFM prior to leaving.

Ringtones are polyphonic (24 channels)and MP3.

Phonebook has 1000 entries, with Photocall (picture pops up when your contact calls/texts you up) as well as call records for 20 dialed, 20 received, 20 missed calls.

It however does NOT have a card slot for external memory cards, providing you with only 11 MB of user memory.

As far as Data Connectivity is concerned, it has v2.0 Bluetooth (yipee!) but without an IR port. The rest are as per below:

GPRS Class 10 (4+1/3+2 slots), 32 - 48 kbps
HSCSD No
EDGE Class 6, 177.6 kbps
3G No
WLAN No
USB No (there's a hole in between the earphone and the charger slot which looks like the USB)

Now, the thing that I was really impressed with the 1101 was the Duracell bunny-like battery life. It just went on and on and on.

This particular model however, goes about 3 days on a single charge, or a single day, after 3-4 hours chatting away. It runs on a standard battery, Li-Ion 700 mAh (BL-4B) which is why it is so slim in the first place.

You should also take into account all the Bluetooth transfers and the texting, web browsing (WAP 2.0/xHTML) and other things that you might use it for too.. (Personally I use a lot of the currency conversion and the calculator tool, with occasional photo snaps [VGA, 640x480 pixels, video(128 x 96)] here and there..)

The charger is a light, 100-240v kind which means that you don't require a different one traveling between the US, Australia, Japan and Malaysia.

Quality of sound is also good, without noticeable hisses and crackles.

Other notable features are the built-in hands-free (speaker-phone, loud and clear), FM-Radio (I haven't tried that out just because it needs the headphones for it to work), Java Games (Mine had Sudoku, Snake EX2 and Mike's World), an expense management tool, stopwatch and it seems on some models, a dictionary.

My main complaints however would really be against the performance degradation that coincides with running out of memory. Face it, with 11MB to play around with, you would have to balance your pics and multimedia messages, with all sorts of other downloadable, savable, content.

And that would hit you really hard, as the more luggage you carry along along, the slower it goes.

My honest opinion? Well the Nokia 2630 is a well thought out phone with a lot of usable bells and whistles.

I thought I got a cheap basic phone when I handed over the dough, but really, looks and feature wise it's hard to beat.