Great value, style, and features all in one
Written: Aug 28 '01
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Pros: Intergrated antenna, interchangable covers, nice looks, good reception, lots of features, small size.
Cons: Operating system 'bugs', Navi button can confuse new users, no web access.
The Bottom Line: A excellent value: lots of features, pretty good price, distinctive styling, durable. If you don't need to use it overseas, it's a great little phone.
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| zegers330's Full Review: Nokia 3390 |
First off, i'd like to say what a great value this phone is. Here in Canada, I brought it for $150 Can (about $100 US), and the price will probably drop in the future. It has a lot of features usually found in much more expensive phones, and it is pretty small, but has a good heft and feel. In short, the 3390 is great.
Features: the 3390 is loaded with features: it has call logs and profiles (staple Nokia features), a calendar, 4 games, calculator, vibrate mode, voice dialing, and a ring tone composer (last time i checked, very few phones have it). It's not the easiest to enter compose a ring tone, but it saves you from getting charged for downloading ringtones. Although voice dialing is becoming more common, it makes the 3390 an even greater value. There also all your standard cell phone features: phone book, SMS, etc. So basically, you get nearly every feature Nokia offers for about $100. Features not included that i can think of are web access, a voice recorder, and infra-red; and that's it. These omissions are certainly not negatives given the price. In fact, I must wonder how much of a profit Nokia makes on this phone.
Interface: I myself prefer Nokia's two-button navigation (like on the 6190 or 8290) compared to the 3390's one-button 'Navi' key. It is a multi-functional button; it's function depends on the text above the key. Many of my friends who use my phone ask my where the 'talk' and 'end' button is; both use the same key and this throws some people off, but it's no big deal once you learn how to use the phone. The 3390 is pretty easy to use; the interface is simple, the menus are well labeled and contain number shortcuts, and there is even a basic help system built into the menu: for most entries, a description will pop up if you wait for 15 or so seconds. The 3390 has predictive text input for writing SMS messages, which speeds up writing messages a lot. Note that predictive text input does not apply to the phone book, calendar, etc.; it is only for SMS.
Performance: reception is very good...i never had drop-outs and the strength signal never dropped below 1/2 at or above ground level. Sound quality is also very good, and so is the volume, though I have heard louder. What is loud is the ringer...maybe not the loudest, but it's plenty loud. Remember that you can also have the vibrate on at the same time.
Styling: For the price, there is nothing (to me) that looks better. Both the front 'face' and the back battery cover can be replaced for different colors...you can even have both cover in different colors! Here in Canada the covers are expensive (i'm talking about the geniune Nokia ones). I would prefer something that looks more 'classy', but it's really a personal preference.
Flaws: My first target is the operating system. i don't know if it's just my phone, but one of the 2 blank profile settings that i configured as 'Home' would sometimes be renames 'HXXX', where 'X' are squares. It has don this 3 or so times, but not recently. One other weird thing is that once the software seemed to have 'frozen' up for about 3 seconds. These things have never happened with my previous 6160. I don't think it's anything too serious, though. The second and last flaw is the average battery life. If left on standby (without any calls), it'll last about 4 days (straight) on a full charge. When you get 8 or so calls a day, you might not make it through the second day. There are optional batteries available, so at least it's fixable.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 100
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Epinions.com ID:
zegers330
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Location: Vancouver, BC, Canada
Reviews written: 8
Trusted by: 0 members
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