Our Experience with the Nokia 6230i

Or should I say MY experience, as I had to do a lot of the legwork in this experience within a few hours of purchasing this piece. I write this review so that the reader should know what to do when he/she goes to buy a cell phone & what homework to do BEFORE going to buy a piece. J

My brother wanted a new phone to replace his Nokia 6310i handset. After a lot of research & weighing ALL the pros & cons of the different options, he decided to go in for the Nokia 6230i. The main requirement is a handset, which has a LARGE phone book, which allows multiple entries, connectivity to a PC (for backups), inbuilt hands free, tri band, good resolution of the screen & hopefully be future proof (for sometime) so things like ‘push to talk’, ‘EDGE’ etc r welcome.

Our ordeal began Sat 18-6-05 when we went to shop @ Shivaji park, Mumbai where we thought we got a ‘good deal’ from a shop which offered 3k as buyback fr the 6310i. Now my bro & I r really not interested in the ‘camera’ option in the phone . We tested all the phone features in the shop & were satisfied with it. The shop owner clicked a few snaps in the shop & showed it to us, it looked nice & we decided to buy it. Since this was our first camera phone in the house we were not really acquainted with the intricacies of it. At this stage I didn’t realize that the snaps taken were being stored on the phone memory itself, so it never struck me to check the memory card in the phone. Our main concern was that the contacts, whose back up’s I had taken should be restored back on to the new phone as the size of the phone book was 468 contacts with at least 4 entries in EACH.

The PC Suite of Nokia is a very peculiar s/w in the help file it clearly states that its back ups CAN ONLY be restored onto an identical handset from which the backup was taken. This s/w would require a separate review in its own right L. The 6310i came with ver 4.54 & I was using ver 6.1 on my PC for the other Nokia handsets we have @ home. I think this was the best ver they have has so far. (Current ver is 6.5) Does this not negate most of the reasons one may take a backup in the first place. Anyway I found a way of by passing this restriction, I also synchronized the contacts to Microsoft Outlook, and this came in handy later on.

After coming home with this handset my concern was to restore the contacts. Let me state that all the required drivers are installed on the 2 computers. The ver used by 6310i (installed on the laptop) cannot recognize the 6230i, & then I found that ver 6.1 (installed on the PC) couldn’t recognize 6230i. So I installed the ver given on the CD with the handset (ver 6.41), to my shock I found EVEN that does not recognize the 6230i. I then downloaded the LATEST ver 6.5 from their site (as I found it can be used for the 6230i as well as the other Nokia handsets in the house). Thankfully this ver recognized the 6230i as it claimed it would (on their website) and I could finally restore (synchronize would be the correct term) the contacts from Microsoft Outlook. The backup files taken in versions 4.54 & 6.1 & 6.41 would not open in this current ver, so I could not use the ‘restore’ option in PC Suite. This s/w seems to get worse with every new version.

On the Sun 19-6-05 we found that we could not format the MMC card in the handset nor could we save any photo taken by the camera, nor could we move any thing onto it. We took it to the dealer who tried another card even that did not work. He tried to format the original MMC card in a Nokia 6600 and it worked, so he put it back in our 6230i and it still could not store anything onto ir. As my brother gets only a Sat off, we went on 25-6-05 to the authorized Nokai service center ‘Brightpoint’ at

Phoenix Mills Compound,
3rd Floor ,"C" Wing,
462 Senapati Bapat Marg,
Lower Parel, Mumbai-400013
Tel: 0091 - 22 - 56607525
Fax: 0091 - 22 - 56607533

(http://www.brightpoint.com/Brightpoint/India/201/English/73/Home/1.html)

We were told @ the counter that the OS of the phone would have to be reloaded (This seems to the cure of the day, as that’s what everyone was being told that) & would take half an hour.. after one and a half hour we were told that this operation has failed. After that we were told that a new phone would be issued to my bro , as they have no stock it would take 3 – 4 days. Half an hour later we were called by the engineer (Vaibhav) who was handling this issue, who asked us if we had given this phone for repairs to any one else bfore coming to his center. When my bro got upset by this he tried to pacify us by sayiing that it was a formality & he HAS to ask the question? (As if anyone who has actually tampered with his phone would admit that !!!). then he asked us to ring him up on Mon 27-6-05 abt the status of this handset.

On Mon 27-6-05 the same engineer finally comes on the line (after trying for the entire day) to say that the handset will be replaced as they cannot repair it & would take about 15 days or so !!!! to replace as they do not have it in stock. I don’t understand this, if this god damned handset is so freely available with the dealers then what takes this ‘authorised service center’ so long to get a new piece??. And the best part of this ‘joke’ is that the Nokia ‘corporate office’ is just next door to this service center, and these jokers apparently feel so insecure that they have installed access control to their front door and don’t allow anyone in !!!!!!!! .They don’t seem to realise the loss of time (we spent more than 3 hrs at their service center on 25-6-05) of their customers who have to get on with their professional lives without their handset especially with out the large phonebook which is an indespensible part of their professional life. (And they peddle this handset as a handset for ‘professionals’). I wonder they treat their customer in Europe, USA and elsewhere in the same manner

On Tue 28-6-05 after dawdling for sometime Brightpoint gave my bro a temporary handset ( It was nice of them) saying Nokia (3315 in lieu of a 6230i) does not have such a policy & that the replacement handset (6230i) would come in about 7 – 15 days !!!!!!!!!

On Thu 29-06-05 my bro spoke to the Customer care chief (Rajiv Jhunjhunwalla) of Brightpoint, who called back on 30-6-05 saying that they had made availabe a new 6230i which we were free to collect. Since Sat is the only day off for us, that’s when we can go there to collect the handset.

On Sat 2-7-05, we went to their service center & we were propmtly given the handser. Only thing I found peculiar is it was the front panel & main handset (the centerpiece in a Nokia) the back cover & battery was from the old piece (coz this this was given to us for safe keeping during our first visit) . I was actually expecting a box pack piece. But we were assured thats it’s a new piece & fully checked, It also came with the original yellow paper (sticker?) with its IMEI number & we were given the documentation giving the IMEI number of the original (returned) as well as the IMEI number of the new handset. Inspite of what happened I feel we just had the misfortune to get a bad piece. But the service center (Brightpoint) people overall were quite friendly & courteous & decided without too much fuss that it was a manufacturing defect & replaced it. J. Due to space constrants this review is continued in the comments section of this review

Moral of the story is when u buy a mobile phone check ALL the features u can (even if u have no intrest in that feature) too save u from grief later on. U know all service centers may not agree it’s a manufacturing defect, in which case u can expect a FAT bill J. Also, if u have a very large phonebook, messages etc, take a back up (in the relevant s/w) in a version which is compatible with BOTH the handsets. And for contacts also use the sync option and save the contacts in a client s/w like ‘Outlook’ , Outlook Express’, ‘Lotus’ etc. In my 2^nd para I had mentioned our main requirements of a phone which r found in this handset so my bro is happy with it. I have not mentioned the features as u can find it on the Nokia website, this article mainly deals with what can go wrong if u don’t check ALL the features in the shop itself bfore buying I know it sounds a bit silly, but it can happen out of disintrest (like in our case) or out of ignorance (also applicable in our case). I hope the reader finds useful info in this experience of ours.

It’s a know fact that MNC’s over charge for their products in India also the quality is not as good. I think that they peddle all their off spec products here.