Home > Consumer Reviews > Nokia 6021 Sim Free Mobile Phone

If you want a phone to make your friends (and muggers) jealous, thin enough to snap in you pocket that you can play chip-monk style MP3s out loud on public transport, or take "funky" or "wacky" (read "blurry" and "dark") photos of your mates with a top battery life of 3 days if you don't make any calls then please look elsewhere.

Positives; The phone does everything a phone should and nothing it shouldn't. SIM free for less than 70 quid, tri-band, Bluetooth, e-mail (from my existing POP3 account), mobile Web browser, calendar/address/task sync with Outlook (using the free tool from the Nokia site). So far I've had zero crashes, excellent battery life, rock solid Bluetooth pairing and voice dialling with perfect reception and call clarity. The phone is small and light but has a solid and sturdy feel when you use it. The screen is clear and well up to the job in hand. The joystick style control work great for me and feels much better than those directional type keys you get on most phones. The back of the phone is textured making it easy to grip and prevents it sliding off shiny surfaces or dashboards.

Negatives; The phone's menu interface can be a bit clunky until you get used to it. It won't sync unless the handset is in stand-by (i.e. not currently parked on another menu). I can see memory space getting a little tight if you have a huge number of calendar entries, although I've yet to get anywhere near filling it. The Nokia PC Suit software for Windows, needed to sync the phone with Outlook, can be awkward to use but it's worth bearing in mind that it IS free and problems with it affect all Nokia phones since it's a standard application for all of their models.

I bought a 6021 to replace my 6310i, which finally died recently after 5 years of faithful service and much abuse.

I'd been tempted to replace the 6310 on a couple of occasions, but the phones produced by Nokia and Motorola in recent years haven't really moved me: they all look like toys; they're small to the point of being unusable; the battery life is rotten; I've got an MP3 player and don't need my phone to stand in for one and if I want a camera, I'll buy a camera.

So I was pleased to find the 6021 - a sober looking, no-frills phone for us sober business types and with battery life to rival the grand old 6310.

And it's not bad. The full colour interface is actually slightly less usable than Nokia's old interface and it doesn't feel as solidly built as the 6310, but the sound and reception quality is pretty good and it pretty much does what it says on the box.

So why not 5 stars?

Well, if they'd made the thing a couple of cm longer the microphone would have been next to my mouth, improving clarity and quality for the listener and the buttons could have been bigger for clumsy old me (lose 1 star). More seriously, the PC Suite software and USB cable required to synchronise the phone is (a) extra (about 1/3 the cost of the phone at Amazon prices) and (b) is just awful - it lacks functionality and just doesn't work properly (lose another).

So - if you want a decent phone with long battery life the 6021 is worth a look; if you want reliable synchronization with your PC, look elsewhere (and note that I think that my issues in this respect are with the Nokia PC Suite software not the phone, so you may need to look at another manufacturer all together).

Purchased this to replace old (yet reliable) Nokia 62 something business phone. Easy to use & lightweight. Do not subscribe to email or other items such as push to talk because you have to pay more. Basically, good value for money if you just want a phone to talk & text!

Old tech now but I bought it as it fully sync'd with my TOMTOM 910. It was obviously reconditioned when it arrived but has worked perfectly over the last 3 months with good battery life and reliable Bluetooth and the voice recorder is handy. I don't use this mobile a lot but some of the more used buttons are fading already which is a shame. Its a good no nonsense phone which syncs with my Mac.

This phone is good if you don't need much more than talk and SMSes. I was inspired about Tom Limoncelli Time Management for System Administrators -book and thought I'll use my phone as PDA. In case you consider using this phone as a calendar & task container be aware that this phone just can't do the job.

Firstly the phone concatenates all calendars to single as an calendar. On my home mac there's my girl friends hobbies and work schedule that I'm interested of but I cannot import them to this without mixing them together with my own markups. That's bad thing because if I sync my phone with my computer at work exchange marks be as busy when my girl friend is having dance lesson.

Another huge problem is that after about 40 or 50 task memory area becomes full. When task list is full tasks that are done can be dropped from memory when syncing but I feel that the phone just throws dice which task it will import to undone list. Most likely some task of the day are not being imported and if you depend on beeps telling you to switch task you'll end up missing some of them.

Major annoyance with task is pressing button that yes I noticed that phone wanted me to see it and press button. If I don't press button next task alarm will not beep. Finally after some hours wondering hmm, the phone has been silent long time I'll remember to push check button and pending tasks will beep at ones.

Minor annoyance is that calendar & task synchronization cannot be done if phone is in any menu, like menu showing waiting task to be checked.

Summary: this is phone, not even simple PDA. I wonder why Nokia listed this as business model.