The Best TDMA phone for AT&T
Written: Mar 05 '03
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Pros: Incredible Battery life and excellent reception
Cons: Kind of large, no internet connectivity (WAP)
The Bottom Line: If you live in a metropolitian area, consider getting a GSM phone. Otherwise, this is the best choice for AT&T's TDMA network.
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| gsalelanonda's Full Review: Nokia 6360 |
When I lost my last phone over Christmas (Panasonic ProMax EB-TX210) I faced a dilemma: I wanted all the features of the latest m*life (AT&T speak for GSM) phones but I lived in suburban Houston. If AT&T TDMA service wasn't very strong in my area, there was no way in hell M*Life was going to be effective in my neighborhood. What was I to do?
My solution was the Nokia 6360. Over the past 7 years, this has been the best of the 8 or 9 cell phones I've owned.
Here's why:
Battery: One of the key disadvantages of the Panasonic phone was it's battery life. Initially, the battery life lasted only a day on that phone -- and got progressively worse. Just before I lost that phone I was lucky to get 60 minutes of talk time and 8hrs of standby without charging. The nokia on the other hand is awesome. If you've ever had the pleasure of owning a Nokia before you'll know the standby time is among the longest of any cell phones. Even as a fairly heavy cell phone user (~3200 minutes/mo), I've only had the battery run dry once. In fact, on several weekend trips I left my charger at home and never run out of charge. Since Jan I can think of only two times when I completely drained my battery.
Accessories: Another great feature of the 6360 is also true of all Nokias -- the accessories are generally all compatible. This means that there are quite a few accessories you can get for very, very cheap off of eBay (I bought a charger for $4 shipped the other day).
Transmitter: Here's another key differentiator. The transmitter in this little guy is one of the best I've ever used. The Panasonic phone I last owned was soo bad that I actually bought an external antenna to use with that phone in my apartment. The Nokia's reception, without an external antenna, is even better than that setup.
IR Capability / VCARD: I always thought the IR port was a stupid feature of my laptop and never thought it would be useful. That was until I faced the task of entering all my contacts into the new cellphone. In migrating to previous phones this process would literally take 2 hours of constant thumb-work. Under Windows 2000 I just waive the cell phone in front of the laptop, wait until it detects the phone and puts an icon on the desktop, and drag .vcf (contact files made by outlook and other contact managers) files straight onto the phone. The phone detects data being transferred and allows you to save the file as a record. Simple! What once took 2 hours only to 20 minutes of dragging and dropping! BTW: Like most new phones the 6360's contact directory uses a record system which lets you have multiple phone numbers and notes attached to a single name. Until bluetooth finds itself into more laptops and cell phones, IR is by far the easiest way to transfer contacts to/from cell phones (it works to/from my PDA, too!).
High-resolution screen: While the screen is only monochromatic, the 6360 comes with a hi-res screen. What does this mean to a phone without any internet access capabilities (at least on the AT&T network)? Games, games, games! In addition to an updated version of the classic Snake, I've killed time in many an airport playing Pairs, a side scrolling spaceship shooter, and Racket.
Voice Recording: like lots of new phones the Nokia allows you to record voice messages or snippets of phone conversations -- up to 2 minutes worth of talking. I've used this feature several times when friends have given me phone numbers or directions and I didn't have a pen at hand.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 75
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Epinions.com ID:
gsalelanonda
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Location: SF, CA
Reviews written: 7
Trusted by: 0 members
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