Nokia 3120 Classic

Photo courtest of GSM Arena.

My wife was recently issued a Nokia 3210 Classic by her phone company. She was excited to get her new phone so even if it was raining heavily the other day, we both trooped to the mall near where we live to get her phone from the telephone company. I got the chance to tinker around with the phone for a few days and I thought I’d write a short review

Vital Statistics

The phone would work on both 2G (GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900) and 3G (UMTS 850 / 210. Measuring 111 x 45 x 13 mm and weighing 85grams, the phone is quite slim and lightweight, which I like. I can stuff it inside my near-tight pants pocket and the resulting bulk is not that visible. The LCD is TFT (16 million colors) and produces a crisp and clear display with very good colors. The colors are not dull but are not loud – just right for the eyes. The unit has an expandable memory slot that can hold an 8Gb microSD card. I’ve not tested the read-write times/performance of the phone as I haven’t bought a microSD card for this thing yet.

Operations

The phone starts-up an estimated 3-5 seconds after you press the ON button, way faster than my Treo 650. Unlike some of the SE phones where the unit asks the user if he/she wants to go on phone mode or file transfer mode, this phone goes straight to phone mode. The unit can be used right out of the box, very easy and intuitive to operate – as what Nokia is known for. Menus are self explanatory and easy to navigate. Compared to the Motoslvr (another phone I use), this phone is easier to operate – even a numskull like me found the phone idiot-proof as there is no deep-nested menu function.

Sending text messages is easy. I can put in 1K worth of characters in my text message. My only beef though is that the input window is quite small and I got irritated when was scrolling back-and-forth to proof-read my message before I send it. Making calls is pretty straightforward, which is the way I like it.

If there’s one thing that I didn’t like about how the phone operates is it’s backlight – the screen and the keyboard backlight goes off after 4-5 seconds of inactivity. This can be annoying especially if you’re watching a video, looking at a photo for more than 5 seconds or you take more than 5 seconds to think of the right word or phrase for your text message. Sure, it will save power but I think the savings is minimal – and the “annoy” factor is quite high. Well, at least for me. Is there a way to turn of this feature? Sadly, no.

Construction and Ergonomics

The phone is sweet to hold, fits right into my small hands. I initially thought that it would slip from my hands when I use it but it did not. The buttons are evenly spaced, intuitively placed and the size of the keys are just right. I don’t have to exercise the dexterity of my stubby fingers as the key positions are easy to access using my stubby finger. The size of the phone allows me to speak with my normal voice while the receiver is nicely planted on my ear.

The phone looks nice and it has the usual interchangeable covers but I think the back cover has a rather…rubbery feel to it. I looked at the “attachments” that would hold the covers in place on the chassis and I think that if you swap covers too much, the attachments could somehow “dull-out”, that could leave you with loose covers.

Multimedia

If there’s one area where I think this phone is weak, it’s its multimedia function. The phone has a puny, tin sounding-like speakers and because of this, the quality of audio is not good. I stored two MP3 songs on the phone to test the audio out and after two loops, my ears got irritated from listening to it. The earphone that comes with the unit has only one ear-piece and listening music through it was not a nice experience as my ear got irritated after a while. I think that it’s best to listen to music on this phone using just the phone speakers. Anyway, I can’t complain much as this phone is not really a music phone like the Nokia xPress Music or SE’s vaunted Walkman series.

The radio reception is pretty good though. I initially thought that the phone reception won’t be good in the boonies (where I live) but I was wrong – reception is pretty decent.

Gaming

The phone comes with six games:a golf game, sudoku, snake 3d II, a car rally game, and two casino-type games. Of all the games, I like sudoku the best. Why? It’s because it’s the easiest game to play in terms of the time required to get a game up and running. The snake game sucks the most as it’s quite difficult to control the movements of the snake: very slow and the UI is not that responsive. The rally car game is so-so. If you want a rally game for a Symbian platform, go download or buy another one. The golf game is pretty decent – good game to pass the time away. The casino games, I didn’t play.

Imaging

The phone has a good, 2 megapixel camera – ‘comes with a flash too. Taking pictures is quite easy as the access for the camera mode is not deeply nested into menus. Based on the test shots I took, the camera works best if you capture the image in well lighted situations. Yeah, the flash helps a bit but not much because the intensity of the light is not that strong. Color accuracy and contrast is quite good but in my opinon, it’s not as good as the images you can take with one of SE’s K-series phones. However, if you just want to take pictures and color accuracy is not that critical, the camera of this phone would work well for your needs. I haven’t made a video call using the phone yet nor have I taken videos using the phone. Once I have, I’ll update this section and give you some of my two-cents worth. Well…maybe four. I’ll also post sample images once I get a microSD to store the pics.

Battery

According to the manufacturer, a full-charged batt will give you 3 1/2 hours of talk time and a stand-by time of 290 hours. While I was not able to test the talk time (I don’t have the patience and the time to test this feature – and to talk for 3 hours on a phone), I was able to somehow perform a…pseudo test. With a full-charged battery, I played games while music was playing then took pics while the radio was on. My objective: to try and determine the discharge time of the battery. After two hours of so doing these two process repeatedly, the battery meter went read. Fifteen minutes or so later of similiar activities, the battery went dead. Charge time, less than four hours.

Pretty decent results.

Overall conclusion

I think Nokia has another winner here. Despite the things that I found that are not to my liking, this is quite a decent phone to own (hey, it rhymes!). Light and easy to use, this phone won’t give you headaches compared to some models. Sure, it has limitations with it’s multi-media capability but if you want to buy an ultraportable “boom box”, get an iPod. If you’re a guy – or gal – who just wants a nice looking phone that lets you do the basic functions of call and text, this phone would fit your needs to a “T”. If you’re a busines phone owner and is looking for a 2nd/backup phone, this baby would be a good choice for you.