Nokia 206 Dual SIM review – Best mobile phone for parents
Nokia 206 Dual SIM is a recently launched keypad mobile phone. In this article I have given the review of Nokia 206 after using this mobile for a month. Here I have also compared Nokia 206 with Samsung C3322. Read the article below to get drawbacks and new features in Nokia 206.
Nokia 206 review
Nokia 206 is a S40 series mobile available with dual SIM facility. It is an alpha-numeric keypad mobile with slim design. If you think that you are bored with touch mobile, then Nokia 206 is a great option with features like music player, dual SIM and internet. Currently Samsung C3322 is considered as a rival to this Nokia 206. If you go to any shop then the retailer will show you Samsung C3322 as another option. Fortunately my previous mobile is Samsung C3322 and so in this article I will review about Nokia 206 and compare it with Samsung C3322.
Design
Nokia 206 has got a beautiful and elegant design. At present it is hard to find a keypad mobile due to the touchscreen revolution. It seems Nokia used this opportunity and built this keypad mobile to consumers. This mobile has got a big screen and spacy keys. It has one of its SIM card slot and memory card slot at the side. To insert the memory card you need to open the mobile back panel. The second SIM slot is available beneath the battery. There is no USB port in this mobile. On the top panel there is DC charging port and 3.5mm audio jack. The keys are a little tight and spacious and it offers you a wonderful feel while typing a message. This mobile phone is available in 5 colors - white, black, red, yellow and blue. White color is more attractive than the other colors. Software
Interface of this mobile is similar to Nokia Symbian mobile phone. You have inbuilt apps like eBuddy, Chat, and Viber. If you need more apps you can download it from Nokia Ovi store. App support for this mobile is good compared to Java mobile.
Messaging
Messaging interface is great in this mobile. Adding a recipient contact is made easier in this mobile. Using the options like favorite contact, recently used, log and group you can add a recipient contact easily. Threaded message view is available in this mobile. No other keypad mobile has this option. This is a plus point of this mobile phone. In inbox, there is no option to visit the next SMS using arrow keys, every time you need to press back key and view the SMS. If you practice to use conversation (threaded view), you won't feel this as a drawback.
Logs
In Nokia 206, there is no log for received SMS which disappoints me. There is no shortcut for SMS logs. In Samsung C3322 all the logs will be under a single window. This will be easier to view and make a call. But old age people won't send a message and they won't need SMS logs. To make the usage easier Nokia has limited many options.
Music player
The Nokia 206 music player software is same as the old Nokia Java mobiles. While playing a song in music player, if I press the end-call key, the song stops immediately, this feature can be avoided. Instead of closing the music player, there should be a minimize key.
Notification
This feature is new to Nokia mobile. Notification will be useful for slightly elderly people. This feature will annoy the youth. An example of notification is, suppose you increase your music-player volume to high it will notify you as "High volume cause damage to ear drums".
SIM manager
Nokia 206 SIM manager option is used to manage your SIM. You can assign which SIM you use to send SMS, call, internet or MMS. SIM manager feature in Samsung C3322 is excellent and quick to use. Nokia can also followed the same. It seems hard at starting and after practice you feel it easy.
Alarm
Alarm feature is best as before for Nokia 206. My Samsung mobile's alarm sometimes gets disabled and fail to alert. Nokia 206 does this job perfectly. Suppose now the time is 9:00AM and if you set your alarm at 8:55AM, it alerts you that "This time has past". This will be useful and prevent setting your alarm to wrong time.
Contacts
Waah, Nokia, you made a big mistake in contacts. There is no option to select which contact to display. If you have contacts in SIM 1, SIM 2 and phone, all the contacts will be displayed.
Software support
I realized that Nokia 206 has good software format support than all basic handsets. Samsung C3322 won't display .bmp image file but Nokia displayed it. You can't install applications with size that exceeds 1MB in Samsung but Nokia supports this feature well.
Themes
Nokia is the only handset that allows you to apply themes. I applied Windows 8 theme in my Nokia 206 and it looks great. It supports .nth format. Hardware
Hardware performance is improved than its previous version. I felt a bit of delay in opening apps. But it doesn't make you frustrated.
Internet
Internet speed in Nokia 206 is faster than before. Even in its default Nokia browser the page loads faster. As mentioned Nokia browser consumes less data, so you can browse more for cheaper price. It has many social networking apps installed by default. Apps like Facebook, Twitter, Viber, eBuddy, Whatsapp works fine in this mobile. Youtube videos streamed perfectly in this mobile, Asha version suffered a problem in buffering Youtube video.
Nokia 206 is installed with UTV app, which contains many movie clips and full length movie in all Indian languages. I watched one full length movie online in this mobile and it played without buffering.
Battery backup
I need not comment about Nokia's battery backup. My Nokia 206 stays without charging for 2+ days. It takes a long time for charging but it is not a problem since it stays for a long duration. Conclusion
Comparing to Samsung C3322, Nokia 206 has less options. But elderly people get confused if there are more options. So if you think that as an advantage Nokia 206 is a good option. Nokia 206 has advantages like being stylish, has a wide screen, big keys and is easy to use while it has disadvantages like less options and some limited software facility as I mentioned above. For the price of Rs.3600, it is the best keypad mobile currently available in the market. Leave your comments below.
Will it ask to select SIM for calling even if we specify a sim in sim manager or even when a single sim used