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Nokia 2330 Classic (Mobile phone)

Nokia 2330 Classic is a mobile phone with Internet capabilities, VGA camera, Bluetooth and FM Radio. It is in the low price range. In the Handy stores it costs 109 BGN, slightly above the psychological hundred BGN price tag, but for what the phone offers, the price seems fair.

Package

The phone comes in stylish blue and green box 11.3 x 8.9 x 6.5 cm big. The main phone features are outlined on the bottom of the box - not very intuitive and not easily seen at first sight. The key features are written with big blue font, and under them with black font are the same features written in six different languages. They are Ovi Mail, 1.8" TFT colour screen, VGA camera, Bluetooth and FM radio. My phone is © 2009 by Nokia and appears to be the second version of the model. It is made in Romania.

After opening the box, the first thing seen is the Be safe, Be original text on blue background, giving us warning to use Nokia Original Accessories for safety, or the user risks invalidation of warranty and even it can be dangerous! There is also short we: recycle sentence. On the phone bed on white background is a picture guide about how to open the back cover and insert the SIM card. Inside the package, except the phone is also the user manual, battery, charger and headset. The manual is small, only in one language, printed in black and white, consisting of 102 pages, ninety of them with text and ten blank, with basic things need to be known about the phone, the warranty card, warranty terms and service. The charger is ordinary Nokia accessory with the standard jack, compatible with the other recent Nokia phones. The battery is model BL-5C, the same used in the Nokia N-Gage phone. The headset have long enough cable, even for tall people and have a button for changing the radio stations or the track currently played. Dimensions of the phone are 107 x 46 x 13.8 mm. The phone easily fits in any pocket and is lightweight. I had touch with even more lightweight phones, like the Vodafone 225, but the Nokia 2330 Classic is not heavy either.

Installation

My experience with the phone installation was not that easy and straight forward, like the other phones I used before. Even if it have a button on the back cover on the top, like the Nokia E51, it is hard to open, requiring extra effort and help of fingernail or screwdriver. Removal of the battery is easy, but the SIM card holder is again hard to open without extra effort. Placing and removing the SIM card is easy, once removed the holder. The reverse procedure of closing the phone, again is not as easy as it should be either. After closing the phone, it is turned on by holding the red button, which is also the button for closing conversation. After about three seconds, white screen appears, then the Nokia startup tune with the shaking hands logo. The phone is ready to use.

Usage

First thing, noticed on the startup screen is the lack of animation on the shaking hands logo. It is still picture, then the main screen appears. The lack of animation was revealed, after using the phone. Even if the keys are very easy to press and type on them, it is a sluggish and clumsy to use phone. For talking it is very good, but the extra features are somewhat limited. On the top of the screen are icons for the network coverage strength, battery charge level and phone operator name. If some enhancement is connected to the phone, it is also displayed as icon on the top. On the center of the screen are the clock and the date. The screen display lamp shares the same light for the buttons, making them illuminate - pretty view at night. But if the lamp is off, it is impossible to see the clock or date, requiring random key press, if the keypad is not locked, or menu button press, if the keypad is locked. The screen itself is garish, with too many light distortions, making it hard to use for a longer period. For talking it is okay at quiet places, but at very noisy environment it can be hard to hear. The loudspeaker is situated at very bad position, on the back on the phone, at the lower part. It is easy to mute with finger, while holding it, or with something else, while being into the pocket. For charging or putting headset, a special cover have to be removed, requiring extra effort of the fingernail or screwdriver. From the main screen there are favourite keys for the main functions of the phone, while pressing the big button at the center brings the main menu.

The main menu appears with animation of the icons coming from the center of the screen, occupying the display area. The menu screen have nine icons. Leaving the selection box over an icon for some seconds brings help text, giving more information about the selection. On the top left on the menu is the Messaging icon. Selecting it brings another submenu with items for various message management selections. The submenus are consisting of vertical selection slider. The submenu options for messaging are Create message, Inbox, Set up e-mail, Drafts, Outbox, Sent items, Saved items, where the number of messages is written under the menu text (11 built-in the phone), Delivery reports, Instant messages, Voice messages, Info messages, Service commands, Delete messages and Message settings. As usual for the Nokia phones, the messaging part is greatly supported, offering many capabilities, including insertion of images, streaming links, video clips, business cards, text templates, sound clips, calendar notes and text fields. The message can be E-mail, Flash or Audio. Great for people who love messages. Nice feature in the messaging is the outline of links and numbers in the messages, so if I select web address, it opens the browser, or if I select a number, the phone allows to save it, sent message, sent number, or call it.

At the center on the top of the main menu is the icon for Contacts. The submenu again offers powerful contacts management options, giving the possibility to look at Names, Add new, Synchronise all, make Settings for Memory in use, giving the possibility to use only SIM memory, phone memory or both. In the Contacts view, it is possible to select Name list, Name & number or Name & image. Name display allows the user to set preference for the way the names are displayed, also Font size can be switched to Normal font or Large font. The Memory status for the phone or the SIM card can be seen from the contacts submenu as well. In the Contacts are also options Groups, Speed dials and Service numbers. The contacts can be deleted all at once, moved and copied from SIM card to the phone memory and the other way around. Unfortunately, the phone can not distinguish contacts with and without country code, so I had calls from people who were in my contacts list, but shown as unknown, because I did not enter their full number, including the country dial code.

Another submenu, offering many functions is invoked with the Log icon, situated at the top right on the main menu screen. The phone stores logs for All calls, Missed calls, Received calls, Dialled numbers, Message recipients, Call duration. There is also Packet data counter, Packet data connection timer, Message log and Positioning. The logs can be erased with Clear log lists and the log can be synchronized with Sync log.

On the center left on the main menu is the Settings icon. It brings submenu with options for Profiles - six available, Themes - only three built-in the phone: Default, Light and Reef, but more are available for download. There are also settings for Tones, Display - not offering the possibility to tweak the garish display light, Date and time, My shortcuts, Sync and backup, Connectivity, Call, Phone, Enhancements, Configuration, Security and Restore factory settings, if something goes wrong, or someone wants to delete all personal data.

On the center on the main menu screen is the Gallery icon, bringing the submenu to manage multimedia data - Images, Video clips, Music files, Themes, Graphics, Tones, Recordings and Received files. Opening files from these submenus will bring the appropriate application for usage with the files. I found a way to use a fourth theme from here - no theme at all, by pressing cancel, while the theme is applied. For the images, the submenu gives preview of the image with small icon, while the videos are shown with a default icon, so the user have to play the clips, if wanting to see what is shot in them. The phone have many built-in multimedia files. In the Music files there is only one song - Tropical.mp3 - 149 KB big, 25 seconds long, but in the Graphics there are six beautiful wallpapers, ten clip-arts and ten frames. The combinations of these graphics can be used for creation of really nice and original messages. In the Tones there are two submenus - Ring. tones and Alert Tones. In the ringing tones, there are fourteen polyphonic sound clips for almost everyone's taste, including songs. The alert tones are only eight, but again various styles are present.

Right to the Gallery is the Media icon, where are the Camera, Video, Music player, Radio and Recorder submenus. On the bottom left is the Organiser icon, with the Alarm clock, Calendar - the strong Nokia calendar, with all the features, To-do list, Notes, Calculator - with options for Scientific calculator and Loan calculator, Timer and Stopwatch.

Camera

On the back on the phone there is a VGA camera, capable of shooting photos and videos. The camera is invoked from the main screen with the press of the up Navi key. The highest resolution it can make photos is 480x640, with options for the Image quality to High, Normal and Basic. The image size of the shot picture can be set also to 240x320 and 120x160, but these resolutions are not recommended. Even with the biggest resolution and best image quality, the shot pictures are blurry, the colors are not saturated and the picture does not look good at all, as seen on the picture on the right, shot with the camera. The shot pictures are small in size, and can be sent easily by messages. The 10 MB memory of the phone is enough for shooting pictures, but if looking for quality, the phone is not an option. Shooting videoclips is even worse experience. On the test clip I recorded, first time it automatically stopped at thirty seconds. I set the Video clip length to Max. available, which turned out to be two minutes. I have tried to shoot some scenes of the screen and text, but hardly anything was distinguished in the blurry pictures, let alone text or objects. The clips are shot in 128x96 pixels, which is smaller than some icons on my Workbench. The recorded audio was not good either. Despite the fact that the sound was loud, hardly anything was hearable during play of the clip. Using the phone camera for anything else than for the fun of it, is not recommended.

Applications

Right to the Organiser icon on the bottom part of the main menu grid is the Applications icon. Selecting it invokes the submenu with only two options - Games and Collection. On the Collection submenu are the Nokia.mobi option, along with Converter, Download! and Expense manager. The converter application differs slightly from the other converters, available on almost every phone. Nevertheless, despite the standard Temperature, Currency, Weight, Length, Area and Volume, it have the new for me Cooking - for cooks and other food interested persons, and Lifestyle, which is empty. The Cooking have converter for Dram<->Millilitre, Jigger<->Centilitre, Gill(US)<->Decilitre, Gill(UK)<->Decilitre, Cup(US)<->Decilitre, Quart(US)<->Litre, Quart(UK)<->Litre, #2.5 can<->Litre and #10 can<->Litre. This is very useful for people reading and executing recipes from around the world. The Download! application is present with Version 3.2.24, offering the user the possibility to get and manage downloaded applications, content and subscriptions.

Another interesting application, built-in the phone collection is the Expense manager. It is for persons, who love to follow budgets, plans and look at their expenses. Spent money in different currencies can be set with daily breakdown and entered in real time. There is breakdown for Food, Transportation, Entertainment, Clothing, Electronic equipment, Accessories, Housing, Family and Health care. For every day the expense can be entered, Budget plan can be set, with addition of new categories. There is possibility for Daily overview, Monthly overview and Categ.overview. The application have also Instructions for the interested people.

Games

Seeing the phone at action for first time, I was expecting better gaming experience than on the Nokia 1208, especially on the better screen. It turned out that from three games on Nokia 2330 Classic, two games were almost the same as on the Nokia 1208, only with different names and one unique game.

Galaxy Balls

Galaxy Balls is yet another Columns clone, sharing many similarities with the game Nature Park on the Nokia 1208. The game starts with beautiful picture of three planets, stars and animated yellow flying character. There is music during the intro, but not in the game. The instructions of the game say: Clear blocks by placing 3 or more blocks of the same colour horizontally, vertically or diagonally. Move blocks, horizontally by pressing keys 4 or 6, or by pressing the nagivation key. Move blocks vertically by pressing keys 5 or 8 or by pressing the navigation key down. Rotate blocks by pressing key 2 or by pressing the navigation key up. Descriptive enough. I went to see the best scores, but unfortunately there was nothing saved into a new phone. Five records are stored into the High scores table, and if the player wants to see the nice intro picture, without the flying character, it is in the background. With the New game option, the action begins on empty 6 X 10 grid, with connected to the main playfield a small 3 x 3 grid, showing the next figure to fall. At the beginning the figures are consisting of only two blocks, but shortly after, three block figures appear. Unlike the other games, where the hard part comes after playing for a while, in this game on this particular phone, the really hard part is the start, where the figures move so slowly, that the player can lose his motivation only after playing for some seconds. Later, when the figures start to move faster, which is still slow, even for unexperienced player, it gets much more interesting, but also easier to play. The keys of the phone respond fast and are very easy to press, but on this game I press several times, believing that the game does not read my previous input. There is no possibility to press and hold, to move the figure from one side end of the grid to the other. If the player manages to remove blocks from the grid, the character on the right closes his eyes in satisfaction. If the player removes more than three blocks, sequentially, a flash at the center appears, with a number inside, showing how many removals after the first are made. Later, the yellow character flies away and another character flies to his place, indicating that the game gets harder. Other cute characters appear on the screen at later stage. With the raise of the difficulty, also the falling figures differ. There are stone figures, which can be removed only by a flash or a bomb, but not by connecting several stones. The special figure bomb, consists only of one block and removes the blocks around it, after falling. The flash special figure also consists only of one block, but removes the whole column, where it falls. There is also special figure - star, which removes same blocks from the grid, on which it falls. The sounds of the game are only few - during fall of the figures and removal of blocks, but there is also vibration, when the stone figure falls, indicating that something heavy have just landed on the grid. This game is not very appropriate for this phone, and I rate is as the worst for the three present in the device.

Snake EX2

Yet another snake game, done on the Nokia phones. The ancient game idea, seen with versions for wide range of computer, mobile and even console platforms, gets another variation in the form of Snake EX2, implemented on the Nokia 2330 Classic. After the nice title screen of snake with green, white and black patterns, the game menu appears. The Instructions for the game are as follows: Make the snake grow longer by directing it to the food. Use the keys 2, 4, 8 and 6 to change direction. Avoid hitting the walls and your own tail. Eat the bonus food before the time expires. In addition to the food there are some power-ups on the playground. Power-ups can either help your game or make it more difficult temporarily. You never know the character of the power-up beforehand. The game has two modes. In the classic mode, you can choose the maze in which you play and the speed at which the snake moves. In the extreme mode you advance from one maze to another when you have scored enough points. The snake also has a tongue. You can use it to catch food from a distance using the 5 key. Visit Nokia games service on the Internet for hints and tips. The instructions are very descriptive, explaining everything about the game to the player with only few paragraphs. One feature, not mentioned in the instructions is the possibility to play with the Navi keys. I find playing with the Navi keys much easier, than using the numeric keys, requiring more movements of the playing finger. But on the other hand in the instructions, there is animation after every screen, depicting what was said about the game, it's controls and the power-ups. Very good presentation for the game. Playing the game in the classic mode is not very interesting, especially on the low Level settings, where it is slow and clumsy. In the Extreme mode it is much better, but still better set the level to eight or nine, else the game is very slow. I had great fun with the game, especially with the various power-ups and the different levels, making the game interesting to pass over and over again. The mastering of the tongue usage is also fun thing to do. The atmospheric sounds and the good drawn graphics, smooth animations and nice gameplay, compensate for the other two games included with the phone. The timer and the random appearing walls are another twists for which the player have to be careful. In the High scores menu item, only the best scores are kept for Classic and Extreme. I rate it as the best game, included with the phone, because of the decent speed, the changing levels and the motivation for the player. If more snake type games where implemented with so many innovations, may be the genre will get more attractive for the gamers. For me, this particular game is the only reason to use the phone for gaming at all.

Sudoku

Sudoku is a logic puzzle about placement and combination of numbers on a grid. Unlike the other two games present, this game gained popularity in the recent years and is not a classic game, implemented first on the eight bit machines. It starts with an animation of the SUDOKU title built from big red letters, sequentially appearing on grey grid. The Instructions say:
The aim of the puzzle is to enter a digit from 1 to 9 in each cell of a 9x9 grid made up of 3x3 subgrids, starting with various digits given in some cells; each row, column, and subgrid must contain only one instance of each digit.
Select field: Navigation keys
Enter number in field: 1-9
Clear field: 0
Previous puzzle: *
Next puzzle: #
Mark field as doubted: Click on number field
Display time/moves: Click on score field
The player have many puzzles to solve and the game is very interesting for the puzzle fans. With all these levels, it can be fun for many hours. On the Easy difficulty, the puzzle is made of grid with 6x6 cells, on Medium and Hard, the grid is made of 9x9 cells. On each difficulty level, there are 100 puzzles, so the game have 300 puzzles total. Even if the game can be played on paper with pencil or pen, the implementation on the phone and the ability to check if it is solved correct is plus for the people owning the phone. The game implementation on the device is very good, with decent graphics and cute blue smiling circle face, when a puzzle is solved, giving information about the player results. If the player tries to pass a level with the press of the # key, and the puzzle was not solved yet, an unhappy red circle face appears, saying: Puzzle locked Complete the current puzzle before moving on to the next one. The progress of the game is kept, until the player decides to start a new game. In the High scores, there can be entries for Easy, Medium and Hard, but by default there is nothing in there. Once the player starts to play, for each puzzle, the Level - Moves - Time entries are saved, something for later challenge, almost impossible to have with the paper version of the game. I rate this game as second best in the phone.

When the battery is removed, the phone does not remember the time, which have to be entered manually, every time when change of SIM card is needed. But strangely, it remembers the game positions for all the games built-in.

Web

The Web icon is at the bottom right of the main menu. Invoking it brings the submenu for Internet options - Nokia.mobi, Home, Browser, Web services and again the Download!. Included in the phone is the Opera Mini browser. In my phone it is version 4.1.14287, 20090505. The browser offers Search, Bookmarks and History. Because I am not fond with the idea of paying for Internet through the mobile phone operator (too expensive), I was not able to extensively test the browser and the other web capabilities of the phone.

Conclusion

The Nokia 2330 Classic is a new phone with many capabilities and good price. The battery does not stay charged for long, especially when used, but it is decent enough to have it as main phone, even in today environment. For gaming and features use, it is not good, mostly because of the bad garish screen, giving me headache after watching at it for a long time. For talking, occasional shooting of picture, a game or two, it is acceptable. For the time being I will continue to use my Toshibo V9+i, but if I had no other phone, I would be happy with the Nokia 2330 Classic.

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