Nokia 6230i Review

Overall Rating

It's small, light, & compact.

Where shall I start?
I bought my 6230i for 4 reasons: good camera, intuitive menus, connectivity (IR & bluetooth), and, chiefly, superior text-messaging capabilities. It's the first time I owned a Nokia. I let myself be convinced by friends (none of whom owns a 6230i). None of my expectations were met: The camera is at best average (beware of low-light conditions, which used to be Nokia's stronghold!), the menu structure sucks, to say the least (in no way comparable to its 66 series mates, lacking absolutely basic functions), and the text-messaging function, which was the main reason why I wanted a Nokia, has such severe limitations that I felt more than one time like smashing it against the wall. I can't send more than 3 parts per message. If it exceeds an unforeseeable/undefined limit, the phone won't send the message nor will it save it. I have written messages of less than 3 parts (450 chars), only to be required to delete 350 chars in order to be able to save the message at all. How much more ridiculous does it get? Is this standard cell phone behavior?? I know of the severe limitations the SMS norms impose (which, by the way, are ancient and in no way adequate to modern users' necessities), but this goes way beyond any other cell phone's idiosyncrasies. Other phones let you write up to 9 parts/msg, the bulk up to 5 parts/msg, but this phone hits the all-time low!

Apart from the above, the phone is seriously limited in a number of ways. It does not apply keypad lock unless you leave all applications and return to the initial screen. Nor does it lock down the phone with its security code. Simply ridiculous. This has led to a number of occasions where it performed calls (to my expense) which should not have been possible had the phone locked down as it should. E.g., if you're in the phone book and forget to leave it completely, any touch on any button will trigger a call (imagine if it were a number abroad!). Dangerous! Expensive!

When the battery is low, it does not warn you in advance (probably because it's still locked in an as yet not closed application, hahah), but will simply beep once and shut down, making you lose everything you were working on, including text messages. Other phones save the last message and display it when you log back on. Not this one. When it shuts down, everything's lost. And, as I said, it doesn't warn you.

As an additional point, for reasons unknown to me (I'm not a techie), the phone is never visible in the bluetooth mode, not to other cell phones nor to a computer. So what use is the bluetooth function? After all, it was one of the reasons I got it in the first place! (I feel nostalgic of my Motorola E1000, a phone that sucked pretty severely too, but at least the bluetooth function was excellent by comparison.) Until now, I have not been able to work around it, even with the help of more knowledgeable people than me (and I've been around cell phones and PCs for the last 25 yrs). When you want to copy your photographs to the PC, e.g., and bluetooth doesn't work, what do you do??? Buy a data cable for $40??? You end up feeling like saying: "Screw technology!" (The IR function is even more haphazard.)

I dished out $290 for this Nokia 6230i phone. It was top of the list in every review I read. What's wrong with those reviews or with the reviewers? In a nutshell, this phone is not worth your money nor your time, contrary to all the "raving" reviews you may have read elsewhere.

As long as we still have freedom of expression, I'll say: Don't buy this phone. Nokia is overrated and overpriced, as if the other cell phones weren't over-rated and over-priced! I'm sorry for every buck I spent on it.