Phones: Nokia 6288 mobile phone – 57

Shortly before beginning this review, I was confronted with a billboard for the Nokia 6288. Looking very much like one of the Motorola KRZR promotions, it showed the opposite side of the street reflected in a sleek, metallic finish on the 6288′s rear cover. Exciting. Unfortunately,  the phone is a little less shiny and far more plastic than the billboard suggests. But that’s advertising for you.

The 6288 is a handsome-looking phone, however. Compact and lightweight, it fits easily in the pocket yet isn’t ridiculously undersized for the hand. The numeric keypad is hidden beneath the screen, accessed by sliding out the lower portion of the phone. This is accomplished via a sturdy mechanism that gives no hint of breakability and allows for large buttons without compromising on screen size.

While the other buttons are fine, the first row (1, 2 and 3) can be a little hard to press, as they are only a millimetre away from the phone’s top portion – it’s especially annoying when entering text. This also makes it hard to comfortably move between the numeric buttons and the navigation buttons, which are nearly a centimetre higher on the phone’s top portion. On the other hand, having these buttons always accessible on the face of the phone allows you to use many features without ever extending the lower keypad.

The 320 x 240-pixel display is excellent and easily viewable in daylight. Menu text is a little on the small side and I could find no option to change this. Message text comes in Small, Normal and Large, though Large would hardly be considered such by the long-sighted. With the size of the screen and the high resolution, a little consideration for the visually challenged would have been nice.

Camera quality is reasonable at two megapixels and the 6288′s layout is particularly good, with a shutter button on the top right of the case when held in landscape mode. There’s also a second camera on the front for video calling and the like, which brings us to the fact that yes, it is a 3G camera.

MP3 playback and an FM radio are nice touches – great for walkers, joggers and frequent users of public transport. A 512MB microSD card is included in the package, which is far larger than the average giveaway card and allows for an easy five hours of MP3 music. Cards up to 2GB are supported and – rather uncommonly – may be inserted and removed without taking the phone to pieces. This makes the MP3 player functionality all the more useful and provides serious competition for stand-alone music devices.

Overall, the Nokia 6288 is a good all-round, multi-media-enabled phone let down slightly by a few minor annoyances and omissions.

HARLEY OGIER

Nokia 6288 mobile phone  $699

CONTACT
www.nokia.co.nz

SPECIFICATIONS

RADIO: GSM 900/1800/1900 MHz, WCDMA 2100 MHz
DISPLAY: Active matrix 320×240 pixels, 262K colours
MAIN CAMERA: 2-megapixel with 8x digital zoom and flash
FRONT CAMERA: VGA camera
MULTIMEDIA: MP3/AAC/eAAC+ music player, FM radio
CONNECTIVITY: USB, Bluetooth 1.2, infrared
MEMORY: 6MB internal
EXPANSION: miniSD card (Includes 512MB, supports up to 2GB)
TALK TIME: up to 4.5 hours (GSM), up to 3.5 hours (WCDMA)
STANDBY TIME: up to 280 hours (GSM or WCDMA)
SIZE: 46 x 100 x 21mm
WEIGHT: 115 grams

PROS

Compact and lightweight
Easy-to-use menu system
Wide range of features

CONS

Slide-out keypad can be annoying
Little support for the long-sighted

VERDICT

A Polished phone

Aesthetics: 95%
Performance: 90%
Features: 85%
Functionality: 80%
Price Value: 90%

Overall: 88%