Nokia 1661- A Low End Basic Phone

Sum and Substance:

Thumbs Up:

Inexpensive, nothing else.

Thumbs Down:

Extremely low on features, bad call quality and bad keyboard.

Inside the Trunk:

Technology: GSM
Band: GSM 850/1900 (Dual Band)
Phone design: Candy bar
Caller ID: Yes
Other features: Stopwatch, reminder, calculator, flash light.

The Whiz Kid Speaks:

The display of the Nokia 1661 is 1.8 inch big and has a resolution of 128 x 160 pixels, 24-bit (16.7 million colors). The phone has internal memory of 8 MB. The phone book capacity is limited to 500 entries. There are 32 polyphonic ring tone in MP3 format in the phone.

The 860 mAh lithium ion battery of the phone has talk time of about 252 minutes and standby time of about 480 hours. The handset comes with a 2.5 mm head phone jack. Accessories bundled with the phone are headset, charger and reference manual.

Other features on this pretty basic phone include speakerphone, caller ID, call timer, polyphonic ringer, vibrating alert, flash light, speech codec – FR, HR, AMR, EFR user memory.

Razzle Dazzle:

The basic Nokia 1661 is low on features and low on build quality too. The phone’s plastic exterior is pretty cheap and we doubt if it can stand the lightest of shocks.

Inside Dope:

We have tested quite a lot of basic phones before this and this is the big daddy of basic phones. It has nothing but calling and messaging and indeed nothing else. While this phone is good for people who are not so enthusiastic about technology, we really do wonder if there will be people for such phones. Even if you are on a stiff budget or not so fond of mobile phones we recommend you to buy a phone that has features like music player and camera. Maybe you will fall in love with them later.

But this is a prepaid phone from T-mobile for people who need to pay only when they are calling. It is for people who rarely make phone calls. This is a bit boring phone for technology enthusiasts like us

The display of the Nokia 1661 is 1.8 inch big and it gives a pretty low resolution of 160×128 pixels or 65k colors. You can change only the backlight and for the menu, you can set the icons in list or grid style. The device has lots of screensavers, display themes, alert/message and screen savers.

Below the display there is a four way navigation part which is a bit hard to press with the cheap quality of the buttons. Apart from that there are two soft buttons which go according to whatever is shown on the screen. There is a call and end button, the latter is also the power button of the phone. At the bottom is the numeric keypad which is of bad quality. We would have also liked a back button.

Buttons are pretty hard to press, the cheap quality plastic used makes things worse. It would be a nightmare if such poor quality keyboard was used in high end full QWERTY keyboards. Even sending text messages will be a problem with these slippery keys.

There is a 2.5 mm headphone for in the sides and also a charger jack. There is no volume rocker on the phone which means you will have to use the up and down keys on the 4 way navigation button to adjust the volume while on a call. On the top of the phone there is a flashlight which is pretty strong. The headphones are used as a hands free device and for making calls.

You cannot put more than 500 contacts on the phone book of the Nokia 1661. The SIM card can store additional 250 names. You cannot assign individual ring tones to contacts and photo tagging to contacts is out of question with the absence of camera. But there are 26 cartoon images like car, star, dog for you to tag your contacts with. We thought this was some kind of a joke and a ridiculous feature. You make separate groups and put your contacts in there. The phone has 32 polyphonic ring tones but you can make your own with the built in ring tone composer.

The low end phone has features like multimedia and text messaging, currency and unit converter, countdown timer, stopwatch, calendar, budget spreadsheet, calculator. The handset has three games for light gamming like Soccer League, NaturePark and Soduku. Gamming was horrible with the tiny screen and the lamentable keys. The phone comes with an internal memory of 8 MB.

We tested the Nokia 1661 for call quality and were quite disappointed. A basic phone is expected to deliver great on call quality but it was not up to the mark. There is a irratiing hiss in the background while on calls and it really gets on your nerves. It is not that the voice is not clear but in places with noisy backgrounds the hissing sound will be frustrating.

While on speakerphone didn’t have the hiss sound and the quality was satisfactory but you will have to speak loudly in places with high noise. The bundled headset quality is best for calling, there was no hiss and voice is clearer.

The battery of the Nokia 1661 has 3.9 hours of rated talk time and 21 days of standby time.

Nitty Gritty:

Nokia 1661 is a very basic phone just for calling and sending text messages. But we will recommend you to look somewhere else even if you are on the lookout for only these two features. The bad keyboard and hiss sound while on the calls is something won’t go well with you.