Home > Consumer Reviews > Nokia 8310 - Vodafone - Pay As You Talk (Smartstep)

Well, I was never really much of a phone person but recently I've needed to have my phone on me a lot. The only problem was that my last phone, the Siemens M35 was a bit on the bulky side and it always annoyed me when I carried it in my pocket because I could always just feel that it was there.

I was going to get a colour phone with a digital camera mainly because it's quite cool and I can play around with it, but I couldn't find one that was small enough and I realised that it wouldn't be worth getting just because of a colour screen.

After looking around I saw the Nokia 8310 and it was just so ludicrously small and tiny that I fell in love with it instantly. I was never all that enamoured with Nokia phones because they always seemed a bit on the tacky side of things and the menu system on the older phones I didn't like very much. This phone has a different menu sytem because it has more buttons and it works quite similarly to my old siemens phone, which was very nice indeed. It is also very solidly built but so small and light you would barely know it was there.

The phone also has a very bright white backlight which is so much more appealing than the dull green/yellow you get with other phones, and it also illuminates the keypad very well when you're in the dark. The phone is very well thought out and although i had to rethink certain things for writing texts you get used to it very easily. The FM radio is surprisingly clear although the hands free kit that you have to use with it has quite a bulky clip that spoils the look of it. Also when you are reading texts it displays it a page of text at a time, rather than letting you scroll down a line at a time, which i'm still trying to get used to. Rather nicely the phone stands on it's end and on its side, with no threat of falling. Funnily, when the the phone vibrates it spins round when you stand it on its end!

Overall, if you're looking for a very very small phone which works very well then you can't go wrong with this. All I want now is a colour picture phone as small as this and I'll be very happy indeed!

What can I say? This could have been a great phone. THE great phone. It has a fabulous address book - you'll never run out of spaces again (similarly there's loads of room for storing text messages). It has speech rec which I've actually found myself using. The voice recorder is great fun, and can even be used to record phone calls. The radio is really excellent, good quality, a genuinely useful feature, not just a gimmick. And the hands-free kit is great - it's got two earplugs and a real pleasure to use. Try talking to your friends hands-free with both ear plugs in - it's a very different experience to using a single ear plug - much more pleasurable. And of course it's all topped off by Nokia's great and simple button user-interface system that, I believe, is a major reason for their success generally.

BUT, and this is a massive BUT, the phone has instabilities, like the 8210. I had an 8210 and loved it, but had to return it 5 or 6 times. I've had to return my 8310 once as well already, because it kept resetting itself at inconvenient times. And my current one reset itself for the first time last night! Aaargh! I really hope Nokia sort this out, because other than that it's a great phone.

After seeing the other review i felt i had to defend the 8310, this phone i brilliant i can find now fault with it apart from a couple of really minor ones. The radio is excellent and it has great reception 95% of the time. The voice recorder is fun, i find it useful for GCSE French to record the verbs and words so i know how to pronounce them correctly, but it could have allve all kinds of uses. The phone is sweet and very small, it fits anywhere and i hardly ever have a bad reception, i have never had a problem with my phone it has worked perfectly since the day it was bought. One minor problems is that when loading the inbox when you have a lot of messages it is slow but this is when you have over 70 messages, im not sure how many it holds but i got to over 100 and it still wasnt full. The backlight is great, a brilliant blue hue which seperates the phone from others, this phone is amazing it has real charachter i love mine to bits, it goes absolutely everywhere with me because it fits anywhere. I have found no other problems with my 8310, its a lot of money but if you are willing to pay that much it really is worth it. This really is the best phone i could dream of having and i feel very lucky to own one.

I have owned LOTS of mobile phones in my life. I really recommend this phone to all of you.