I'm the first to admit I'm a bit sad when it comes to mobile phones, I just can't seem to resist them. Although this model is actually my husband's, I love to play with it as often as I can!

This particular phone is available free on many ‘contract’ type packages here in the UK and is a real beauty. It’s very compact in size (weighing just 151g) but not so small that it’s too fiddly to use, but compact enough to fit into your handbag or pocket snugly. And if you like to be individual, you can purchase a variety of new covers for both front and back to jazz up and personalize your phone, these are fairly inexpensive to buy and there is a superb range to choose from.

The one thing I’ve noticed with this phone is the quality of the signal, it’s excellent (well, with Vodafone which is the network my hubby uses)…we’ve never had any problems being disconnected or cut off during calls, even during the busiest periods. And the sound quality is superb, despite no external aerial (this is concealed within the phone inside the main body), and we get no problems with background hiss or calls breaking up unlike with my own Nokia 7110e at times.

It’s a very simple phone to use with just a few basic buttons (four in all) in addition to the usual numeric/alpha keypad and the menus are laid out clearly and are incredibly easy to access.

As for the basic specs, well you get up to 250 hours of standby on a single battery charge which of course will be reduced quickly if you use the phone to make a lot of calls, but for the average user I would say you wouldn’t need to charge the battery more than once every two to three days. And after your initial battery charge of a few hours, recharging takes a very short time indeed, often no more than an hour and sometimes less!

The phone gives you between 150 and 260 minutes of talk time before needing to be recharged which is a fairly decent time compared to many other models. You can add over 100 names in the phone book which should cover most user’s needs.

Text messaging is very straightforward and you can store up to ten text messages at a time which is a little restrictive, but an added feature is ‘predictive text messaging’ which can be very helpful if you like to send lots of texts and can speed up your typing no end! And you can also add animated icons to your messages which can be fun, but these won’t be seen by the receiver of your message unless they have a similar phone supporting the same technology!

If you’re a fan of games, this model comes with 3 ready for you to play. Snake is the most popular and just about everybody who has owned a Nokia will be familiar with this one, but in addition you can also play ‘Rotate’ and ‘Memory’, both very simple and both incredibly addictive!

The phone has an impressive 40 built in ring tones but you can add to these by downloading tones and icons from various sites on the net (try www.bluebolt.com or www.orange.net for some good additions)

Other features include a clock you can have displayed on the front of your phone, a good alarm which will gives a good strong tone which builds in intensity the longer you ignore it (even manages to wake my hubby after his usual Friday night lager louting when pretty much unconscious!) and a simple to use calculator.

One disadvantage with this model is that it doesn’t have a ‘vibrate’ feature which is often a must at times when you don’t want your phone switched off but still want to accept incoming calls and messages, nor does it offer a WAP facility. But despite these minor gripes, all in all, this is a great phone which offers all the basic features you would expect and excellent sound and call quality.


Recommended: Yes