New Cool Gadgets

Nokia has finally started to pay attention to the growing CDMA market and is now launching several new CDMA phones. I recently changed my CDMA handset and bought the Nokia 6235 CDMA phone with camera. I am using a Reliance India Mobile connection and the handset came pre-programmed with the number. There is no need to use a SIM card as in a GSM phone.

First Look

The Nokia 6235 CDMA phone looks slim (98 grams) and smart with intelligent use of black and grey on the body and chrome accents on the keypad. The 5 way joystick makes navigation easy, although it felt a bit too hard for my comfort. Comparatively, the Nokia 6600 has a very soft feel joystick. The screen backlight is good enough to make the phone easy to use in the dark. The smart black strip on the rear which has the camera on one side adds to the look of the phone.

Features

The Nokia 6235 has an integrated VGA camera and video recorder. However due to the limited memory (12 MB max), you can only record a few minutes of video. The camera has a one-step digital zoom. The image quality is fairly good and there are three quality modes to choose from.

The Nokia 6235 features video streaming and can play live TV, a service which is now available on many CDMA networks, including Reliance. I tried watching NDTV news channel on the phone and found that the telecast was only a few seconds delayed than what was being shown on my cable TV! Wow, this is the coolest feature of this phone! Imagine as more and more TV channels are added to the service, you will be able to watch all your favorite TV shows on the move! For the radioheads, the Nokia 6235 features an FM Radio. The stereo earphones shipped with the phone are quite good and deliver excellent sound.

The phone supports a wide variety of media formats and you can store and listen to MP3 and AAC song files, watch videos and view JPG or GIF images. The MP3 decoder is excellent and I found the Nokia 6235 to have a better sound quality than my iPod! If only Nokia had provided a memory card slot in this phone. With the limited memory, I can carry only 3 to 4 MP3 songs. Another cool feature is that you can set any MP3 song as the ringtone! The phone has a handsfree loudspeker which can be turned on to listen to the radio or MP3 songs.

The 128x128, 65K color display is sharp and clear. The display supports both large and small fonts and can display upto 4 rows of text. The now popular Nokia user interface makes navgating through the menu very easy. The phone has all the standard features like Messaging, Infrared and MMS. However a Bluetooth option is missing. Voice dialing and voice commands are supported and there is a voice recorder to record your memos etc. The Nokia 6235 has a good battery life enough to give you about 3.5 hours of talktime.

Verdict

At around INR 8,000.00, the Nokia 6235 CDMA cellphone is a good package which is spoilt only by the limited memory. Nokia should atleast have given the option to expand the memory with a card. But with so many features, like Video recording, camera, MP3 player, FM Radio and MMS, the phone is excellent value for money. For a CDMA user who wants to have all the latest features and does not want to burn a hole in his pocket, this is the phone to buy!

Update - Nokia 6235 SIM card slot

A lot of people have written in to ask if they can use a GSM SIM card in the Nokia 6235's SIM card slot. The SIM card slot in the Nokia 6235 is a T-SIM slot and a GSM SIM cannot be used in it. Some CDMA service providers like Tata Indicom sell T-SIM cards which can used in the Nokia 6235. But you may need to unlock your 6235 to be able to use another service provider's T-SIM card. Maybe some mobile phone genius could make a GSM SIM card work in the T-SIM slot, but I have not come across any example yet. So there you are. If you have any more questions, you can write to me at the email address at the bottom of this page.