Nokia 6133

A good phone for making calls, taking pictures and listening to music but it has some drawbacks. The Nokia 6133 as offered by T-Mobile® is a quadband 850/900/1800/1900 MHz unit. There are more features than what I discuss these seem to be the features I interact with the most.

The main positive features:
1- Good reception
2- Large, colorful internal screen
3- Adequate internal memory
4- Speakerphone
5- Bluetooth®
6- Media Player
7- Music Player
8- Text Messaging
9- Multimedia Messaging
10- Customisation of colors, backgrounds, sounds
11- External display
12- 1.3 Megapixel camera with 8X pre-exposure digital zoom

1- I've never dropped a call with this phone.

2- The 320 x 240 24 bit display is colorful but washes out in the outdoors.

3- The internal memory is decent sized but not hard to max out. If you synch and transfer regularly it should be adequate for a telephone.

4- The speakerphone on the Nokia 6133 is loud and clear enough to use.

5- Bluetooth® capability opens a whole new world of connectivity. An ear piece allows handsfree use of the phone while it is in standby mode with voice dialing.

6- Media player handles the videos you shot with the camera and also an individual audio track such as an MP3.

7- Music player is the utility that allows you to play a variety of file formats including MP3, AAC and MP4. One of the highlights of this unit is the high quality sound through midlevel and better headphones. An undocumented feature is the MP3 player supports stereo Bluetooth® headsets. This came as a welcome surprise when I tried a pair. I do not know if it is a full A2DP implementation.

8- Text messaging is straight forward. T9 predictive text is usually on the money.

9- Multimedia messaging allow you to send that video clip you just recorded.

10- The user interface is highly customisable. Many aspects can be changed from the unit.

11- The small external display, 128 x 160, is 18 bit lacking the broad color palette offered by the inside display.

12- The 1.3 megapixel camera takes okay pictures. You can make a decent 4X6 print.

The main drawbacks
1- Voice dial/voice command
2- Limited MP3 ringtone use
3- Infrared port omitted
4- Pop-port™audio connection
5- Camera button location
6- Multi-function volume control

1- Voice dialling only in standby mode.

2- MP3 use as a ringtone limited to the MP3 ringtones you can download from T-Mobile®. T-Mobile® firmware excludes use of user created MP3 files as ringtones.

3- You are limited to exchanging files only with Bluetooth® equipped units. The infrared transceiver is not included in the build. I couldn't find it when I pulled one apart.

4- The only wired access to the superior sound of the FM radio and music player is through the pop-port™. You will need an adapter to hook up your mid-level to high end headphones to hear the excellent sound quality. You could spring for a Bluetooth® stereo headset.

5- The dedicated camera button is on the side of the phone immediately adjacent to the on/off switch. You can and will mis-identify which of these small switches you are operating.

6- The PoC button serves as the volume control and the voice dial/voice command switch. Sometimes you go to PoC (push to talk half duplex communication), sometimes you adjust the volume and sometimes you are prompted to "speak now". Push to talk is not supported by T-Mobile®

Of the T-Mobile Phones I have owned and used that belonged to other people, this one is probably the best I have encountered. It is just a great phone. It has easy to see screens, a user friendly interface, and very good sound quality and volume control.

The only two drawbacks I have found to date (almost 3 months) is that the voice over command function is a little difficult to figure out initally, but once you know how to use it, it is quite easy to use actually, so not really a drawback. And, the other problem is that the camera button being on the side means that I am accidentally turning the camera on at least three times a day, but it is easy enough to shut off.

The MP3 Player is great. It also plays WMA (Windows Media Audio) files. If you use those, then you can also use the files as ringtones, although the display is different on the player. MP3 files cannot be used as ringtones, but the WMA conversion is a nice way around that.

I also wish that it had more than 9 speed dial spots like most motorola phones do. Although I also own the Razr V3t (a very comparable phone) but I like this one just a bit better.

I also own a Nokia 5300, and while this phone lacks a couple features that the 5300 has, I found this to be a much better handset overall, the 5300 just didn't perform as well for it's primary use, a phone.