Nokia 3230, up close and personal.

Nokia came out with an elegant yet functional phone last April and I blogged about wanting to get one for myself. I settled for Nokia 6230 that following month but after it was stolen during my last trip to Baguio, I reckon fate has nudged me to grab a better deal.

Thus, I’m doing a review of my new Nokia 3230 here. First off, the casing is really plastic but it looked metallic with a hint of chrome and not that heavy at all. The large display screen (176 x 208 pixels) is crisp and clear, giving you a lot of breathing space for text messages and MMS.

Like any other Nokia models with a navi-key, navigation is easier although one might get a little confused with the orientation and functions of additional buttons on the keypad. The keypads looked too small and might be cumbersome to use but once you get the hang of it, you’d rarely hit two buttons at the same time. One thing that I couldn’t easily get accustomed to was that the navigation is now left to right instead of the usual top to bottom scrolling. The same also applies to the options menu, which is accessible via a sliding bar on the top right section fo the screen. Gives you a desktop feel.

The 1.3 megapixel camera is a wonder and with the right lighting, could produce quality images (at 65,536 colors) and videos (16.7 million/24-bit color). Pictures become grainy though if there’s not enough ambient light so you’d most probably get good shots in the outdoors. You can then transfer them via the built-in IR, bluetooth or the USB (cable not included). The RS MMC card is just 32MB and may not hold a lot of those pictures and videos so I would recommend replacing it with 128 or 256MB. And did I mention the mp3 player?

Since the N3230 runs on Symbian OS, it is vulnerable to virus and thus you need to disable your bluetooth most of the time to avoid it. In the last week alone, I got at least 3 anonymous bluetooth file transfer requests in public places. However, the OS allows for cooler features such as installation of applications and new themes on top of the bundled apps for sound, video and picture editing. The installed games are also great and you can download more as long as the internal memory (6MB) can handle it. Never have I been so engrossed into playing games on a phone than this unit. With the navi-key as a joystick and the bright screen can display vertically and horizontally, you’d never get bored with the selection of games.

By the way, the visual radio requires internet connection is able to play on-air FM as well as internet radio. It has an on-speaker option too. The only other hitch I had with it is that it often returns a “memory full” error when running the camera. This is because the applications are loaded into memory and if you do not close them properly, you’ll end up choking the OS. Reminds me of Windows XP on 64 MB of RAM.

Overall, the N3230 is already a full-featured phone, slick and functional. The series 60 UI is very familiar and easy to use. The price range is somewhere between Php 18K to Php 22K. I got mine at Electroworld for Php 21.5K on deferred payment for 6 months at zero interest.

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