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3250: Hardware PROs & CONs

Jan 22, 2007
2 comments

I'll finish this first day of blogging with my first real symbian related post: a list of the good and bad things about the 3250. After having this phone in my hands for 7 months now, this is what I found (this will be long):

PROs

3250 twist

the twist: ok we're already bored with this but, come to think about it, this is the ONLY phone on the market that has this system. Plus it always makes me smile when someone (especially adults and old people) is posing for a picture and i take my phone and twist it. They get their eyes wide-open and then ask me what is it that i'm holding. When they know it's a phone they start saying "ah technology!" and that never bores me :) My friends also tell me they're always afraid it's gonna break which is funny coz
the twist is not fragile: the phone seems very solid in the hand and after twisting it i don't know how many times, it still works perfectly fine (a plus for Nokia) and loads the cam / music player as fast as the first time
before i bought the phone I read someone's review on how the cam would load if while twisting for the music, the phone got stuck in the 90degrees cam position for a little longer than usual: never had that problem, the cam never launches when I'm a little bit late on the twist, it only does when I really stay in that position for a while
the phone by itself is not fragile : I haven't counted how many times I have dropped my 3250 but it's sure more than 30. Still works ;)
the camera is on the side: this is a HUGE difference between this phone and all others, and basically its only real plus. You can take pictures in 4 different modes: left-sided (normal mode), ahead (camera mode), right sided (music mode: twist the phone to music mode, exit the music player and launch the camera) and self-portrait (self portrait mode). This means that you can take pics in the left and right sided, without people even noticing you. Good for snaping pics of someone you like but can't photograph openly, or for taking a pic of someone eating in a weird way in a restaurant, or for capturing my teacher's funniest positions. That's really something in comparison with the usual back-camera where everyone sees you when you try to take a pic.
the joystick: that used to be a CON before i bought the phone and it's just recently that I noticed that the joystick didn't nag me as much as I thought it would. I have used before the joystick of my aunt's SE K750i and that was a nagger! This one is softer, quicker, easier to handle. Plus the SE K750i sometimes now doesn't take the order for the up scrolling, I guess the joystick needs cleaning. But i would say here that i use my 3250 way more than my aunt uses her K750i and still never had that proble. The only time i feel I'm gonna hit the joystick is when i'm playing sudoku (can't change the controls)
the dedicated music keys: definitely a plus, but since most phones now have them, we can say it's a tie. But still the look of the phone when in music mode is quite classy. It's also funny when people see the back during the music mode, they see the keyboard and wonder where is the screen :D some witty ones think the mirror back is a cover for the screen :)
it was the first released s60 3rd: now people tend to forget that, with all the hustle about the N-series. Still, the 3250 lead the way ;)
the mirror back : this depends on whether you like a classy phone, which the mirror effects provides, or whether you like something that doesn't need to be wiped every 5 seconds to erase fingerprints, then it's a CON.
the battery life : that is basically AMAZING! I'm a heavy user, and usually the Oxford Medical dict is always opened on my phone, and since it's java (got it cracked, long story, another issue) it really uses the battery. I also play a lot of games and unlock the phone / lock it for no reason (i'm a kid and it's my toy) and I usually have 2 or 3 apps running at the same time. But with the 3250, I only need to recharge every 2 - 3 days (the battery level would be around 30%). Back at the time when there were no apps available, i would forget the phone without recharging for sometimes a week, then look at it and find it still running.
the unscratchable left and right sides : i have held an N72 and N80 and they both don't feature this carbonlike material that the 3250 has on the sides. It's unscratchable, and believe me, if it was I would've found out ;)
the spacious keys : no problem hitting the wrong key by accident. I can an send sms without looking, while driving and without using the T9, without any problem.

Hs 20

1 comment
the sound quality : it's really louder than my aunt's k750i and very clear. My phone on 20% volume was louder than my aunt's on full volume... which leaves me perplex :s (same song, same download)
the hs20 has music control keys : that's really nice because i use my 3250 as a player in the car (i have the tape system) so i slide it in my back pocket, leave the hs20 control keys part next to me and shuffle through my music :D
the O.S (it's a hardware post, but I can not not mention this) : s60 3rd, the newest edition. That also was a CON back in june but now that 3rd-party apps flooded the market, it's a real PRO. I have basically everything on my phone: Office Suite, Oxford Medical-business-idioms-english-french-thesaurus, Mobireader with 3 major references for my studies, BestCalc, LivePVR, HandyZip... and many many many many many more.

But the 3250 isn't all sugary and sweet, got some defects that need to be highlighted

CONs

the screen resolution : nothing bad when u simply look at it but it's 176x208 so many of the new apps (esp games) don't work on my phone for resolution issues.
the camera lacks: doesn't have flash so picture is really blurry at night or in bad lightning conditions, doesn't have close-up mode so i couldn't get a visible picture of my toxicology grade (91/100 was really proud)
the camera sound: there's always a shutter sound when you take a picture and that's more than annoying when you need to snap a picture unnoticed.
the mirror back : because of the fingerprints as mentionned earlier. You can't be a cleaning maniac and own a 3250 :)
the microsd slot opens when in cam mode: this is something I have never read about, but still I have this problem although i only have one card so i don't open/close the slot often. That's really annoying when you're trying to take a pic and paffff the slot opens, the phone freezes to come back to the original theme. By then you have either missed your capture, either have to take it but it's saved on phone memory, so you have to copy it after you reinstall the card. Fortunately the card never falls down, which would've been a major problem with it's tiny size.
the joystick is hard to handle when in cam mode: that's a CON when you have to change the settings, or while in the cam mode of Zensis PhotoRite SP (for chosing frames for e.g)
it has no built-in 3.5mm : it comes with the HS20 but since i used it quite much, now the sound only comes to one ear so i have to change the whole thing although there's nothing wrong with the headphone part (it's the remote control part that has the prob)
it has no WiFi: this is not a major problem for me in lebanon but it may come as a CON for some people in WiFied up countries
you can't use the keypad when in music mode: now i know that sounds stupid to note, but in all new phones with music keys, you can still access the keypad while still playing music... that makes me sad.