Chris Alexander
8th November, 2009
Unfortunately earlier this weekend my trusty E61i died a horrible death. What’s annoying is that it shows some signs of life (the notification light comes on when you press power) but it doesn’t start booting. Think it’ll be long hours for me to figure out what’s going on, and even longer to get it sorted.
So in the mean time, I needed (literally) a new phone - I didn’t fancy doing 300 miles in a weekend in a car that has failed its MOT (the other one hasn’t expired yet - don’t worry it’s still legal!) without a working phone to call the AA if it all went wrong.
So here’s what I got, and what I think of it.
Yep, that’s a Nokia 1680, the latest super-cheap phone from Nokia. But please, before you send me an SMS to mock me, give it a chance - its more than you think.
First of all, some kind of justification for this. I had to go to ASDA as it was the only place open at 8.45 on a Saturday that sold mobile phones (even though they couldn’t sell it to me until 9.00 when the photo booth opened up) and I had one specific requirements and 2 bonuses - it had to be cheap, and it would be nice if it was a Nokia (so I could charge it with the in-car charger I had with me) and on T-Mobile (so I could just stick in my contract sim card).
Fortunately for me, this gem was just £25, on T-Mobile, and a Nokia, so as far as I was concerned it was perfect. (You’ll be pleased to learn I made it home without requiring its services).
The key features of this phone are quite revolutionary
Some of the extra features that it has quite surprised me though. Well, the one extra feature I could find is that it seems to support IMAP4 e-mail accounts - something I completely didn’t expect and it seems to do fairly well. Other than the tiny screen displaying about 6 words at a time, and my inability to type more than about one word per minute on its little keypad (there definitely aren’t enough buttons).
So its sturdy, does the job, and will be replaced as soon as I can get my mitts on an Android something-or-other.