Which Mobile Phone to use in Thailand? Nokia 3110 Classic.

Recently traded in my old phones for cash and bought a new phone. I’ve had some nice phones here in Thailand – a Motorola with touchscreen – can’t remember the model… duh. A Nokia e61 and e70. By far the e70 was the tops, but I really didn’t need that much phone when I decided to stop blogging here so much. Didn’t need the video and photo, or WIFI capability.

I’ve used a Motorola L7 for over a year now and it’s been ok. It doesn’t have EDGE – high speed GPRS capability so I thought I’d get another phone – a Nokia, that does. I bought at Tesco – this being where I buy most electronics. Really I just want to avoid the hassle of buying at a mobile phone shop where they could have parcelled out the good parts of my new phone and replaced them with garbage parts.

I looked at all their phones and decided on the Nokia 3110 Classic. It was about 3,500 baht. It has the specs below. It didn’t say on the box or the display ad whether it had EDGE – and this was a necessity. A quick check through 3 mobile phone magazines they had showed that the Nokia 3110 Classic has EDGE. This one at Tesco was named a 3110c. Hmm. I’ve been fooled before – but finally decided I’d get it and try my luck. I’m glad I did.

When I got home and fired it up – It DID have EDGE and it was working immediately. That was unexpected because when I used my e70 from my home last year – there was no EDGE service. Apparently DTAC increased their coverage to include me now. Nice. I registered downloads in the 28-32kBps range which reminded me what I’d been missing with EDGE service. The Moto L7 gave me consistently about 4kBps.

I ran to the internet shop and connected to their wifi with my notebook and downloaded the Nokia PC SUITE software which included an update to the one I had from over a year ago. I then went to the Nokia europe site and installed some functionality for the email, mms, and other things that apparently don’t come standard in Thailand phones sold here. I plugged in my phone number and the site called my phone 6 different times to push the software to it – so I could install it. That all went very smoothly.

I fired up the browser on the phone and went to gmail.com/app

This told me that I needed a specific Gmail software for the phone and it was available. I grabbed it and installed it in about 2 minutes. Then I had a nice interface for my Gmail on the phone that allows archiving messages, deleting, composing, replying, etc. – rather easy to use. It shows up in my “APPS” icon in the menu – i just click it open and I am looking at my gmail within about 9 seconds.

I went back home and opened PC SUITE and set up a USB cable connection to the computer and phone -and was online with Firefox 3 browser in about 5 minutes of configuration. Speeds were nice… bearable anyway. I can live with anything over 15kBps I’ve decided over almost 4 years in Thailand. That’s a couple hundred less than I thought I could live with in the USA.

I went to 7-11 and picked up a 300b DTAC card. Called 1678 and spoke to cust. service about plans for GPRS minutes (Internet minutes). There was a 15 hour/month plan for 107b. I took it. It’s pay as you use – and it auto renews at end of month I believe. I’m usually surprised at the end of the month with the auto- fee. This woman didn’t say it was monthy auto-renew but I assume it is.

The phone has video (176×150 or something microscopic), it has a 1.2MP camera which does OK – won’t win any awards. 8x zoom which did ok. The coolest thing for me was the voice recorder that records for up to an hour – which I missed on the Moto L7. I like to record podcasts for some of my other sites – and this will work well. Nokias PC SUITE does a good job of converting videos into different formats- Nokia’s proprietary one – or M4a – which QT (Quicktime) opens.

There’s a memory slot for up to 2GB extra mem. The phone has FLASH and RAM memory totaling around 72MB if I remember correctly – I don’t think I do… should be in specs below.

Anyway – a basic phone that does everything you’ll probably need. Oh – it has Bluetooth, Infrared, and a standard mini-USB connector. FM radio… uhm, some other stuff. Overall I like it a lot – you won’t go wrong if you get one for basic Thailand living if you can live with a Tri-band phone. It was clear enough for me over the last couple days.

********** specs below *********
Nokia 3110 Specifications & Features
ScreenTFT 262k Colour Screen (128 x 160 Pixels)Imaging1.3 Megapixel Camera8 x Digital ZoomVideo RecorderVideo PlayerVideo Streaming (3GPP)ScreensaversWallpapersThemed DisplayMessagingSMS (Text Messaging)MMS (Multimedia Messaging)MMS Audio MessagingEmailSoundMedia Player (MP3, MP4, AAC, AAC+, enhanced AAC+. H263, H264 & WMA)FM RadioMP3 & MIDI RingtonesEntertainmentEmbedded Java™ GamesDownloadable Java™ Games
OrganiserPhone BookAlarm ClockClockOrganiser with CalendarTo Do ListNotesCalculatorCount Down TimerPush to TalkVoice DialingVoice CommandsVoice RecordingHandsfree SpeakerConnectivityBluetooth®Infra RedUSBGPRSEDGENetworkTri Band (GSM 900, GSM 1800 & GSM 1900)InternetXHTMLMemory & Talk Time32 Mbytes Flash Memory & 16 Mbytes RAM plus MicroSD™ Memory Card Option4 Hours Talk Time370 Hours StandbyWeight & Size87 g108.5 x 45.7 x 15.6 mm