Stylish World Phone

I bought the Nokia 6100 back in June 03 and I was using Nokia 8260 AT&T TDMA service for last 2 years. Their service is in fact great and I seldom had problem with my calls. However, I believe the future is the world of GSM and need to say goodbye to obsolete TDMA technology. The downside of GSM, at least in Bay Area, California, was the reception and I believe that¡¦s the case in general for whole country. GSM service is offered by Cingular and T-Mobile in my area and I picked the former solely because they have Nokia 6100.

I only consider Nokia phones. Yes, I¡¦m biased. I briefly used Motorola and Ericsson phones before and their user interfaces were awful, and their stylings were dull comparing with Nokia and Panasonic. I believe they are improved dramatically after years but I already used to Nokia interface. Under Nokia nameplate, I was considering Nokia 6610 and 7210 as well, which shared the same platform as 6100. Only tri-band phones were on my list because I want to use my phone when travel to Asia. GSM has been very popular specification in Europe and Asia.

Dimension:
(Obtained from Nokia USA web)
Length: 4.02 inches
Width: 1.73 inches
Thickness: 0.68 inch
Weight: 2.75 ounces
Memory: 300KB (shared)

Exterior:
The exterior styling is awesome and attractive. In fact, the exterior firstly attracted me to look into it among all other phones. It¡¦s thin, light, and even lighter than the legendary Nokia 82xx series. The phone looks intelligent, aims towards young professional people. Keypad is nicely placed and so far I don¡¦t mistype often.

Display:
Nokia 6100 features a 128x128 pixel 4096 colors LCD, provides enough line/space to view the phone book and details. Though 4096 colors are good enough to display clipart or menu item, it does not have enough color depth to display good wallpaper. I tried several pictures but they were all screwed up after downgrade to 12-bits color.

Reception:
The call quality is reasonably well, even only have 1/7 or 2/7 signal strength indicator. However, the reception is constantly stayed below average. When I first purchased the phone, the phone shows only 1-2 out of 7 signal strength constantly in my office and home. Later, my home signal got improved and now receives full signal strength. It¡¦s a known issue that Cingular wireless has weak signaling in Bay Area and some reviews also mentioned Nokia 6100 has bad reception on GSM1900. Thus, not sure which contribute more towards the weak signaling on my phone.

Battery life:
Normally I talked around 1100 minutes every month, which accounts for 35 minutes on average per day. I usually need to recharge once every 4 days (around 3 hrs talk time). It should have been better because weak signaling in my office consumes more power.

User Interface:
Nokia user interface is a big factor for me to pick them. The menu items are easy to navigate and the options are organized such that there is no need to read the manual. You can simply pick up the phone and get used to it in 15mins or so. The phonebook can be easily accessed by press UP/DOWN key. Current software supports multiple phone numbers per entry. I am not sure the limit, but at least 4 phone numbers allowed. My only 2 complaints are: 1) Only 4 caller group are defined and don¡¦t find any way to add more; 2) Ring tone can only be tied with particular caller group but not to individual entry.

Ring tone:
There are whole bunch of polyphonic (MIDI) ring tones came with the phone but surprisingly, I can¡¦t find a ¡§normal¡¨ (ring-ring) tone pre-set.

Other features:
I didn¡¦t really dig into other features, such as GPRS, SMS, etc, nor download any java application because there¡¦s no data transmission included in my plan. Some common features that I used most are:
1) Integrated speaker ¡V which keeps conference easier.
2) Infra-red transmission - when used with Nokia software you can sync with Microsoft Outlook contact list. It can also allow you to edit the phonebook, pictures, and ring tones on-the-fly so that you don¡¦t need to press 20+ key to enter a name from the keypad. Since I¡¦m using a laptop with integrated infra-red port, I really take advantage on this functionality. The software also let the phone to act as modem communication.

Accessories:
The only accessory I purchased with the phone is the Boom Headset (HDB-4). It nicely fit in your ear with talk button integrated. There¡¦s no need to press the phone button to answer incoming calls. You can also set the phone to answer call automatically when headset is plugged in, good during driving.

Nokia 6100 has been a popular and successful model in Asian countries when it was released back in November 2002 (I wait 7+ months till it reach the US). It had pretty good ratings, suppressing 6610 and 7210 and it is sold at a higher price, despite it lacks features such as FM radio. However, 6100 doesn¡¦t seem to be well received here in the US. Only Cingular sells this phone and it has been discontinued after 2 months, probably the rumor is true that GSM1900 reception is weak on this phone. In conclusion, I love using this phone. I would recommend that phone to anyone who lives in a city which should have better coverage and reception.