Nokia 5165: One of the Better Cell Phones I've Used
Written: Oct 16 '02
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Pros: Good digital sound quality and battery life
Cons: A little larger than some more-recent cell phones, no Internet features
The Bottom Line: The Nokia 5165 is a good cell phone, especially for light cell-phone users, but there are definitely better ones out there.
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| Cornell2000's Full Review: Nokia 5165 Cell Phone |
I have had experience using a wide variety of cellular phones and the Nokia 5165 is definitely one of the better ones I've used. It's not the world's smallest phone (which might be a good thing because then it's harder to lose it) and it doesn't have wireless web surfing features, but it's good for what I got it for -- standard phone calls. Nevertheless, I like it more than my old Motorola Startac or the hideously awful Ericsson phone I used to have.
I like most everything about this phone. I have no problem using it for my day-to-day calls. However, most people tend to be affected more heavily by the negative aspects or features of a product than by what works fine. I will therefore focus this review on what I find annoying or problematic with my phone.
If you're not a fan of electronic menus, like on VCR's and TV's, you wouldn't like this phone. In lieu of the traditional "Send" and "End" buttons, there is one button on the phone that doesn't have any preset name. Rather, it's action changes depending on what mode the phone is in. When you've entered a phone number you're about to dial, it's the Send button. When you're in the middle of a call, it's the End key. When you're in the phone/address book, it's used to Store data. This isn't really a problem but it took some time for me to get used to. I'm glad that the keys are hard enough that accidental keypresses are kept to a minimum with this phone. To get around the electronic menuing system, you can memorize shortcuts for specific menus (i.e. Menu -5421) and directly access what you want, but that's too much work for most people to be bothered with.
One of my big gripes with this phone has to do with the way one stores phone numbers into the memory. If you have one of the more basic cell phone plans that doesn't cover the whole US, you probably have to dial 1 plus the area code when you want to make a call from outside of your home region. If you have a phone number stored in the memory, e.g. 234-5555, it will work fine if you're in your home region, but you'll get an error message if you're outside the area. Why should I have to program 1 plus the area code into the memory slot? Doesn't a cell phone know what its own number (and therefore, its area code) is?
My gripe about the memory storage is compensated by the caller ID system in this phone. When I receive a call I know right away if it's something I want to answer or not, which saves money. Who is going to answer a call from "AMERICAN DIR MKTG SVC" on their cell phone?
To finish up, I have had a positive experience with my Nokia phone thus far. I have only had calls break up twice, while this was a very common occurrence with my old phone. When my contract runs out and it's time to scope out a new phone I'll probably see what the current Nokia phone is and upgrade to something that hopefully has a few more features and is a little more refined from a user-interface standpoint.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 2yr contract
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Epinions.com ID:
Cornell2000
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Member: Justin A. Nachod
Location: Ithaca, NY
Reviews written: 70
Trusted by: 36 members
About Me:
I am a junior at Cornell University, majoring in microbiology/pre-med.
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