| Review of the Nokia 6126 |
 |
This a new Nokia clamshell phone offered to Canadians through Fido. Nokia
hasn’t really started to make clamshell phones until just recently, but
the 6126 proves that they got the right idea right away. The model I
tested was provided courtesy of TelecomZombie (that’s his
HowardForums name). Last Updated: 19-Sep-2006 |
Before reading this review, please read
Some Thoughts on Phone Reviewing.
RF Performance
RF Sensitivity: I was able to test the RF
capabilities of the 6126 against the recently-tested
Nokia E50 and it proved that once again, Nokia knows how to build GSM phones
that can pull in weak signals. However, you have to be very careful how you hold
the phone, because the internal antenna is very sensitive to body parts coming
in close contact with it. The antenna (according to the manual) is located in
the bottom of the keypad section, which means that you must hold the phone at
the hinge and put your fingers on the upper section at all times.
If I might editorialize here for a moment, I think that this internal antenna
business has become a huge annoyance. Just for the sake of getting rid of the
little antenna bulge at the top of the phone, we now have to hold them in
unnatural ways that can be both a pain-in-the-neck and an RF issue if we aren’t
cognizant of how we are holding it. So, a thumbs up to Nokia for giving us
excellent RF sensitivity, but thumbs down to them for making us hold the phone
in ways we may not choose to.
Over-the-road Performance: I found that the 6126
handed off and handled network issues about the same as virtually every other
half-decent Nokia ever made. This is one area where Nokia has remained
consistent, but perhaps to their detriment. While I wouldn’t say that Nokia’s
have poor over-the-road performance (because they don’t), I believe that they
could have worked on improving this over the years (but they haven’t).
Click on this link for a full description of
RF Performance, and how to interpret it.
Audio Performance
Tonal Balance: In a word, excellent. Okay, maybe
not the best I’ve ever heard, but certainly in the top 5. There is a nice mix of
highs and lows with very little peakiness or harshness.
Sound Reproduction: Also excellent, but with a just
a tad too much hiss. This one area where virtually all Nokia phones excel, with
a few notable exceptions such as the 7210 and the
6200. It's been a few years since I've tested a
poor-sounding Nokia, so perhaps they've rid their lineup of all such models.
Outgoing sound quality is a mixed bag however. In a perfectly quiet environment
the quality is very good, but once you have some background around you the
quality drops off very rapidly. I tried making test recordings in my car with
the window down on the highway and the results were extremely disappointing. Not
only was the background noise overbearing, but the general sound quality of the
audio was affected too.
Earpiece Volume: Not bad, but Nokia always seems to
fall a little short in this regard. Fortunately the 6126 processes Nokia’s
excellent volume boost feature, which increased the loudness of the earpiece
when it senses a noisy background. That means you won’t suffer from lame
earpiece volume when you try to use the phone in such places as a noisy vehicle,
a crowded mall, or a busy street.
Speakerphone: Nokia has been all over the map when
it comes to speakerphone quality, but I’m happy to report that the 6126 is one
of their better implementations. The tiny little sounder does a surprisingly
good job of generating a decent volume level with passable tonal quality. You
can certainly use the speakerphone feature to carry on real conversations
without any difficulty.
Click on this link for a full description of
Audio Performance, and how to interpret it.
Support Features
Ringer Volume: The ringer uses the same
high-performance sounder as the speakerphone and as such the 6126 has a very
loud ringer. By selecting an appropriate ringtone you can hear this little phone
ring in just about any environment.
Keypad Design: Here’s another area where I’ve been
critical of Nokia in the past, but this time they got it right. In fact, they
did a better job that most clamshell phones by using up every little bit space
they could to provide big friendly keys that were easy to find (without looking
at them), easy to press, and accurate. Kudos for this design.
Display: Once again, Nokia have gone out of their
way to use up the real estate in as effective a way as possible. The 6126 has a
positively huge 240 x 320 pixel color display with 24-bit color depth (16.7
million colors) that looks gorgeous. It could do with being a bit brighter, but
aside from that it’s one of the nicest clamshell displays I’ve tested in quite
some time.
The phone also has a color external display with a resolution of 128 x 160
pixels. There are phones that can’t even boast that kind of resolution on the
main displays. The quality of that outer display is low compared to that of the
inside display, but it serves it purpose very well. It even displays what the
camera sees for doing self-portraits.
External Memory: The phone uses MicroSD cards to
provide addition memory for photos and MP3 files. Presently MicroSD cards are
available up to 1 GB, but there is a SanDisk 2 GB card presently available
exclusively through a US provider. Once they become readily available they might
work on the 6126, depending upon whether Nokia correctly implemented the
interface. Apparently a number of other phones that use MicroSD cards can only
“see” up to 1 GB.
Battery Life: I don't normally
get a chance to test battery life, and even though I didn't have the 6126 in my
possession for long, it aptly demonstrated how generally poor the charge life
is. After I'd first received the phone I full charged it overnight, but within
about 3 days the battery had dropped to only 1 bar and the total amount of usage
hadn't been all that great. For those of us who charge their phones each night,
this isn't really an issue, but users who require that their phones can operated
solely upon batteries for prolonged periods of time, or with heavy use, may find
the standard batter in the 6126 a bit weak.
Icing on the Cake
Camera: The 6126 includes a 1.3 megapixel camera,
but sadly it has the same major problem as all of the other Nokia cameras I’ve
tested. It has way too much digital noise in darkly-lit areas (even in dark
areas of well-lit pictures). This makes it impossible to adjust the shadows and
highlights using photo-processing software such as Photoshop without bringing
out the noise. On the other hand, it has excellent color clarity and at the
highest quality setting it uses low-enough JPEG compression to actually produce
some very sharp-looking images.
Unlike most cameras, the 6126 defaults to portrait mode (when the phone is held
upright). This is because they fill the entire 240 x 320 screen with the
“viewfinder” image, rather than providing a small image that uses up only a
small percentage of the screen (like most other phones). This viewfinder is
certainly a great feature, but you’ll end up taking a large percentage of
portrait pictures rather than landscape pictures like everyone else (unless, of
course, you get used to holding the phone sideways).
Conclusions
While this might not be the perfect GSM phone, I can find very little to
complain about, with the exception of the outgoing sound quality in noisy
environments and lackluster battery life. If I were looking to switch back to GSM I’d certainly put this
phone at the top of my candidate list. I even like the overall styling, both
inside and out, especially the way the top of the clamshell is actually shorter
than the bottom. They blend the two halves together in a very elegant manner.
The phone is a tad expensive if bought without a contract, but you get a really
top-notch phone that includes all sorts of goodies, such as Bluetooth, an MP3
player (that will play MP3, MP4, eAAC+, & WMA formats), a 1.3-megapixel camera,
a huge display, and Class-10 EDGE connectivity.
