Nokia 6340i

Pros: Fairly small. Good battery life. Fair features.
Cons: Turns itself off. Poor reception.

Its not a terrible phone. The battery lasts 3 days on average for me and I barely talk on it. It turned itself off constantly until I shoved torn note cards in it to hold the battery in place. The reception is the worst I have ever seen. Either it is Cingular service or this phone. Hard to turn on and off. Does not easily recognize voice commands. Faceplates are difficult to interchange and replacement keypads are junk. The top plastic piece falls out. I wish I would have payed the extra for the newer technology phone.

Pros: Long battery life
Cons: EVERYTHING ELSE

This phone is owned by myself, my husband, and my mother-in-law and we all have the same problems. This phone is very poorly constructed (the top where the on/off-switch is constantly falls off and you cannot turn your phone on and off), the reception is terrible (very high pitched ear--no matter what volume setting it's on) and (if you have Cingular) it can't be exchanged for a new/upgrade. I was very disappointed considering that Nokia is (or was) by far one of the best cellular phone makers. I found this phone to be extremely poor quality. The only upside to this phone--I only had to charge it once a week no matter how much I used it.

Pros: The light weight design makes it very handy. We like the clear "land line" quality.
Cons: Sloppy switching between transmission towers causes many dropped calls, mostly when leaving a major metro.

After using my 6340i since Memorial Day weekend I have to admit I miss my old Nokia 5160. The company I work for asks me to travel all over the upper midwest for many days in a row. I may be driving between three or four states during the weeks trip. I have had continuous problems with poor reception and dropped calls. The phone is on its third software upgrade and has not shown any sign of improvement other than some of the convenience features work better. The external antenna on the car cradle makes no improvement. My dept. has five other people traveling with 6340i's and we all have similar problems. The last dept. meeting we decided to photograph all 6 phones being run over by a car but our communications director overruled.

Pros: Multi band, good for rural areas that do not have GSM coverage.
Cons: The 6340i will not stay on, this is a documented problem that should be addressed.

I returned this phone after just a few days, it would NOT stay on. It would turn itself off every night, no there is no timer, and at least 3 times during the day. After doing some checking I found out this is a very common problem with this phone. A phone that will not stay on is of no use. My old StarTac was never turned off, except when I failed to charge the battery. I expect my phone to be there when I need it and not have to check it every constantly to see if it is turned on. The signal was nothing compared to the StarTac, I would get a better signal without an external antenna on the StarTac than I could get on the 6340i with one connected.