Nokia 6185 on SprintPCS is a flop
Written: Oct 15 '99
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Product Rating:
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Pros: excellent user interface and overall aesthetics
Cons: poor cellular performance and battery life
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| rbeer's Full Review: Nokia 6185 Cell Phone |
Nokia has an outstanding reputation from delivering many high quality and innovative cellular phone products. Over a year before this review was written, I purchased a Nokia 6160 phone for use on Cellular One's 800mhz TDMA network in the SF Bay Area, and the phone had exceptional cellular performance and battery life. Additionally, the Nokia 6190 is widely known as being one of the finest GSM phones on the market. Unfortunately, the 6185 falls short from the quality of the 61* series heritage.
I was on a waiting list to purchase the 6185 from a local SprintPCS retailer for over a month after its mid 1999 launch. I could not wait to upgrade from the large and clumsy QCP-2700! As soon as I was told that the 6185 came in, I rushed to the store to pick it up.
First, I feel that Nokia's 61* series cellular phone interface is one of the finest on the market. It has a clean, consistent menu interface and is one of the most configurable and feature rich. One of my favorite Nokia cell phone features is its "profile" setting, which essentially changes many aspects of the phone based on a single profile setting. For example, a "meeting" profile will deactivate the audible ringer but will make the phone vibrate for inbound calls, and will make a quick "beep" if someone leaves you a voice mail. The "outdoor" profile will configure the phone to its loudest ringer and notification settings. This is a very nice feature that more phone manufacturers should implement.
Despite its nice user interface, the 6185 falls short in the following areas:
1) Nokia's CDMA (SprintPCS uses CDMA as its air interface) implementation in the 6185 is not up to par with Qualcomm or Motorola based CDMA phones. I experienced a noticeable increase in echoing, strange audible digital artifacts, temporary call interrupts and dropped calls compared to the QCP-2700 and Denso's touchpoint series. Additionally, the phone will not hold onto a digital signal as aggressively as a QCP2700 or touchpoint -- it is very eager to drop into analog mode, and this translates to increased cost if you use the phone when out of digital coverage areas.
2) The battery life is nowhere near the advertised capacity. Expect anywhere from 1/2 to 3/4 whatever Nokia advertises. Beware that the battery charge will diminish quickly when the phone is roaming in analog mode. One annoyance is that the battery meter on the phone will seem to almost instantly drop 1/4 within hours of bringing the phone off of the charger.
3) The 6185 currently does not have the ability to use the Sprint PCS wireless web features.
4) The 6185 is bulkier than the 6160 and 6185 due to a larger battery.
Ironically, the QCP-2700 phone that I upgraded from outperformed the 6185 in the areas where it really counted such as battery life and cellular performance. I eventually returned my 6185 and upgraded to the Denso dual-band Touchpoint. Without a doubt, the Touchpoint is a superior phone for the SprintPCS network.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
rbeer
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Location: Santa Clara, CA
Reviews written: 2
Trusted by: 6 members
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