Nokia 2600

Sadly, this phone's days are numbered. The refurb deal that included it is now gone, and the Nokia 1600 will soon take this phone's place. But nonetheless, here's my review of t

First off, the phone seems a little uncharacteristic of Nokia. Signal bars can be put into the top portion of the screen (via an option in the Themes section of the Settings menu), the menu can be arranged in a 3x3 grid layout and you have backgrounds available in your various menus. And the right directional key (the phone has a 4-way D-pad right below the single select key, to the right of the Clear key and to the left of the power key...in other words a much-modified version of the Nokia 1100 layout) leads to a menu like the right key (or is it left key?) of the Siemens s56. Or maybe I'm just trying to think up a conspiracy theory for this phone.

All in all, the phone is solid, with nice loud polyphonic ringtones in abundane, concantenated text messaging (up to 459 characters spread over 3 SMSes), reception I'd call above average, battery life that's good though expected for a GSM phone, and that good ole Nokia user interface though with the quirks I talked about earlier. I actually haven't had much of a chance to test voice quality on the 2600 but it seems to be quite good, even on Cingular's infamous network. And, wonder of wondrs, the phone easily slips in and out of roaming mode (no extra cost, same features, just a difference between home on Cingular and roam on T0Mobile) in order to keep a full signal! Maybe this is due to the phone's being made mainly for the Eurasian community, but whatever the reason I'm happy.

Not that the phone has tons of features, but it has all you need for Tracfone (unless you are looking at this phone from the perspective of a new Motorola c261 Trac) service, with the little extra called email-over-SMS (send it or receive it, it's your call, but receiving any type of text message is totally free!) and concantenated SMS too. Even both at the same time. And for working just on the phone, things are nice too, with a few good games loaded on the phone, a calendar\organizer, a stopwatch and even a spreadsheet. Yes, in its time it was a nice phone. Heck, it still is an okay phone for Tracfone use with its relatively high-res screen and good battery life. But it's been a few years so the Nokia 1600 will soon take the 2600 idea and improve on it. As it stands though the 2600 is a nice phone for $20 or $30, though $40 is a bit much in my opinion for the new version.