Nokia 2610 – Who Said Basic Need Be Ugly?

In recent years, Finnish mobile phone manufacturer Nokia has blessed the market with some of the most innovative and stylish handsets around. From its N series to the gorgeous 8800, it’s easy to see why they’re the leader in the mobile phone field. However, they entered the market with basic yet reliable phones, and it’s here they return with the Nokia 2610.

Although it’s aimed squarely at the lower end of the mobile phone market, that’s not to say that Nokia haven’t furnished the 2610 with any of the features you’d expect on a higher priced phone. In fact, with the exception of a camera and MP3 and Bluetooth support, this is a pretty well specced phone.

Although the screen is fairly small, it’s more than ample for looking up contacts and navigating through the phone’s various menus, although any pictures on it, or games, tend to look a bit dull due to the screen only supporting 65,000 colours.

Underneath the screen, you’ll find a little directional pad as opposed to a toggle, and this makes it easier to work your way around the Nokia 2610’s menus. However, one thing that is slightly annoying is that you need to use this pad to control the volume on calls, since there are no side mounted volume adjusters. This means that you pretty much have to pull the phone away from your ear, which is frustrating.

However, something that more than makes up for this is a cool feature with the ringtones – with the Voice Clip feature, you can attach funny voice samples to callers, so that when they call, you’ll get a strange little voice alert. Childish maybe, but a fun diversion all the same. You can also use the voice recorder option to make up your own “unique” alerts for people who call you – what will you hear when the boss calls? There’s also a handy hands-free option, a little bonus on a phone such as the 2610.

Although the internal memory only holds 300 contacts, the SIM card has space for a further 250, and to be honest, anyone who is looking at this phone is probably not going to be a businessman with several hundred contacts anyway.

Using the Nokia 2610 is extremely easy – since the buttons have a raised feel to them, they allow easy access even in darker areas, and this is helped further by the backlight that illuminates the keypad for you. If there’s anything against the keypad, it’s that the numbers are fairly small, but again, the raised feel of them counters this.

With a handy organisational tool that helps you work out your weekly expenses, as well as calendar and notepad options, this really is a great little phone an inexpensive too. With full WAP Internet support for downloadable games and ringtones, which can be stored on the 2610’s 3MB memory, for such a basic unit, it definitely doesn’t seem like one. Add in up to five hours talk time and 380 hours standby, and it’s the ideal solution for younger children and those who simply need a phone just to talk and text with.

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