| Review of the Nokia 6265i |
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The 6265i is one of the newest CDMA model from Nokia. Like some of their recent clamshell models, this one too departs from the norm for Nokia, who generally build candy bar phones. The 6265i is a SLIDER, which means that the top and bottom halves of the phone slide to make the phone longer and reveal a hidden keypad.
This phone is available through Telus PCS Last Updated: 28-Jun-2006 |
Before reading this review, please read Some Thoughts on Phone Reviewing.
Sadly the 6265i may be the LAST designed-by-Nokia CDMA phone that we may ever
see. Just before I did this review Nokia announced that it would no longer
design CDMA phones, though it would put its name on re-branded models designed
and manufactured by other companies. Equally sad is the fact that this might
well be the best Nokia CDMA phone to come along, which means there was a promise
of better things to come.
RF Performance
RF Sensitivity: All of the Nokia CDMA phones I’ve
tested over the last year or so have had excellent RF sensitivity, and the 6265i
is no exception. A new site activated just outside of Square One forced me to
find new locations in the mall to test this aspect of a Telus PCS model, which
also meant I couldn’t really compare it with older models I’d previously tested
at the mall. However, compared to my old
ST-7868W the 6265i is incredibly good at picking up a weak signal and
rendering fairly decent audio. It is therefore among the best phones around when
it comes to pulling in the faintest of signals.
The next day I met with Howard Chu and he brought along his
Nokia 3205, which we took with us to Rockwood
Mall. I was certain that Telus had PCS repeaters in that mall along with Mike,
but apparently they didn't. Coverage in the mall on Telus PCS was exceedingly
poor and a perfect place to test the two phones. Both held up equally well,
which meant that the 6265i wasn't quite at the top of the heap. If you check my
review of the 3205, you'll see that I found that phone to be slightly less
capable than the old Ericsson T206 or the
Kyocera Blade. However, very few phones have
managed to match the RF sensitivity of those two phones.
Over-the-road Performance: I was a little surprised
here, as just about all of the recent Nokia CDMA phones have been phenomenal at
this. The 6265i is still very good at it, so don’t get me wrong, but the phone
seems to behave more like it has a Qualcomm chipset in it than a Nokia chipset.
The phone manages to tame the ever-present audio disruptions as well as just
about any other phone I’ve tested, but the previous Nokia models (including the
Nokia 3205) seemed to make many of those
disruptions magically disappear.
Click on this link for a full description of
RF Performance, and how to interpret it.
Audio Performance
Tonal Balance: This is a hard one to call. On one
hand the phone actually has very pleasing tonal balance, with only a hint of
harshness on some types of voices. On the other hand, the phone lacks the
gorgeous and well-balance tonal quality of many of the previous Nokia CDMA phone
I’ve tested. I’d have to say that unless you were comparing two Nokia models
side-by-side, you are generally going to like the overall tone of the 6265i.
It isn’t too tinny, it isn’t too bassy, and it isn’t too shrill. One might say
that’s a perfect combination, but it could stand to provide a little more
low-end to make voices sound richer. At the end of the day however, I have to
give this phone pretty high marks for this aspect, because once I’d placed quite
a few calls to various sources I was left feeling quite impressed with the tonal
quality.
Sound Reproduction: Here’s another aspect of the
phone that was decidedly different from previous Nokia CDMA models, and more
like recent Qualcomm-based models. I’d never been very happy with the raspy
quality of all the Nokia CDMA models I’ve tested in the last year or so, and
thus I hadn’t expected the 6265i to be any different. Much to my surprise
however, the 6265i doesn’t seem to process that raspy coarse quality at all. The
phone sounds as good as the best Qualcomm-based models I’ve tested, and combined
with the fairly good tonal balance, this is perhaps one of the nicest-sounding
CDMA phones I’ve tested in a long time.
Outgoing sound quality wasn’t quite as impressive, but in some ways the 6265i
does better at it than the vast majority of CDMA models on the market. I tried
outgoing tests under a variety of extreme conditions, including a noisy food
court, in a Volkswagen Golf with all the windows at sunroof open at 120 km/h,
and out on a noisy street. Unlike many CDMA phones, your voice remains easy to
understand and it is unlikely that your callers will ever ask you to repeat
yourself.
Unfortunately the phone just doesn’t have the ability to prevent the background
noise from causing damage to your voice and the 6265i doesn’t come close the
Samsung SPH-a920 that I tested last month.
Put another way, I would characterize many CDMA phones used in noisy
environments as devices of TORTURE to your callers. The 6265i on the hand
merely ANNOYS them.
Earpiece Volume: The volume of the earpiece is a
little low, but nothing too drastic. Fortunately the phone includes Nokia’s
wonderful volume-boost feature that raises the output of the earpiece by
approximate 3 to 4 dB in response to increasing background noise. So, when used
in a very noisy environment the phone is actually louder (at all volume
settings) than it is when the phone is used in a quiet environment. I would have
preferred something akin to the auto-leveling feature that’s appeared on many
Kyocera phones, but the Nokia volume-boost feature is the next best thing.
Speakerphone: I was a bit disappointed in the
performance of the speakerphone feature, especially in light of how good it is
on many other Nokia models. The company has already proven that it can install
some really impressive mini-speakers that pump out good volume and astonishingly
good audio quality. Sadly they chose not to use that speaker here, and so the
volume and tonal quality of the phone is about average. It’s loud enough to
carry on a speakerphone conversation in a very quiet room, but under even
moderate background noise the speaker is barely audible.
On the other hand, the microphone sensitivity is boosted during speakerphone
conversations and it does a wonderful job of picking up your voice, even from a
meter or more away. It also does a better-than-expected job of masking loud
background noises. The latter is especially ironic, since under those conditions
you can’t hear the thing anyway.
Click on this link for a full description of
Audio Performance, and how to interpret it.
Support Features
Ringer Volume: The ringer seems to use the same
sounder as the speakerphone, which makes the 6265i less than stellar when it
comes to ringer volume. It doesn’t do a bad job of rendering MP3 ringtones, but
the overall volume isn’t loud enough to hear in a noisy environment. Howard & I
set up the phone to the loudest-sounding ringer we could find (that came with
the phone) and we turned up the volume of the ringer to level 5. The phone was
then put in my shorts pocket and I called the phone while we stood around near
the food court at Square One. I had considerable trouble hearing the phone ring
and I couldn’t feel the vibrator on the side of my leg.
Keypad Design: There have been quite a few
complaints about keypad failures on HowardForums, but the 6265i I tested
suffered from no keypad problems. The numeric keys (which are exposed when the
phone is slid open) are a flush design that is difficult to use without looking
at it, but the keys press well and tactile feel is at least passable. The two
soft keys, as well as the SEND and END buttons (which are always accessible)
have a similar feel. The 4-way cursor key and selection button is a bit
disappointing and I often ended up getting a cursor down when I’d intended to
press the selection button. I’d have to give the keypad a grudging pass, but it
could have been so much better.
Display: What can I say? The 320 x 240 color
display is big and bright and one of the best I’ve seen on a device that isn’t
also classified as a PDA. Color rendition is excellent and the resolution is
high enough that photographs displayed on the screen look detailed enough to
really enjoy looking at. After all, that’s what you want a screen of this type
on a phone for. Visibility in bright daylight and direct sun is excellent.
Camera: As I’ve often said, I don’t generally say
anything about the camera on a phone, as it doesn’t really come under the
heading of a core feature. However, when a camera is as good as the one on the
6265i, it simply can’t go without mention. The 2-megapixel unit on the 6265i is
perhaps one of the best I’ve encountered on a phone. The lens provides excellent
focus and continuity and the quality of the pictures is good enough to print at
4 x 6. Those prints may well fool many people into thinking that you took those
pictures with a real digital camera.
Don’t get me wrong though, the cameras in phones (including this one) have a
long way to go to match the sheer quality of even a bottom-end digital camera,
but they’ve now reached a point where they aren’t anything to be ashamed of.
I’ve included a full-size (1600 x 1200) image at the end of this review to let
you see for yourself what you can expect from this camera.
Conclusions
Despite some shortcomings, the 6265i is a really great CDMA phone. It provides
pretty good tonal balance, very good sound preproduction, decent earpiece
volume, excellent RF sensitivity, fairly good over-the-road performance, and
your callers will only find it mildly annoying to listen to you.
As I said in the opening paragraph, it’s a shame that Nokia has decided to bow
out of CDMA phone development, because this model proved that they were well on
the way to making some of the best-performing CDMA models out there.
The 6265i isn’t even that expensive, at only $300 without a contract, and only
$99 if you are willing to sign up for a 3-year commitment. I have no intention
of abandoning my Mike phone, simply because I personally feel that Telus’s iDEN
network is a superior system for users who need primarily voice service, but if
I were ever to consider a switch to CDMA, the 6265i would be high on my list of
phones to buy.
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The following photograph was taken using the 6265i at 1600 x 1200:
