Nokia used to have some of the best CDMA phones out there. Now that they are going the ODM route (outsourcing EV-DO phone manufacturing), have they kept that track record? Read more to find out.
Phone Encyclopedia: Nokia 6205
Buy a 6205 from Verizon Wireless
First Impressions, Basic Functionality
The Nokia 6205 is one of those all-too-uncommon Nokia flip phones. It does bring up reminders of the RAZR, with its brushed metal casing. However, the most remarkable thing about the design of the phone, is its display. The display portion of the phone is extremely thin, and relatively flat. This makes the phone very comfortable against the ear. It does, however, make the phone feel a bit weird, considering that the base of the phone is more than twice as thick as the display portion.
And now, for a history lesson, as the rest of this phone needs to be kept in context. Back in 2004, Nokia had a falling out with the CDMA world. Qualcomm and Nokia entered into the legal battles that they are still hashing out. Essentially, Nokia felt lied to over Qualcomm’s licensing with Nokia. Nokia obtained a CDMA2000 chipset license, only to have Qualcomm do an about-face and launch EV-DO, instead of EV-DVÂ technology. This make Nokia’s license worth considerably less. Qualcomm felt that Nokia violated many of their patents on GSM technology… and thus, Nokia bailed on CDMA completely.
Fast forward to last year. Realizing that Nokia was losing the American market, the decision was made to allow Nokia CDMA to resume operations. Essentially, Nokia will continue to use its existing licenses to make budget, non-EVDO phones. And, they’ll outsource CDMA phone development on carriers which use EV-DO, to so-called ODM (original design maker/manufacturing) companies.
And, the Nokia 6205 was certainly not made by Nokia. While the keypad, and perhaps many of the blueprints had involvement from Nokia… it appears this phone was made by notorious knock-off company TechFaith.
Note: Nokia has not confirmed that TechFaith is the ODM. We are basing that on design characteristics. Nokia has refused to state to PhoneNews.com which company is manufacturing and designed the 6205.
And, that is the first reason why this phone is terrible. By outsourcing to the worst ODM on the planet, Nokia has ensured this phone is full of bugs. See, the 6205 does not run on the Nokia Series 40 phone platform, which is Nokia’s operating system and design plan for all non-smartphones sold today.
Because of that, it lacks all the functionality which Nokia has championed. Instead of a great web browser, this has a poor Openwave implementation. Instead of amazing Bluetooth profile support, it has terrible Bluetooth. Instead of being able to stream videos with 3GPP ease, it can only play V CAST Video.
About worst of all, is the lack of the Series 40 User Interface. There is no way to get rid of the Verizon Wireless UI, which ruins nearly all of Verizon’s phones. Instead of making a VZW UI theme for Series 40, Nokia instead just hired an independent company to overlay TechFaith’s phone with this ugly interface.
Advanced Functionality
It’s really hard to review advanced phone functionality on a Nokia like this. Typically, we can look at all the breakthrough Series 40 (not to mention S60) innovations that Nokia brings to the table. We would have liked to look at the Flash Lite support, the J2ME support that Nokia even offered on its older Verizon phones, and all the great things that used to be in a Nokia phone on Verizon.
Sadly, none of those are present here. Instead, all we have to look at are V CAST… oh, and the camera.
Did we mention the camera is terrible? The viewfinder software was not Nokia’s (of course), but instead ArcSoft’s dreadful camera application. Laggy, and makes Motorola’s similar implementation look almost beautiful.
V CAST Music and Video both work. That’s not to say the widescreen view, or load times on either app are great… but they do work.
Probably the worst bug on any high-end feature of this phone, is that it has trouble updating itself. The FOTA (Firmware Over The Air) Software Update feature appears to be broken, crashing whenever we check for updates. And, if past history is anything, when something like that breaks… Verizon usually opts to simply not release a firmware update for the phone. That means to get the bug fixes, you’re left stuck buying a new phone down the road, creating needless e-waste, and needless expenses.
Conclusions
The Verizon Wireless User Interface alone was enough to take Nokia far from greatness. The lack of Series 40 underpinnings did the phone in. We couldn’t reccomend this phone to anyone, there are great competitors such as the Motorola W755, and LG Chocolate 3, which vastly outperform this phone.
Our advice to Nokia: Bring Series 40 to EV-DO phones (not to mention S60), and make the VZW UI into a Nokia theme, which could be disabled by savvy or elderly users who are familiar/enamored with the Nokia UI.
Final Score: 1/5
Pros: Thin, good external casing.
Cons: Buggy. Lack of Nokia UI. Lack of Series 40 features.
Phone Encyclopedia: Nokia 6205
Buy a 6205 from Verizon Wireless
I have had a chance to be hands on with this phone and 100% agree. If only the CDMA 6175 (6165 with EVDO) from back in the day that nokia decided to scrap could become reality. Another thing I noticed when I put a 6165 roaming on Verizon up against a 6205 was that the 6165 would have 3 bars with the stub down and 4 with it up while the 6205 would have 1 bar and occasionally the second bar would flicker. Shame on you Nokia.
I don’t have Verizon. but I’m impressed that you gave an honest score in your review. Doing a quick Google search for “Nokia 6205 Review”, I read some other sites reviews, and for the most part they had the same cons you had with the phone, yet it still got an average score of 3.5/5. Far to often, consumer electronics sites/magazines use a 5 point scale, yet never go lower then a 3. Are they really that deep in the advertisers pockets? It’s odd how in the video game industry, for the most part, they give honest scores (well, except maybe Gamespot), yet they still manage to survive.
It is wrong to base your opinions off an assumption of where you think the phone was manufactured (especially since you are wrong). Whatever your issues are with TechFaith they should not have anything to do with writing an unbiased review.
Rich, TechFaith’s products have spoken for themselves at countless CTIA expos. We think that companies which continually produce knock-off products (from HTC, et al), are not productive for this industry.
If the 6205 was a good phone, it would have gotten a positive review. It’s that simple.
I am shopping for a new phone and have found this review very helpful. I definitely will not be buying this phone (as I myself found it to be very cheap looking and sounding when I looked at it yesterday in the store). The light that is called a “flash” is no flash at all when taking a picture, and the picture does come out terrible. You could barely hear the phone ringing standing 6 feet away from it when there was background noise. Overall I do believe this is a very poor idea, especially from Nokia. Hopefully they will just take this phone off the market!
As addressed above i hope this is helpful.
I got this phone a few days ago and I don’t like it at all. It has a lot of annoying little things that add up and end up being very irritating. Some of these little quirks (none of them are a big deal alone, but all together they’re annoying): you can’t really open it with just one hand to quick read a text or answer a call, it doesn’t learn words (or maybe it does, but I haven’t figured it out – either way, it’s not easy), it won’t let me type … (three dots), and the symbols list is one big list instead of a few pages and you have to use the arrow keys to select each one (it’s very inconvenient).
Thanks for the honest review! I have a Nokia E71, and I love it. My girlfriend wants to leave AT&T for their poor coverage in New York for Verizon, and I’ve been waiting for Nokia to deliver a S60 flip phone that will work with Verizon. I thought that this would be it, but it seems I will have to continue to wait.
this phone is terrible. i have had to replace it 3 times in only 3 months. the phone scratches very easly and the flip top does not seem secure. worst of all my phone shuts off when you flip it shut or stick a headphone jack in it. Also the camera is worthless. DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY ON THIS GARBAGE.
I agree. I’ve had this phone for about six months and am replacing it for the second time! The exterior screen went out completely on the first one and I had issues with texting. This one shuts off every time I get a text message and I am still having issues with the keys when trying type a text message. I have been told the replacement they are sending me has software updates to take care of these problems but I do not have a lot of faith. We will see….