Nokia still boasts its position in the low-cost phone market. Its products are very popular and this is the merit, first of all, of the name of the company itself. Nevertheless, in a short period of time, the segment of budget devices was replenished with interesting models from other manufacturers. For example, Samsung has released a range of functional and inexpensive devices that offer a good value for money.
To keep its place in the sun, the Finnish company is releasing a series of affordable phones that can work with dual SIM cards. However, they have a lot of competitors. Let us recall, for example, the Fly products, which for a long time occupied the leading positions in the “two-sim” market. And now other companies have also started producing similar devices. In general, the competition is tough here, especially since the difference in price between the phones is very small.
In this review we will consider another budget phone from Nokia - the C2-00 model. It has a small display with a resolution of 128x160 pixels, a simple VGA camera, a standard 3.5 mm audio jack, a slot for a flash card and two slots for SIM cards.
Equipment
The package includes the phone itself, Nokia BL-5C battery, Nokia AC-3 (or AC-8C) network charger, Nokia WH-102 stereo headset, instructions.
Appearance
The C2-00 is a medium-sized monoblock with dimensions of 108x45x15 mm and a weight of 74 grams. In the hand, it will seem thick, but at the same time rather light. The device is almost not felt in the pocket of the clothes.
This model is available in four different body colors: white, gray, purple and black. The latter color option is likely to be the most popular, and it is he who is considered in our review.
Like any other budget phone, the tested phone has a neutral appearance, without any conspicuous body parts. The front side of the device was made of glossy plastic, and we didn't like it very much: because of its soiling, it immediately becomes covered with fingerprints, and the appearance of the phone is noticeably deteriorating from this.
A wide silver frame was made around the display. Above it is an oblong hole for the earpiece. There are a couple of soft buttons under the screen. They were placed on an insert separate from the keyboard. The answer and end buttons are located below. All buttons are large and have a clear response when pressed. Although they are flat, they are easy to find by touch. In the center of the soft-key block is a four-way joystick. It is silver in color and resembles a square frame (the central joystick button is slightly recessed).
The phone has a standard keyboard with a traditional layout of buttons: four rows of three buttons. There is a slight horizontal stripe separation between the rows. The "5" key has been supplemented with small notches to make it easier to navigate the keyboard blindly. All keys are pretty decent in size. And although they have a flat profile, erroneous presses are rare, the keyboard is comfortable to use. The symbols on the buttons are white, the same color and their backlight.
The top end is occupied by a standard 3.5mm headphone jack, the bottom has only a microphone hole.
The left side surface is almost empty. Only the strap clip is located here. The right end, on the other hand, has many connectors. On this side, a microUSB interface is installed, which is necessary for synchronization with a PC. To do this, you need a special data cable, which is not included in the phone package. Unfortunately, the device cannot be charged via the microUSB port. Slightly higher is a 2 mm socket for connecting a mains charger. On the same side there is a slot for the second, additional SIM-card.It supports hot swapping of the card, you do not need to turn off the phone to perform this procedure. The slot is covered with a hinged plastic cover.
All ends of the model and its back are made of plastic with a practical matte texture. In the upper part of the back cover in the center there is a large square insert made of transparent plastic, which covers the 0.3 MP camera lens. Slightly higher on the right are the openings of the ringer loudspeaker.
The cover is fastened to the body of the device very reliably, but it squeaks noticeably if you press your finger on its central part. There is a special recess at the bottom of the phone. Thanks to it, the cover can be pryed off and removed. Below it is the memory card slot and the battery, which covers the main SIM card slot.
Display
The diagonal of the TFT-matrix installed on the model is 1.8 inches. The screen has a resolution of 128x160 pixels and can display 65000 colors. With such parameters, the image quality on it is at a very low level: the colors are faded, the brightness is low, and you cannot adjust it manually.
The screen of Nokia C2-00 has small viewing angles. Most of the image fades when the unit is turned to the right. To protect it from scratches, the display is covered with transparent plastic on top.
Interface
The tested phone has the Series 40 6th edition platform. On the desktop there are a pair of indicators of the network signal strength, a clock, an icon of the selected operating mode, and a battery charge indicator are displayed. The locked screen contains a minimum of additional information. It displays a large clock, the current date, and icons for missed calls and unread messages.
The desktop can contain up to three lines with widgets and shortcuts of programs available on the phone: alarm clock, favorite contacts, mail, etc. Their position on the screen can be adjusted manually.
The main menu of the device is opened by pressing the central button of the joystick. The actions of the soft buttons can be reassigned, but initially the right one is responsible for opening the phone book, and the left one calls up the shortcut menu. It contains icons of various programs, here you can add the necessary shortcuts from the list of more than 60 functions available on the phone. By the way, the shortcut menu has no size limit, you can place links to at least all available functions and applications in it. The desktop can be of a simpler type. In this case, the navigation key is used for quick access to the functions of the device.
The main menu contains twelve icons, the location of each of which can be set manually. There are other types of menus: single, list, unsigned icons. The model has four skins for changing the appearance of the interface. The background picture of the desktop is also configured.
In general, the Series 40 is convenient to use: the interface is intuitive and the platform is fast. Unfortunately, it does not support the full multitasking experience found on Sony Ericsson budget phones. The player or radio can be minimized on C2-00, but background mode is not available for all other programs.
Phone book
Up to 1000 contacts can be entered into the phone book of the device. Up to five numbers, Email address, place of work, date of birth and other data are recorded for each contact. There are separate fields for the first and last name, each with 50 characters. Also, the subscriber is assigned an individual ringtone, photo or video, which will be played during an incoming call.
Contacts in the book are displayed in a list, next to each contact there is a small icon indicating the location of its storage - device memory or SIM card. You can enable the display in the list of only those records that are located in a specific memory. Sorting the list of subscribers is possible both by first name and last name. You can create groups of subscribers, each group is assigned an image and a ringtone.If your phone book includes a large number of entries, then the search function will come to your rescue, with the help of which you can search for subscribers by first or last name.
Call log
The log traditionally includes four categories: all calls, received and missed calls, dialed numbers. A separate list is occupied by the addressees of messages. Here you can also view the total duration of telephone conversations, there is a traffic counter used for Internet connections.
Each category in the magazine contains up to twenty issues. Each entry contains the name of the subscriber, the date / time of the call, and the duration of the call. You can add a new number from the journal to an existing subscriber or create a new contact in the phone book.
There is a function of recording telephone conversations, there is a speakerphone. You can include up to eight numbers from the phone book in speed dial. Each number is assigned to any key on the keyboard, except for "1" (as usual, voice mail is attached to it).
Thanks to the SIM management manager, you can set which of the cards will perform a particular function in the phone. Since there is only one GSM-module in the device, when talking on one card, the second one becomes unavailable. What pleases most is the possibility of changing the SIM-card, which is inserted from the side, without turning off the device.
Posts
The section contains short (SMS) and multimedia (MMS) messages. Here, the correspondence with an individual subscriber is combined into a single list, which looks like a dialogue. By adding a video, image or audio file to an SMS message, it is automatically converted to MMS. The functions of copying / pasting text are supported, the font size in messages is adjusted. The number of the subscriber to whom you will send the message can be taken from the phone book, call log, last used numbers, or set it manually. The phone has the function of creating a backup copy of data on a flash card.
Letters from your e-mail boxes can be received directly to your phone thanks to a special built-in application. Connecting to a mailbox on any popular mail server (we connected to Gmail.com and Mail.ru) turned out to be as easy as shelling pears. It is enough to enter only the username and password, and the program will do the rest. The mail client supports automatic downloading of letters, for which you need to set its interval in the options. The period for receiving mail is also configured.
Emails are downloaded even with attachments, but the received files cannot be viewed - the phone can only open images. The mail client is capable of working with several accounts, the POP3, IMAP4 and SMTP protocols are supported. In general, the application has only basic features. You can send letters from your phone, attach graphic files to them.
Camera
The Nokia C2-00 has the simplest 0.3-megapixel camera with no autofocus and no flash. The photographs obtained with its help are of very low quality. They will fit only for setting as wallpaper on your phone's desktop. The maximum image resolution is 640x480 pixels. The camera is capable of shooting video clips with a resolution of 176x144 pixels at 10 frames per second.
MP3-player
The player supports the following audio file formats: MP3, WMA, MP4, AAC, AAC +, eAAC +. During playback, the title and cover of the album are displayed on the screen, the name of the song and the name of its artist are displayed, the total length of the track and the playing time are indicated. The playlist is sorted by artist name, album name or song genre. The player functions are controlled by means of the navigation key.
The volume control has ten levels. The phone is powerful enough to listen to music in any noisy environment, for example, in the subway. As for a budget model, the device has good sound quality.For the undemanding user, Nokia C2-00 can replace a portable player, but you will have to replace the bundled headset with better quality headphones.
FM-radio
The radio receiver of the phone operates in two ranges - 76–90 and 87.5–108 megahertz. It has a memory bank for twenty radio stations, which can be found both manually and using autosearch. RDS supported. In the background mode, the device displays the name of the listened station.
Gallery
The gallery contains pictures taken with a phone camera. It has two sections: "My Photos" and "Timeline". In the first section, photographs are presented in the form of preview pictures. For easy viewing of images, there is a slide show function in which you can set the transition effect between images (three options are available) and the duration of their display (3 - 10 seconds). The selected image can be expanded to full screen, sent via Bluetooth or MMS.
The Timeline section displays pictures sorted by date. You can select a specific day to view all the photos taken at that time. In fact, this section differs from the previous one only in the way it is ordered.
Applications
The calendar can be in the form of a month or a day. In it, you can create five types of records with setting the place, start and end time of the event, the period of its repetition. A sound signal will remind you of the event. For it, you can set the response time, select a melody. The search function will help you find the desired event or date.
The phone only has one alarm clock... It can be triggered on certain days, set the period for the signal to be repeated. You can use a preset melody or a song you have loaded into the phone's memory as an alarm ringtone. Also, the sound of the radio can be a bell (you must first connect a headset to the device).
Thanks to the function “World clock»You can set the display to show the time from four different time zones. Also present stopwatch and timer.
Installed on the model calculator able to perform simple arithmetic operations. It can take the form of an engineering calculator (included in the settings), which calculates more complex mathematical functions - getting the square root of a number, calculating percentages, etc.
Posts created voice recorder, can last up to one hour and will be saved both in the internal memory of the phone and on the memory card.
On the tested device, it is possible to create notes, in which you can store information about upcoming cases. Each note is prioritized for its importance.
Also present at C2-00 unit converter and unpretentious budget planning software.
To pass the time, you can play games on your phone. There are three of them installed here: Bounce Tales, Block ID and Snake III.
Profiles
The device has seven customizable profiles. In each of them, the melody and volume of the call, the signal for the arrival of a message, the keyboard sound is turned on / off, and other settings are set. There is a function to automatically turn off the profile at a selected time. There is "Airplane mode", in which all its functions remain available in the phone, but the GSM module is turned off.
Browser
The popular browser Opera Mini version 4.2 is installed on the tested model. The application is very simple and convenient at the same time. Its main advantages are high page loading speed and low traffic consumption.
Communications
Nokia C2-00 can only be used in GSM networks (900/1800). GPRS class 12 is used to connect to the Internet. File exchange with other devices is possible via Bluetooth 2.1 with EDR. The module supports the A2DP profile, which allows you to connect a wireless headset to your phone.
Synchronization with a personal computer is carried out via a USB connection (the version of the USB port installed on the device is 2.0).In this case, the phone can operate in two modes: "Ovi Suite" (the PC must have the Nokia OVI Suite application installed to synchronize the phone book, messages and other data) or "USB storage" (the computer will see the phone memory and flash cards ).
Memory
The phone has approximately 45 megabytes of internal memory on board. MicroSD cards are also supported, which can be as much as 32GB, which is rare on budget phones. We tested 1GB, 4GB and 32GB flash cards. All of them worked in the apparatus without any problems.
Thanks to the file browser, you can copy / move files between the flash card and the built-in memory of the device, delete them, rename them. It is possible to create folders. The displayed data is sorted by title, date, size or format.
Autonomous work
The phone has an average capacity 970 mAh lithium-ion battery. The manufacturer promises that one charge will be enough for 4 hours of phone calls or 400 hours of standby time. If you use the device not often (10-15 minutes of calls on both SIM-cards), then it can work up to five days. More active use, including half an hour of phone calls and up to two hours of player operation, will drain the battery in one and a half to two days.
Summary
The phone does not have a separate ringer speaker. Its functions are performed by the colloquial. The most interesting thing is that during a telephone conversation, the interlocutor's voice is heard more clearly from behind than from the front. Therefore, it makes sense to talk on the phone with its back facing your face, even though it will look strange. The device's vibration alert is very weak, it is almost never heard.
Of the positive qualities of the Nokia C2-00 phone, it is worth noting its convenient Series 40 platform and decent speed of java programs. That's basically it. The main drawback of the model is the poorly thought-out basic telephone functions. And this despite the fact that inexpensive devices that can work with two SIM-cards are used specifically for conversations.
Nokia C2-00 can be called a strange phone. It is difficult for him to compete with devices from Fly or Philips, and even with products from Samsung, even more so. Take, for example, the E2152 DUOS model, in which there are no problems with the speaker, and the work with SIM-cards is implemented much more conveniently.
