An average phone without any bells & whistles

I bought my Nokia 3100 last year around oct-nov. Its an average phone which currently seems to be correctly priced. I bought mine for Rs 9300 with an exchange offer for my old Nokia 5110 which I used for 5 yrs.

If you want my advice avoid all the ’Priority dealers’ & ’Professional care centers’ of Nokia unless u want to get cut very badly. U only end up paying for their carpenters & tailors bill. They will call it ambience and/or service. Dont buy that crap. Look for a small shop who will offer the same with bill and warranty/insurance. There r a lot of such shops in Mumbai. In fact the place I bought my piece at Shivaji park cost me 9300 (with exchange) & if I had crossed the road to the then Nokia authorised service center the price would have gone up by @ least 1800 bucks.

People talk a lot about the very easy menu layout of Nokia phones & that’s true in this case also. But I must say that the s/w used by Nokia is over hyped & is quite primitive the drawbacks I have found in the Nokia 6310i r still prevalent in the Nokia 3100 & even later models.

While on this s/w topic let me give u a eg.

1) If u enter multiple phone numbers for a name in the phone book u can assign the default one only to a group & hence a tune, not the rest. If I have a friend & I enter his res,office,cell number against his name, I can assign only the default number to a group and hence a tune but what happens if I want all this particular friends numbers (res,office,cell number) to be in a group and same tune in that case I have to enter them as separate entries.!!

2) If I enter my cell, res & office numbers against my name & if I do the same for a family member now the res number is common. Now the joke is since this number is common for (in this case) 2 names in the phone book, When there is an incoming call from this number it will not display the name/s it will display only the incoming res number, so u see the glitch. Nokia has never bothered to solve these basic issues. There r many more of such ’bugs’ but that would take a lot of space.

The 2 examples given r enough to prove that Nokia has been over rated or got their current reputation for models now defunct like 5110, 6110, 6210 etc

The colour screen is no big deal its only 4096 colours, Samsung models come with 65k colours & a better resolution. U may have difficulty in viewing the screen on a sunny day (even at its brightest).

The polyphonic tunes are quite low in volume, good for the quiet office environment but useless on the road in traffic, (U could use the vibrator but that consumes more battery power) but luckily it has a pop port which can take the Nokia DKU 5 cable. Which u can connect to ur computer to take backups of your phone book and/or change the tunes, pictures etc.

While on the cable don’t go to buy it from a ’Priority dealers’ & ’Professional care centers’ of Nokia it will set u back by Rs 3500 (thats what was told in a Nokia Professional care center, again go to ur local small shop or buy it from baazee.com. for less than Rs 500. I did that They work !!!!!!

Also for those who want to keep changing ur ringtones dont get fleeced by all the service providers who peddle ringtones over the air & charge u about 5 - 15 bucks for a ringtone, invest in a CD full ringtones. Many small shops who sell cell phones sell these CD’s or u can get it thru online shopping for as little as 50 bucks & u can use the cable which u can connect to this phone and merrily change ur tunes,pix etc. Then exchange the tunes among ur friend circle.

The hands free are quite useful for conferencing, u can keep it on the table & everyone around it can talk to the person on the line. Also if the lline quality is poor as it is wont to be in Mumbai (Service providers r hopeless but that’s another story) u can keep the loudspeaker on a low volume & hold it to ur ear. I do that it works very well but not fr long calls :). The phone does not have the current favorite gizmo on phones. The camera, any way I dont want that frivolous thing. Since I am on the camera topic let me inform the reader that if a camera is fitted on the phone the price goes up by around 10k for a third rate poor resolution camera. A similar stand alone camera can be bought in the Mumbai market for around Rs 1500 - 2000, some can even be connected to ur Nokia phone (including the 3100) Do u now feel as if u r being taken for a long endless ride !!!!!!!!!

Pity it has no IrDa or Bluetooth but then one cant have everything for that price. The phone book is about adequate for me the SIM card offers a phonebook of 250 (when will r service provider issue 64K or greater capacity SIM cards & which can take multiple entries in the phone book ???)
Overall an average phone without any bells & whistles would recommend it for a budget buyer.