NEC e616 Review

Overall Rating

Superb value for money, reasonably large list of features, bluetooth, video capabilities, good amount of inbuilt memory with room for expansion. E616V is improved and more reliable than older E616.

Rubbish signal on 3, poor 3 customer servive, GPRS tempromental, GPRS only allows 3's content, top ups run out after just 30 days, very big and heavy, battery life is useless. Sometimes freezes with fast use.

Well, a bit of a mixed bag, this phone. As you can imagine by reading my 'summary of bad points,' the main problem for the NEC e616 is the 3 network. Customer service is vague and useless, as is the top-up policy. 3 has bad connectivity, and this becomes quite irritating after a while. The battery is shockingly bad- using video facilities reduced the batery to last less than a day. For what is supposed to be a highly advanced phone, that is a dissapointment. The video qulaity isn't particulary outstanding, but it is as good as many other 3G and 2.5G phones, so this isn't a big moan. What is a big moan, however, is that you can only do 24 seconds in high quality, which is the only acceptable quality. You can extend this to up to 61 seconds, although this is in a completely appauling, useless quality which jerks and jitters.
On the plus side, it only costs £45, and it does include a software CD, 2 batteries and a USB connectivity cable.
The photograph feature is good- pictures usually come out crystal clear and there are even differnt effects you can add to your picture. Music videos can be downloaded very easily via 3's content and are of impressive quality both visually and audably, although you can only store 3 or 4 at a time before the memory is used up. However, adding a 128MB card means that you can store alot more content. Many games can be downloaded and are usually of good quality, although some of the 'rented' games are completely rubbish. You can download movie trailers, watch the news and access sports video news too, so it does show it's advanced 3G intentions as some compensation.
Overall, this phone is what I would class as average. It isn't particulary user-friendly, but it does have many features and benefits from 3G capabilities like face-to-face video calls and video capture. The deciding feature to tip the balence is that the phone occasionaly freezes with fast use and it has even switched off on me during sending a text message. A poor battery, coupled to a huge body and a notorious 3 network leaves me no choice but to say the following: "alright handset, a few good features but it is NOT to be recomended.' Only buy it if it is what all you can afford- at a mere £45, it is worth a squirt if that is all you could stretch to.