Nokia 6230i - one word for it: excellent

It's so good - I have to write something about it.

I've had Nokia phones for about 12 years now. I admit that I was a little disappointed with the fact that Nokia was pretty late to the party with clamshell (flip) phones coz I really wanted one. But there was no way I was going to buy any of the "doorsteps with a hinge" that are currently in their range.

So I must admit I was looking at other manufacturers for my next phone; my 6200 was getting a little long in the tooth. In fact, it was one step away from completely fucked.

Let's face it (maybe you didn't know this), but the cellphone line-up in the US is a little lacking at best. All the providers (Verizon, Cingular, T-Mobile) offer great deals (read "free") on phones from 2 years ago.

So I decided to tape together what remained of my 6200 and wait until I was in Europe over Christmas to see what was on offer there. Amazing post-Christmas sales, and I was down to a shortlist of two from the Nokia store: the candy bar 6230i andthe 5200 slider.

Unfortunately, the store I was in only had the 5200 in pink, so that wasn't an option, so I went with the 6230i. I paid about $140 US for it. And let me tell you - it's the best phone I've ever had.

Now, I'm not one of those people who want a phone for all the gadgets and gizmos it has - there are friends of mine who take the Swiss Army Knife approach to their cellphone. I just want to make calls on it, perhaps a few little goodies for me to play with - like the camera, perhaps. But I'm not into the one-size-fits-all crap with MP3 players and video editing software and radios and all that nonsense.

But it seems that Nokia have packed pretty much everything into the 3oz 6230i. Which isn't available in the US - so if that's where you are and you like what you see (don't just take my word for it - the blogosphere denizens are raving about it) - you'll have to get it on eBay or something.

1.3 mpixel camera, media player, music player (mp3, m4a and aac as far as I can tell) with a graphic equalizer(!!!), radio, voice recorder - all cool stuff. Plus the advantage of the familiar Nokia user interface so you're not messing around learning what all those crazy symbols mean (no names mentioned, Moto). All the other usual stuff: txt msg, IM, push-to-talk, calendar, to-do list, calculator, games and stuff to add to the PDA experience if you really want all that - but it's nowhere near as good as PDA/Windows mobile - and why on earth would you expect that from a phone?

What's really neat is that you can connect to your PC (to organize names, addresses, ringtones blah blah) using either bluetooth, IR or a cable (not included - but you'll need a DKU-2 cable if you want to go this route).

The battery lasts for ages too. I don't know exactly how long - but it's longer than any other I've had. I use the phone pretty much all day, and it's not needed charging for 3 days.

Using the 6230i in the US

Now - don't believe all that garbage from the cellphone providers about foreign phones not working in the US. It's tri-band GSM - no problem. What you will probably need to do is get it unlocked. I bought mine with O2 pay-as-you-go service. And obviously had no intention of using it. And I screwed up the 3 unlock attempts that you get (remote unlocking) with some piece of shitty software that I downloaded that obviously gave me the wrong code.

You can unlock using a web-based service - I really like the experience I had with unlocktotalk.com - you mail off your phone, pay them $12 via paypal, and they send it back the day they receive (and unlock) it. There are other services on the web which will give you the code - or you can go into a wireless store in your local chinatown or whatever and they'll do it. But go careful with this free software and unknown web-based services who are quite happy to take your credit card details, supply you with a duff code, then try to tell you it's your fault that it doesn't work.

There are plenty of resources on the web regarding unlocking: as I said - a word of caution - you only get 3 goes if you're using codes. My opinion (now) is that it's worth the few dollars to pay for the correct code, but you could try 1 or 2 from freeware if you're feeling brave.

All in all, I'm one happy camper. If you get one and you're already a Nokia fan, I don't think you'll be disappointed.