Jørgen Sundgot has spent time with Nokia's 6310 model, a business-oriented phone that was Nokia's first model to feature both Bluetooth and GPRS - read what he makes of it.
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Despite getting off to a slow start in terms of Bluetooth as well as GPRS, Nokia is increasingly implementing such features in its mobile phones. The Nokia 6310 was the very first model from the company to offer both features when it first hit shelves, and has until recently remained the primary model (along with the slightly more feature-rich 6310i) for customers wanting a Nokia phone with Bluetooth and GPRS. Now, the Nokia 8910 and 7650 both deliver Bluetooth and GPRS in one phone, but the 6310 still stands its ground - and I've taken a closer look at what it has to offer.
 | Nokia's 6310 is a workhorse of a business tool
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As a dual-band GSM 900/1800 MHz phone with support for GPRS, HSCSD and Bluetooth, the Nokia 6310 is a typical for Nokia's 6000 series as a discretely styled, business-oriented phone with a rich feature set at the time of introduction. The phone comes with a charger, a comprehensive and well laid out manual, and a CD containing the appropriate version of Nokia's PC Suite for the phone.
The phone itself, measuring in at a somewhat large 129 x 47 x 21 mm and 111g, is rock-solid with good tactile feedback from the well laid out buttons. The power on/off button can be found on top of the phone next to the infrared port, and a volume up/down control on the left side of the phone. The screen provides up to 6 lines of text and has good readability thanks to its green backlight - but the keypad also has a green backlight, and this backlight makes the keypad more difficult to use in daylight and medium light conditions since it makes for green letters on a grey background. It cannot be switched off, either.
Under the hood
Navigating the main functions of the phone is made simple through the Simplex UI, and Bluetooth shows up under its own menu where necessary functions can be easily performed. Following a firmware upgrade to ensure GPRS worked properly, I've had virtually no problems connecting over Bluetooth to a series of devices for a multitude of purposes, and GSM, HSCSD and GPRS data calls have performed flawlessly over a long period of time. Also a plus, the 6310 supports the Bluetooth fax, headset and handsfree profiles.
The 6310 has a reasonable amount of memory available, and should be able to accomodate the needs of most business users with its capability to store up to 500 phone book entries and 150 text messages. A nice feature is the ability to create own folders for archiving SMS messages in, but the phone in general lacks ways to manage items of various kinds in what has become a sizeable amount of memory compared with what the first phones sporting the Simplex UI offered.
Other features that deserve mentioning include the WAP 1.2.1 browser that works like a charm, the good reception audio quality of the phone, the GPRS data transferred and time connected counters, and lastly the secure wallet for storing personal information of various kinds. As for battery life, the 6310 lived up to Nokia's claims of 3 hours to 5 hours and 30 minutes of talk time and up to 18 days of standby time. With Bluetooth switched on, the standby time reduced somewhat, but Nokia's implementation seems to be very efficient as other devices show far larger relative impacts on battery life from having Bluetooth switched on.
Conclusion
The Nokia 6310 would be a good choice as a workhorse for any business user, provided the latest version of the firmware is installed or GPRS can mildly put be a bit buggy. The phone otherwise proved rock solid both in terms of ruggedness and GPRS/Bluetooth reliability, and at the time of writing comes with a nice price tag. For those who want just a bit more, the updated 6310i model provides one addition 1900 MHz GSM band and J2ME support; otherwise, it's the same thing.
- What's positive: Rich feature set and Bluetooth profile support, very reliable
- What's negative: Keypad backlight, somewhat large, complex item management
| Features | 7/10 |
| Exterior | 6/10 |
| Ergonomics | 7/10 |
| Performance | 7/10 |
| Value: | 7/10 |
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iSW Score:
6.8/10 |
Price and availability
The will start selling for TBA () in November 1999.
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