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Welcome to the Nokia 6233 mobile phone review. This is classed as a business phone and labelled as the successor to the 6230i. We agree with this description as it has everything that a business person would want to use in 2006. However like its predecessors the amount of functionality available on the phone makes it desirable to more than just this group of people.
This is another benchmark phone in our opinion but of course still not perfect. Overall a great phone does almost everything including 3G capabilities so what's good and wrong with it?
Battery Life
The battery life of this phone is very good but it comes with some conditions. Because it is a 3G phone if you are in a marginal area like we are, it spends a lot of time searching for the best signal, it clearly prefers 3G than GSM. Yes you can make it use only GSM or 3G if you want. One normal settings it will go for 4 days stand by in marginal areas. On GSM with a few SMS only it will go at least 7 days.
Speed
The phone is very fast. It activates all functions except JAVA based programs with minimal delay. The V3xx is ever so slightly faster. Works great for SMS.
Construction.
Nokia has put some effort in making this mobile look reasonably good. The plastics are better quality than its predecessors and phones lower in the model range. It has a metal surround which is a stand out compared to other brands. However it is a large and heavy phone in comparison to others.
Tightly put together not creaking parts! That said one slight issue with the SIM card bracket - sturdy but with sharp edges.
The keypad is sized for normal sized hands although the buttons are one the same shape or size. It has nice blue back lighting too! Button presses have a upmarket feel to them.
Functionality
The 6233 seemingly has everything you could ask for in a mobile phone. The most outstanding feature is the number of customisation options. Literally everything can be changed on the phone itself or with the assistance of freely available Nokia software. You name it you can change it menu icons, font colors, backgrounds, screen saver, tones, group profiles etc... Most of all we loved the timed profiles. This means you can have the phone mute itself over night and come back alive in the morning.
Apart from customisition features it has everything you need, file manager, PTT, MMS SMS, IM, a variety of Nokia apps like world clock, presenter and and so forth. Games included Rally, Soduku and Snakes.
The only thing missing which was a bit of a pain - you can't adjust the time-out of the backlighting. It only turns on for 10 secs - so you have to press a key to turn it back on. Since our version was a relatively early one we expect that this has been fixed in current version?
Connectivity
The 6233 has all the options available, USB, Bluetooth, infrared.
MP3 and video/sound
The sound quality coming from this phone is impressive for a mobile phone. Probably the best sound quality in any mobile. In fact it is now the benchmark that all phones here at hyp4mhz will be judged.
Thanks to the beautiful screen videos look good and play without any jerkiness unless you're playing a jerky video of course.
Web Browser
The included browser is the generic Nokia version so it has all the usual features you could possibly want. Works well too on WAP or standard internet web pages.
The camera/video/voice recorder
It takes OK pictures for a mobile phone and has all the usual features for a camera phone. Features like brightness, various scenes modes light daylight, indoor outdoors, night mode, a timer, various effects like sepia m multiple picture size and quality etc..
Overall picture quality is a bit better than most average for a mobile. It doesn't produce sharp pictures and the colours bearly OK I still won't rival a normal digital camera.
Voice recorder is a on the unresponsive side because we had to talk close tot he phone for decent play back volume.
The screen
The 6233 screen is clearly high quality. Nice sharp images, vibrant colors, bright back lighting but turns off way too fast. It can run flash screen savers too!
Call quality and network reception
Very good voice quality on both GSM and 3G networks. The quality of the loud speaker really helps. It can also do video calls but you have to turn the phone around which defeats the purpose of video calls. Mind you very few people make video calls so its not exactly something to complain about.
Issues
The most annoying thing about the phone is the backlighting timeout. It turns off really quickly and there is no way to adjust it. The 2nd issue is the small amount of internal memory only 6Mb available. It comes with 64Meg micro-SD card and supports up to 2Gig.
Network
All networks sell the phone in various colors.
Summary
The 6233 is the preferred phone around here for various reasons as detailed above. We like all the various functions. It has a ton of functionality, fast stable, reasonably good looking and so forth. It has something for everyone basically. The loudest and best sounding stereo mobile phone to date.
We understand that Nokia has discontinued the 6233 in mid-2007 and we can understand why - its really good value and better than more expensive models in the Nokia range.
Manufacturer : Nokia
Model : 6233 (Series 40 3rd Ed FP 1)
Network : Tri-band GSM (900/1800/1900 MHz)
3G UTMS 2100 MHz (Aust only)
384kbps download speed
Design : Standard Phone
L108 x W46.5 x D18 mm
Weight 110 grams
Black/Silver/White/Pink
Display/s : 24-bit colour TFT - 240 x 320 pixels
Camera : Single 2MP Camera
Video capable MP4, WMV, 3GP
Connectivity : Bluetooth, Infrared, USB
Memory : 6 MB internal memory
MicroSD memory Hot Swap
Ring tones : Video, ACC, ACC+, eACC+, MP4, MP3, MIDI (64), WAV, XMF, Vibration, True Tones, AMR
Features : SMS, MMS, IM, EMAIL
Animated themes SWF or GIF standalone of theme
JAVA MIDP 2.0
Push-To-Talk
Modem for PC
Web browser (WAP 2.0 - xHTML)
Speaker Phone/Hands free
Stereo speakers
Media player
FM Radio
*See below for more details.
Speed : Vs Nokia 6230
Navigation 9/10
Battery Life : 1400mAh Li Ion
Claimed operating times:
Standby 340 hours
Voice 4 hours
Sample camera :
Price history
$499 AUS 2006
$399 AUS 2007
$250-350 AUS 2008