Nokia 1616 User Reviews

Short and clear: this phone is made to just do phone calls, nothing else. It's solid, resistant, reliable and if does what a phone should do, phone calls. It was a good phone.

Now this isn't a phone for Internet users.

It's a nice phone. If you just want a basic phone for making calls and write (occasionaly) some SMS, it will do the job well. The only "extra" features that I use is the flashlight, it's very handy and powerfull enough for normal use (wandering through the house with the lights out), and the alarm clock that works very well. The two things I don't like: the keyboard buttons are a little hard to press and feel too cheap (for the price you can't be too demanding) and the round edges make it a little slippery.

With the market saturated with iPhone wannabes, its comforting to note that major mobile manufacturers like Nokia have not forgotten an important demographic: the basic phone segment. There is still a substantial demand for these simple no-nonsense handsets. Not everyone wants a camera, bluetooth , touch screen or microwave oven in their handset, the 1616 has none of those but it does do what a phone was built to do: Make and take calls and send/receive text messages. And it does it quite well.The 1616 also has some very welcome additions to its roster of features. First and foremost is the use of a 3.5" jack input for its headset. No need for those lame proprietary headsets and their non-standard connection jacks. Any garden variety headphone will work with this handset. And although a headset is still needed to enjoy the radio, the sound on loudspeaker mode is quite adequate. It sounds a bit better than an old school transistor radio. And that's saying a lot.The built-in flashlight located on top of the handset is also quite adequate . Though it does pale in performance to the Samsung B2100 Extreme's flashlight, its suitable enough for use up to around a meter or two. It ain't no Surefire flashlight, but it'll do.The Nokia 1616 is not without it's weaknesses though. Some of which can be quite annoying. First and foremost is the options presented to the user after reading a text message. After reading a text message and pressing the "options" key to reply, the first choice on this list of options is, would you believe: "delete"? This will probably prove handy to those who rarely answer text messages and just opt to delete them immediately, but for the rest of us who aren't that way, this can be quite annoying. It also opens the possibility of accidentally erasing important text messages. Even more inane is the option presented after replying to a text message. Now, instead of "delete", the option presented is "reply". That's right, you can now reply again to that same text message if you want to, and I'm guessing is, you don't! This has got to be the very definition of counter intuitive.Another pet peeve is the 1616's saving a copy of all sent text messages. This would be fine if you could turn it off, but you can't. You'll have to manually delete all those sent messages. This Nokia has one serious identity crisis, it thinks its a Sony Ericsson!There's also no way of choosing which phone book to show in your contacts list. If you have the exact same contacts on your SIM card and phone, then they'll both show up giving the appearance of duplicates. A minor gripe but one that can also be annoying.Finally, the sound quality from calls can be on the tinny side. Once again, its adequate but below average in my opinion. The alert sounds could also use a much needed sound boost. But then again, these last two gripes are probably a direct result of the handset being a basic one. In the end you really get what you paid for. These minor gripes are however, tolerable.What I find difficult to understand is the counter intuitive menu functions I mentioned earlier. Sure, this is a basic phone, but come on, I don't think it costs anything to fix those and get them right. In conclusion, its these minor interface quirks that keep this handset from being an exceptional one. In the end, the Nokia 1616, sleek as it may be truly does an adequate job as a basic handset.