Customer Reviews

NOKIA 6215i 6215 VERIZON CDMA CAMERA CELL PHONE

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

If your main reason for using a cell phone is to make phone calls and crystal clear reception is a priority for you, then this is definitely the right phone for you. My wife and I both made separate trips to the local Verizon store, and we tested this phone against the LG VX8300 and the 8600 and the Motorola RAZRs and KRZRs. Yes, the other phones all look cooler and have better cameras and more features in general; however, the Nokia 6215i phone was much, much clearer and had less static than any of the other phones. The calls sounded better on both ends: for the Nokia cell phone caller and for the person who received the call. We called both landline numbers and other cell phones, and tested each phone one after the other and multiple times during our visits to the Verizon store.

We spent an inordinate amount of time on this process because we did not want to get stuck with bad service and phones ever again. We have been miserable customers of Cingular for 3+ years now, and we are in fact expending $600 to break our family plan contract with them 6 months early. It is completely pointless to have a cell phone if the reception for your calls is so poor most of the time that you can't even carry on a conversation. I could not make calls from my Cingular phone from my office in downtown Arlington, VA despite the fact that everyone in the offices around me had no problems making calls with other carriers. I could not make phone calls from the Convention Center in Boston despite the fact that everyone around me was merrily chatting on their cell phones, etc., etc., etc.

I am sharing this experience in hopes of saving others a lot of time, aggravation and expense. If we had ordered our Nokias one day earlier from Verizon, we would have gotten the phones for free and paid no activation fee. Unfortunately, they changed their online offers overnight and we were out an additional $220 as a result.

I've had this phone for about 3 days now. I got it to replace my old Samsung A530. Here are my thoughts:

PROS:
-very light, compact, and small
-black glossy exterior looks professional and classy. yes, it does show fingerprints and scratches, but it's not that bad
-dual OLED screens are vibrant and sharp. the inner screen is smaller than most other phones, but i haven't found this to be much of a problem
-reception is great. haven't had a dropped call yet. for some reason i rarely get more than 2 bars of reception while indoors, but this doesn't seem to affect call quality
-ringer is loud with a nice selection of built-in ringtones
-earpiece and speakerphone is clear with adequate volume
-battery life is amazing. i've had light-moderate use for the past 3 days and the battery indicator is still full!!!

CONS:
-both screens are very hard to see in bright sunlight, even on highest brightness setting
-no bluetooth, SD memory, MP3 player, etc. but these aren't important to me. i just need a slim phone that doesn't have a lot of extra bulk.
-camera could be better, but it's a phone people, not a canon powershot!

Overall, I'm very happy with this phone and I'll be glad to own it for 2 years. If you need a nice compact phone that performs well, this is for you. I haven't had any problem transferring the phone book. You just have to take it to a "flagship" store where they have the right computer to do it. I took it to a Verizon branch first, and they had a different machine that transferred only the numbers and not the names.

Give this phone a try. It's no Motorola KRZR, but it's much cheaper. You'll be happy with it!

I upgraded to this phone primarily on the opinion of a the c-net review which said this phone had such good voice quality that it was indistinguishable from a land-line (San Francisco), and reviewer (VA) who said this phone had the "best voice quality" -- since i was having trouble hearing on my previous phone, especially in mobile-to-mobile calls. Perhaps it is the area I am in (north Jersey), but I sure can tell I'm on a cell phone! While better than my previous model, I'm still saying "what? could you repeat that?" In calling Verizon Wireless to ask another question, the technical supervisor just told me "the voice quality and even reception ability varies a lot from individual phone to phone within every model: we can get 5 phones of the same model and line them up and each one sounds different and right next to each other they'll display different signal strengths..." Wish I'd known THAT before I bought!


I like this phone's features, and since Verizon has it on promotion, it's a great deal right now. It has more "conveniences" than I'll really use. It doesn't have bluetooth for hands-free, but that's OK with me.

My biggest complaint is that the LED display (it's not an LCD but new LED display) is completely unreadable in daylight. Also you must use some kind of cover: the battery comes unclipped with the slightest of touches on the clasp such as pulling the phone out of a pocket or purse. I find the more "rounded" shape phones a little easier to hold than this "squared" shape, and it's easy to press on the exterior screen or the buttons on the side when holding the phone closer to the ear when trying to hear better in a noisy or outdoor environment.

Have had this phone for 36 hours (9/25/06)and am being told by Verizon I have to delete all 150+ of my stored numbers and start from scratch (I had an LG 7000 series which I never liked). Seems there is a software issue and there is no data on when it will be resolved. Phone makes a call from phone book but does not complete the call when your intended answers the phone. Speakerphone calling seems to negate this defect and if you press the speaker button when the person answers, it seems to work. Pressing it twice did get the phone to work but not the headset. Blue tooth headset (Moto H500)paired easily only it did'nt work through the speaker option I may have discovered. Looks like a nice phone, light, easy to use but decision is, is this worth the extra steps, reliable enough to function normally and then left to guess when the software fix is available and just "stop-in to Verizon"? Surely they aren't going to tell me when it's ready. Probably worth it to wait to buy this phone or choose another if you have tons of numbers to enter. Verizon should have known this, but I'm sure it's a great first time phone or if you don't have lots of numbers to transfer over.

This is my first cell phone that I got with the Verizon Wireless plan and I am quite impressed. I really like the sleek glossy look that goes around the phone. Suprisingly enough after 7 months of use it doesn't have any major scratches on its surface.

I have NEVER lost a call or had no service wherever I have gone while using this phone. It is amazing since I always used to have a terrible time trying to find a spot where my older phones would get one bar of service.

I do have a complaint though, the screen on the inside of the phone is tiny. If your eyes are bad then I would recommend a phone with a larger screen. Other than that I praise this phone, especially since I didn't have to pay anything for it with my plan.

I just bought this phone from verizon as a replacement for my 6256i which rocked to high heaven. I bought this partially because of the glowing reviews in this area and especially for the signal reception reports.
I find this phone to be poor in reception compared to my 6256i. It takes a couple of bars of signal to even boot where my 6256 was booting with not even a bar. The camera is crap but I knew that in advance. The buttons are way too close together and cause lots of screwed up sequences of button pushing. The clarity of reception I don't see. My mother who is a little hard of hearing can't understand me with this phone but had no problem with the 6256. The front display is tiny but the clock is large and readable. The inside display is small and made smaller with the banners up top and bottom with another banner added whenever voice or data mail is received. The colors are very vivid however. The available memory is VERY small...I can't believe they made a phone without more on-board memory.
I'm getting another replacement sent since it will not perform some of the advanced functions due to it's inability to get a programming update via the *228 function. If the reception is the same on the next phone and the clarity is not understandable by my mother, I'm swaping for another phone.

The Nokia 6215i may be an entry level phone -- one of those that are given away with contracts -- but does the job more than adequately. The reception is excellent, which to me is the most important feature. The phone does have an extendable antenna, which might seem out-of-style, but reception remained quite good without extension.

The camera is very average, but as far as I am concerned, the phone camera is just for taking quick pictures to show your friends where you are, something funny, etc. If I want something I can print and frame, I'll still use my regular camera. There is a flash, which has come in handy.

The most unique part of the phone, however, is the screen. Though small, the screens are made with new OLED technology, which is extremely bright with terrific contrast in average lighting. On a traditional LCD screen, there is a large backlight that sends light through every pixel, and each pixel is like a little nightshade. To make a dark point, the screen pulls the nightshade to block as much of the backlight as possible. But the pixels can't block 100% of the light; a little bit always leaks through, especially if you look from other angles. A good analogy is a window blind -- never perfect at blocking all of the sun, and if you look at it from different angles, you get more or less light through.

On an OLED screen, each pixel is like a tiny little light bulb, which can turn on and off independently of one another. When they are off, they are completely off, which gives the screen its amazing contrast. It also looks identically sharp regardless of your viewing angle.

Unfortunately, it is COMPLETELY invisible in bright sunlight, even more so than most cellphone screens. This is also because of the fact that each pixel generates light directly rather than blocking it. Even though the light generated by an OLED is impressive, it is no match for the sun, and gets washed out completely. On the other hand, since an LCD works by blocking light, it is still able to block some of the sunlight to form a visible image, even if it was designed to be illuminated from the back. The nightshade/light bulb analogy is again appropriate. In a sunlit room, turning on a light bulb makes a lot less difference compared to pulling the blinds. So, the OLED is a bit of a double-edged sword.

My only other significant quibble is the low memory capacity, with no ability for expansion. 4 MB is just not very much; you won't be able to keep too many pictures or ringtones.

Overall, the phone is quite good. It is small and light, and looks rather sleek. Most importantly, it makes crystal clear calls with no drops that I can remember. That would have earned it 5 stars, but the screen problem and limited memory knock it down a notch.

I bought this phone a couple months ago. It looked great online and in person, but I HATE the keys... they are not raised at all and it's difficult to text message. Also, the "OK" button is really small. It's very sleek and pretty- I'll give it that. I like the speaker, it sounds fine, I like that I can take decent pics... I hate the screen saver! Does anyone know how to turn it off? I also dislike the fact that I have to push extra buttons to send a text. My old LG only had about 2 or 3 steps- the Nokia steps have doubled, a bit of a pain. All in all, though, I really like this phone. I'm sure I just need to get used to all the little things. Buttons and all.

My old Motorola 265 is having cut-out problem occasionally so I decide to upgrade to a new phone. I signed two-year contract and get this phone for free from the Verizon website. Then my headache started.

The new phone looks nice and works nice except the speakphone is not as loud as my Motorola 265. But since the second day I got this phone, I found I'm having much worse cut-out problem than my old phone. I had to call Verizon for replacement. The first replacement only works worse than the original one. So, replace again. The second replacement still has the cut-out problem but I have no energy to care about this problem any more --- its speakerphone totally doesn't work! I need the speakerphone everyday when I chat over the phone with my husband.

Verizon is not happy either. Their CS told me they can not ship me again and again and I don't trust their service any more. Therefore I brought this phone to the local store. But the local store can not do exchange for me because my account shows my cell phone has only 3 months warranty(??!!).

I'm so tired but I still have to call Verizon. Today they told me they are going to ship me another model, Motorola V325i. I checked customer review on Amazon and only to find very bad reviews. I don't know how the new one will work but I'm just too tired to argue with them any more.

From the three Nokia 6215i phones I've got, I can tell that its speakerphone is generally soft (but my current one totally doesn't work). If a speakerphone feature is important for you, keep away from this model.

I've had this cell phone for 2 days and it is great. Text messaging, phone calls, and the camera work fine. The image on the screen is high quality. Overall, it works great.