Wednesday, April 22, 2009

My new phone - Nokia Navigator 6210 - Never get lost again

What are the top two foolish things for a person do do during these time of recession?
  • Changing a job
  • Unnecessary spending money on gadgets
Having done both of them the past month, lets throw some more light on my the second one(the first is going to a boring talk anyways) i.e. shelling out around 14k for a GPS enabled phone in India where roads are re routed daily, house numbers are more randomly defined than a Java random number generator :-).
Nokia Navigator 6210 is my latest phone. Being a loyal Nokia fan for almost the last ten years, my first task was cut shot when i decided to go for a GPS phone was that I would be looking out only for Nokia. Call me biased, but i personally feel Nokia platform (Symbian) has got some great support and usability of Nokia phones is definitely an USP.
Quite a few phones are now available in the Nokia stable offering GPS facilities. But the cheapest one at this time was Nokia 6210 with 6 months on Navigation license (though being a Navigator series phone an unimited Navigation license was expected).
To clear your doubts first what is Navigation and is it the same as GPS. Though Nokia's site does have a good explanation of the same, for the impatient ones Nokia Phones now come bundled with an application called Nokia Maps (2.0). GPS Feature is free for life and you don't pay anybody anything for them (except minimal data transfer charges if you use AGPS which quickens up the initial GPS process). Using GPS you can find your current location on the map which is updated as you walk or drive. This feature is free for life across all Nokia GPS phones i know of.
But navigation takes this a step further by providing various value added services like routing of directions, voice based navigation, POI (point of interests) etc. In Nokia 6210 this comes free for the first 6 months and 8 Indian cities and later on you can buy a license of your liking.
Besides the default Nokia 6210 Navigation, you can also installed third party apps like Google Maps (+ves reliable, free, -ves no voice based navigation, data transfer charges as maps are downloaded over the internet), mapmyindia.com(one time license fee) etc. Personally i am a big fan of Google Maps.

Coming back to the phone, below i briefly mention some of the pros/cons of the handset and my recommendation about the same. You can get a details of the phone features and specifications from its official website http://www.nokia.co.in/link?cid=PLAIN_TEXT_934156

Pros
  1. Good navigation features (AGPS, 6 months free navigation)
  2. Digital compass for pedestrian navigation
  3. Great screen size and display
  4. Battery life is good
  5. A true smart phone with lot of support for third part apps (like voip, messengers etc.)
  6. Firmware is pretty stable and hasn't crashed on me after 3 weeks of continous use.
  7. Works as a pretty good music phone too.


Cons
  1. Build quality is a real bummer has a plasticy feel written all over on it, and is very much susceptible to dust.
  2. The top three keys below the sliders are not very easy to operate. So this phone is a strictly no no if you are an avid texter
  3. Being a Navigation phone a lifetime navigation license was expected. But it comes bundled only with a 6 months navigation license.
  4. Images taken from the camera could have been better. The LED flash sucks

Recommendation

Go for it if you are looking for a great GPS smartphone. If you are loooking for good build quality or a music phone there are definitely better options out there.

Rating 7/10

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