Nokia 2320 GoPhone – AT&T – A basic down to earth phone

Sum and Substance:

Thumbs Up:

Good call quality, simple design, controls are easy to use

Thumbs Down:

Lacks volume rocker, no Bluetooth, speakerphone call quality is disappointing.

Inside the Trunk:

Technology: GSM
Band: GSM 850/1900 (Dual Band)
Phone design: Candy bar
Caller ID: Yes
Other features: Preinstalled messengers, GPRS, EDGE.

The Whiz Kid Speaks:

Nokia 2320 GoPhone is a basic entry level phone with 1.75 inches screen which has a resolution of 160×128 pixels or 65k colors. Messaging/data features include E-mail, Instant Messages, Picture Messages, Text Messages. The phone comes preinstalled with Windows Live Messenger (MSN Messenger), AOL Instant Messenger Service (AIM) and Yahoo! Messenger. EDGE (Enhanced Data Rates For Global Evolution), GPRS (General Packet Radio Service), Internet Browser, Mobile Email. The handset has 32 MB of internal memory.

PIM features include Expense manager, Converter, Notes, Countdown Timer, Stopwatch, Timer, Calculator, To-Do/Tasks, Calendar and Alarm. 1020 mAh lithium ion battery has a rated talk time of 210 minutes and standby time is 360 hours.

Razzle Dazzle:

Nokia 2320 is not an attractive phone, but this is not unusual for an entry level handset. The device measures At 4.21 inches by 1.81 inches by 0.54 inch and weighs about 2.81 ounces. It is so light that you might not even feel the weight in your pocket.

Inside Dope:

Nokia is a manufacturer which makes a large variety of handsets; it has high end smartphones phones as well as entry level basic phones. Recently it also ventured in to the touch screen market with its 5800 Xpress Music phone. We got the Nokia 2320 in our test centers, which is a basic phone just for calling and sending text messages. The handset costs $29 without any contract obligations.

The display of the phone measures 1.75 inches and has a resolution of 160×128 pixels. We weren’t much fond of the tiny display, the graphics weren’t sharp, but colors looked vibrant. You can change font size and color and the menu icons can be changed from list to grid style.

The navigation array consists of Talk and End/power buttons, two soft keys and a four way toggle key with OK button in the middle. The toggle button is raised from the surface and hence makes it easy to use. Rest of the keys are spacious and we didn’t have any mishits while pressing them. However, we missed a dedicated back button. The numeric keypad buttons are flat and have a cheap plastic feel. Fortunately, they are easy to use. You might make a few mistakes initially while typing messages but you will get on with it eventually.

The handset doesn’t have a volume rocker so you will have to use the four way toggle for adjust the volume. On the sides, there is a headset jack and charger port. The former is a 2.5 mm one but we won’t complain much since this is a basic phone.

The phone book is limited to 500 contacts and a single entry can take multiple phone numbers, notes, birthday, street address, nickname, job title, company name, formal name and e-mail address. Photo ID is supported but there is no camera, so you will have to use the built in images as photos. You can also make groups of your contacts and there is a choice of eight polyphonic ring tones.

Other features on the handset include stopwatch, timer, calculator, notepad, to-do list, speakerphone, calendar, alarm clock and multimedia and text messaging. There are some advanced features on the phone too, like packet data support, PC syncing, instant messaging and applications like Mobile Banking, Mobile E-mail, Weather Channel, and Wikimobile.

You can personalize the phone with various alert tones, color themes and wallpapers. You can also download stuff from the WAP 2.0 wireless Web browser. Just make sure you keep an eye on your purchases and downloads because this is a prepaid phone. The Nokia 2320 has three games Midnight Bowl, Scrabble and Collapse. All three are trial versions and you will have to pay for the full.

The Nokia 2320 has great call quality, the voices sounded natural when we were talking to our friends on the phone. The volume was strong too, so we didn’t have much trouble talking in places with high noises. There is no volume rocker on the side of the phone to adjust the volume level during calls, you will have to use . The voices occasionally sounded a bit tinny but it didn’t bother us too much. Our friends said that they could hear our voices clearly too but they could tell that we were on a cell phone. There was bit of background noise during calls at their end but it wasn’t much. Speakerphone calls were awful, the voices were distorted. The tiny speaker on the back has low volume.

The rated talk time of Nokia 2320 is 3.5 hours and the standby time is 15 days.

Nitty Gritty:

Nokia 2320 is a basic phone and is a good choice if you need a handset just to make calls and send text messages.