Nokia 6030

I'm on a roll here...here's the other phone review. Thanks to Bill in NC for this phone!

first, I was actually able to test the phone, even though it has Cingular branding...because it's easy to unlock. In fact, it arrived to me unlocked. So I stuck my T-Mobile To Go SIM in the phone and went...

...and I'm overall satisfied with this phone.

Battery life is fine...I didn't charge it when I got it and it lasted...hmm...eight or nine days and it's still showing a bar of battery left. I'd call that impressive for a phone with a decently-sized color screen and that had a little bit of activity going on during its discharging.

Reception-wise the phone also seems fine Again, I'm faced with the dilemna that I now only have one T-Mobile SIM (sold the other some) but the reception does seem to be qite good where I've gone, even inside a big metal building where my Sprint Mogul (good at reception actually) and a friend's Cingular phone (actually the Motorola c168i at that point as I was lending it to her for review) were faltering.

On build quality, at first I thought this phone seemed a bit junky, but now it seems much less so. Granted, it's not quite built like a Motorola w370 or suchlike, but it's pretty well-built. Not too incredibly thin either, especially when compared with stuff like the Slice and even the c168i, but it's not too bad thickness-wise and the extra thickness means extra battery life. All in all the phone looks pretty and doesn't disappoint when it comes to how it feels.

Feature-wise, this phone is pretty much as full-featured as you can get without having a camera or mp3 player on the phone. As such, it uses Nokia's grid-style menu system, which isn't as fun as their single-icon version but it works. An interesting omission (at least on the Cingular version) is any decent number of ringtones...it was like using a Virgin Mobile phone, as far as how few the choices were. At least the speaker was high-quality, though not earth-shatteringly loud, and at least the phone supports mp3 ringers.

Maybe I'm ovelooking something, but the Nokia 6030 also seems to be a pretty solid phone for someone who dosn't need a camera or advanced features like that, and in this case you get a bit more solid platform in exchange for a bit thicker formfactor. And it's unlockable, and available on both T-Mobile and Cingular. Sounds good to me.