| Review of the Nokia 1600 |
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The Nokia 1600 is a basic no-nonsense low-end phone offered by 7-11 on their Speakout Wireless service. There’s no camera, no MP3 player, and no expansion memory slot, but there’s plenty of features for those looking for just-a-phone.
The 1600 is available on 7-11. Last Updated: 27-Jun-2007 |
Before reading this review, please read
Some Thoughts on Phone Reviewing.
RF Performance
RF Sensitivity: This is one area where the Nokia
1600 really shines. I compared it against the
Siemens A56, which is a phone with an excellent reputation for good RF
sensitivity. Most phones that I rate highly usually match the performance of the
A56, or beat it ever so slightly. The 1600 however, actually beat the A56 by
enough to be quite noticeable.
I ran the tests in a couple of known weak spots for Rogers inside of Square One
shopping mall in Mississauga. The first was in the lower level of Sears, which
is a great place to test the performance of phones at 850 MHz. I was able to
take the 1600 into places on the lower level of Sears and maintain reasonable
call quality where the A56 broke up or even dropped the call.
My second test location was in the Z-shaped hallway that connects between the
underground section of the mall (between Sears and Zellers) and the main
hallway. At the second elbow in that hall the signal on all networks gets
extremely weak (especially Rogers), but coverage there is predominantly from
1900 MHz indoor repeaters and it’s a good place to test 1900 MHz performance of
phones. Once again, the 1600 bested the A56 by a reasonably wide margin.
Over-the-road Performance: I was actually quite
impressed with the 1600’s ability to tame network maladies during numerous
over-the-road tests. Handoffs were usually quite tame, and the phone did a good
job of keeping everything nice and clean. It wasn’t quite up to the level of the
recently-tested Sony-Ericsson z710i, though
the handoffs were slightly less “obvious” than on the SE model.
Compared to other Nokia models, the 1600 is among the best they make for this
particular aspect of performance. Coupled with the phone’s excellent RF
sensitivity, there is no question that this model is a definite winner when it
comes to overall RF prowess.
Click on this link for a full description of
RF Performance, and how to interpret it.
Audio Performance
Tonal Balance: While admittedly far short of the
best sounding phones I’ve ever tested, the overall tonal balance of the 1600 was
very easy on the ears, if a tad shallow-sounding (that is, it lacked any low end
that gives other phones a rich tonal quality). Throughout much of my testing I
found the sound to be reasonably well-balanced with very little harshness.
However, the lack of richness was a bit of a letdown given the excellent
performance up to this point.
Sound Reproduction: Like tonal balance, the ability
of the phone to reproduce the nuances of speech is quite good, but not quite
stellar. Part of the problem is a detectable background hiss that seems to
change somewhat with the overall sound. In other words, it isn’t just hiss, but
a distortion in the sound that takes away from overall clarity. Still, it
outranks quite a few more expensive phones on the market, and so given the
low-end roll in life, it’s hard to find fault here.
Earpiece Volume: Sadly the earpiece volume is only adequate in many
circumstances, and rather faint in others. Not only is the maximum volume of
this phone mediocre, but the volume boost feature seems reluctant to kick in
when you need it. At first I wasn’t even sure there was a volume boost feature,
but I finally found conditions that would trigger it. I personally wish Nokia
would just provide more overhead in their volume settings rather than relying on
this method of compensating for loud conditions. It can get annoying when the
phone constantly raises and lowers the volume.
If you call a loud source (like the Speakout Wireless customer service front
end) the phone sounds quite loud, but once you call other people, especially
those with faint voices or faint phones, the lack of earpiece volume is quite
noticeable.
Outgoing Audio: The overall quality of the outgoing
sound (when there is no background noise present) is quite nice, but hardly
terrific. Like the incoming audio, it is a bit shallow-sounding. When background
noise is present the phone lacks any real noise cancelling attributes, but it’s
no worse than any other Nokia is this regard.
During tests at a noisy food court I found that my voice was still quite audible
above the background din, but the overall quality of the sound was noticeably
poorer under those conditions. I’ve tested plenty of phones that can greatly
reduce the background noise without doing much (if any) damage to the outgoing
sound quality.
During tests on the highway with the windows open I found that the phone
transmitted quite a bit of that noise to the caller. During the extreme
pass-a-tractor-trailer-with-the-window-down test, I found it impossible to hear
my voice at all. Other phones I’ve tested have handled this severe condition
well.
Speakerphone: As I’ve noted before, some Nokia
phones end up with a pathetically faint speaker, while others get a really loud
one. In stark contrast to the earpiece volume, the speakerphone on the 1600 is
surprisingly loud. The overall quality of the sound is a bit tinny, but it’s
very clear and easy to use in quiet to moderately-noisy environments.
Click on this link for a full description of
Audio Performance, and how to interpret it.
Support Features
Ringer Volume: As with most Nokias that include the
loud sounder for the speakerphone, the volume of the ringtones is quite good. It
isn’t Motorola-iDEN-phone-loud, but if you pick your ringtones correctly you
should be able to hear it over most noisy backgrounds.
Keypad Design: Even though the 1600 uses an odd
arrangement of having 2 vertical keys on the same physical key (that rocks up
and down), the overall feel and layout of the keypad is actually pretty
traditional otherwise. Tactile feel is consistent and a groove down the middle
of the connected keys makes it possible to feel the difference between them
without looking. Unfortunately the same cannot be said of keys that are
side-by-side. Because of this the keypad is still pretty much unusable without
looking at it.
The 4-way cursor key is a bit better than average when it comes to feel and
accuracy, but there is no center-press functionality to select an item once
you’ve scrolled to it.
Display: The display is among the smallest and
lowest-resolution of any phone I’ve tested recently. It’s only 68 x 96 pixels,
and while Nokia boasts 65,000 colors, that’s hardly a consolation, since you
won’t be looking at photographs on it. However, given the phone’s mission in
life as a low-end no-nonsense phone, the screen resolution (or lack thereof)
hardly seems much of a concern.
Conclusions
While this is hardly one of the best Nokias I’ve ever tested, it has very little
wrong with it and as a low-end starter phone its tough to beat. It has excellent
RF characteristics, reasonable audio quality, a great speakerphone, and
reasonably loud ringtones. It’s certainly one of the best phones presently sold
by 7-11, and given its mission in life you would be hard pressed to find a
better phone for the same money.
