Nokia 6126 user reviews (AT&T)

Pros Nice display and easy automatic open with push of button

Cons Unhandy design of keys and buttons

Summary This phone is not for boomers. Volume on high is not that great, and place where sound comes out is hard to find period.
Buttons like volume and camera are on side of phone, but flat, so you accidentally bump them easily, which in the case of the camera means it is generally going to turn on when the phone is opened whether you want it to or not.
Former Nokia software was superior to this model.
If you upload names and numbers to phone and also to the SIM card, then the display shows everything twice.
Symbols for battery condition, strength of signal are so tiny that my children have a hard time seeing them, it makes no sense at all why they are as small as they are.
Disappointed in Nokia/AT&T that they make so few phones to choose from, and never have car chargers and data cables available, they only care about selling 2 yr contracts

Pros Simplicity, easy to use menu and features, bluetooth pairing

Cons Poor battery life, mute and speaker phone are menu selections, did I mention poor battery life?

Summary I was pleasantly surprised at the value packed in the Nokia 6126 especially since this is supposed to be a midrange cell phone offering.

Nokia's menu system is well thought out with most important functions only one or two clicks away. The keypad selection ring moves quickly and intuitively through the menu selections and the oversized center button is very easy to find without looking at the phone.

The 6126's signal strength is much better than my previous cell, now receiving coverage in areas formerly inaccessible. Call quality is clear, loud and steady. Bluetooth pairing with a Southwing SH310 was quick and easy. Bluetooth functionality - answer, mute, volume, call, voice dial, end call - worked seamlessly with the 6126. Call quality through bluetooth was good and did not vary anywhere the phone was on my body - pockets, belt, etc., and worked with the phone 6 feet away in a wooden desk drawer.

A lot of the extended features - e-mail, IM, camcorder, voice recording - I have not tested. Cingular rate plans for the 6126 allow selection of specific functions, so cost conscious folks should look closely at this phone. My primary use for the 6126 is (believe it or not) *just*to*make*calls! The rest is icing on the cake. Net: it is great for just making calls!

Oh, before I forget, for the StarTrek crowd, there is a exceptionally well placed trigger button on the clamshell hinge that pops the phone lid open - can you say "Kirk to Enterprise"? Unfortunately, it's cool for the right hand only, so lefties... sorry folks.

On the downside, the biggest minus is the battery life. After 3 weeks of charging, full discharge and recharge, *both* of my 6126 phones still only get 2.5 to 3 days on standby however talk time does appear to be at least 3 hours as advertised. The short standby time is annoying. Both phones are the same even though I have one phone with the Bluetooth and accessories all shut off so the discharging is mainly from core phone functions.

Battery life aside, a minor inconvenience is that the speaker phone and mute functions are menu selections that only appear on the options menu during a call so you have to pull the handset from your ear, select mute then return to listen mode. Speaker phone also is menu selectable during a call and *does* remain enabled for all calls thereafter until unselected. That's not a completely bad option. Also, neither mute nor speaker phone are able to be added to the user's shortcut menu buttons on the keypad so the best you can do is memorize the menu selections so you can mute or speaker phone without looking. Life could be much worse.

All said, this was a very good purchase and I am shortly adding another line to the Cingular plan and will be picking up another Nokia 6126 to add to the flock.

Pros Cool button to open phone, good service

Cons Really bad battery life, missing options, overly sensitive mic.

Summary My biggest problem with this phone was with charging it. I'm one of those people who plug in their phone, set the alarm, and go to bed. However, when this phone is fully charged a message is displayed telling me that it's fully charged. In the morning, the alarm will not go off because there is already a message displayed on the screen. After almost being late to work twice, I returned the phone. Also, on my old Nokia I could hit any outside button to snooze the alarm. On this one, if you accidently hit the camera button (which was REALLY easy to do, I had so many pocket pictures) it would turn on the camera and the alarm would no longer go off. Since the battery dies so quickly, I had to go through this process almost every night. Another big issue was that you can't time-stamp text messages so I would have no idea when I actually received a given message. Also, the microphone was so sensitive that I was constantly yelled at for making so much noise when it was just a kid talking outside 1/2 a block away. These things were just too fundamental for me to ignore and I was forced to return the phone.

Pros Attractive design

Cons Proprietary connectory for USB cable and Headphone

Summary I’m more than a little disappointed with the fact that there is no headphone jack. I see this as a major design flaw. I purchased the phone for the MP3 player, but to use it I either have to spend a bunch of money for a Bluetooth headset or a proprietary connector from Nokia. I also feel that advertising that the phone has a USB connection without qualifying that the phone end of the connection is proprietary is deceptive. They must know that people will think that they can use standard cables to connect to their PC. This was a selling point for me. To find that I have to spend an extra 50 bucks to buy their connection kit, just to use the USB connectivity is unacceptable. I feel like I have been duped.