Customer Reviews

Nokia 6126 Phone (AT&T)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

This review is for an unlocked version of this phone, but with Cingular (or AT&T nowadays) service. I received this phone from my brother (he used to work for Nokia in Texas) because my other phone broke (nokia 6102i) and my contract with Cingular was for another year (yeah, it sucks).

Background: I was not eligible for the upgrade yet, so that meant I had to purchase a phone at retail price (without the contract) which would have run up upwards of $300 and more. So I got this phone (unlocked) as a gift, and the switch-over was relatively easy and trouble-free. I copied my address book from the 6102i onto the SIM card, and when I moved the SIM card to the 6126, the address book was there (taa-daa!). What I was not able to move were the photos I snapped with the old phone. Those I had to send via email, which I saved onto a microSD card and then was able to move to the 6126 (it has a microSD slot, which read the 1Gb card easily).

Features: I have always liked Nokia. This phone is no exception (except one which I will discuss later). It is a clam (ie. flip) phone and is almost as slim as (but slightly lighter than) my Motorola RAZR. I like the menu layout of the Nokia. The camera is up to 1.3 Megapixel resolution (settings of 1,024x1,280, 960x1,290, 600x800, 480x640, 240x320, and 120x160). The photos are decent in daylight, but not too great in poorly-lit areas (but that goes for every camera phone I've ever encountered).

I like the black and silver coloring. No external antenna (sweet). The button on the side to open it is extra (not necessary). The internal display is nice and large, and colorful. I like the navigation keypad. The textured covering on the rear flap is different (I like it, and is about 50-50 with my friends).

There were plenty of hands-free features. There's a speakerphone, which is loud enough to be used outside, Bluetooth for connecting to a headset or for sending files, as well as voice dialing and commands. There is POP3 and IMAP4 e-mail support, audio messaging for sending voicemails directly to another cell phone, and USB cable support (I haven't used this yet).

There is a large 1,000-contact phone book has room in each entry for five phone numbers, e-mail and Web addresses, a job title and a company name, work and home street addresses, a birth date, etc. The SIM card can hold an additional 250 names. Other extras include standard stuff: vibrate mode, text and multimedia messaging, calculator, voice recorder, a calendar with reminders, notepad, stopwatch, and an alarm clock.

Hands-free features were plentiful, as well. There's full Bluetooth for connecting to a headset or for sending files, plus voice dialing and commands and a speakerphone. For hard-core emailers, there is also POP3 and IMAP4 e-mail support.

I tested the quad-band GSM phone in San Francisco/Bay Area using my existing Cingular wireless service. I got the same quality as the old Nokia 6102i phone. Call quality was decent.

Now, for the negatives. A minor drawback with the design is that the MicroSD card slot is located behind the battery cover. Although, you don't need to remove the battery itself, but you do need to remove the cover. My other beef is with the battery life. The 6126 has a rated talk time of 3.4 hours and a promised standby time of 10 days. When I maxed out the talk time, I got about 3.5 to 3.75 hours talk-time (impressive). Because I am always on the phone, it is hard to guage the standby time. However, when I paired and activated the Bluetooth, and connected with a Nokia BH-900 earpiece (By the way, the BH-900 earpiece is sub-standard compared to the Motorola HS850, but that is another review altogether) that is when I got a feeling about the battery life in standby. For half a day of minimal use (20 min max), and standby the rest of the day my battery is now at 20-25% capacity. When I turned off Bluetooth, I was able to go a full day with some use and still have over 50% battery capacity. So it seems that when the Bluetooth feature is activated it is eating up more battery juice (which makes sense). I have yet to find a control that tells the phone to automatically turn off Bluetooth when there is no active device around.

Conclusion: The Nokia 6126 is a nice phone with many features. I only gate it 4-stars because of the battery life. This is a must, especially for a frequent traveler (like me) or those who use the phone/Bluetooth earpiece a lot. Nokia has to improve on the battery life, and this is easily done with a patch to automatically turn off Bluetooth when there are no Bluetooth devices around.

BTW, this phone is still offered from Cingular. I just came from the store

A mistake I notice a lot of people making when reviewing this phone is that they compare it to the phones that boast dual functionality as an MP3 player or camera. Nokia, in my opinion, has always looked for function over form. They throw in certain features as standard, but those features alone are not supposed to be the selling point of the phone. The 6126 is a PHONE first and the rest is an afterthought. With that said let me start the review.

PROS:
-THIS PHONE IS POWERFUL! I have never experienced any lag with this phone, even when viewing thumbnail photographs or switching between menu items (which you can do WHILE listening to music). My last phone, a sony ericsson z525, was notorious for lagging between menu changes. What really blew me, was that when I load nokia themes to the phone, i could actually preview them when I simply scrolled over it. Anyone who has customized his/her phone with a theme knows how LONG it takes to apply one(albeit a few seconds, but thats an eternity). This phone previews it for you in seconds.
-THIS PHONE IS RIDICULOUSLY CUSTOMIZABLE! you can change EVERY aspect of this phone, from how the menu presents itself to how many minutes you want the phone to wait when you hit snooze! For the really intricate stuff it may take a few menu clicks before you find the option, but I have customized my internal displays 1)screen saver (when you first close the phone) 2) Standby screen (10 sec after the phone is closed) 3) Flip screen (what picture the external display shows when you flip open the phone, so when you're holding it up to your ear you can decide what people see). Thats 3 customizations of only the IMAGE of the external display! there are even more options.
-ACTIVE STANDBY! This is almost like a start menu on your main screen, it displays any notes you might have entered for the day, the status of the music player, and has a scrolling shortcut bar that, once again, is totally customizable. Oh, and EVERY button on the main screen can be customized as a shortcut - you almost never need to go to the menu screen.
-AMAZING SYNCING ABILITIES - I LOVE THIS PART! You will have to download the Nokia PC suite from the Nokia website, but once you do, its complete bliss. Anyone who uses Microsoft outlook will love how quickly and easily the phone syncs over bluetooth. Transfer speeds are quick and there are many customizable options with the software (like whose numbers take priority, outlooks or your phones). The rest of the suite is a little on the cumbersome side since vista allows you to send files directly to the phone by right clicking on the file, which I find more useful.
-FLIP FEATURE! Okay, sounds gimmicky. But honestly, i feel super suave. With the flip button you can pull out the phone and have it flipped open and at your ear in one smooth motion. No prying of the thumb or flicking of the wrist, no stumbling. Just smooooooth :-)
-MP3 ringtones - send em over bluetooth, you WILL need an MicroSD card for this. Transfer takes seconds. Plays them loud and clear.
-Screen - I constantly keep changing my wallpaper just to make use of this bright and beautiful screen, the external screen actually has 262thousand colors, thats how much most phones had on their main screen a few months ago. The internal screen is 16 MILLION colors, its gorgeous. Everything is easy to read, from text messages to web browsing.
-FLASH COMPATIBLE!!! A HUGE PLUS - if you know how to use it. Flash lets you have animated wallpaper on both your internal and external screens. I currently have 3 3D rings twirling on my external screen with a clock. Before that I had a picture of a parking space in which the lines actually told the current time, I LOVE flash! And since the ext. screen has so many colors, the animations look beautiful.

CONS:
BATTERY LIFE - Not necessarily bad at 2 days, but my sony ericsson spoiled me with its ridiculously long lasting battery. Even when the display said it was empty, the battery would run for an additional 8 hours on standby. When the Nokia tells me its about to die, its not lying. Still, I am not disappointed by the battery life, although i have yet to put it through HEAVY usage.
LOOKS - I'm a young guy (23) and sorta want a fashionable phone. That said, theres really nothing outstanding about the design of the 6126. Its practical, feels sturdy, has a rubberized outside that helps with grip, no glitz and glam. It is stream-lined and not hard on the eyes. Its simply a hard worker and you sorta have to rely on the screen savers for it to stand out.
MP3 player - YES, this was an afterthought. If you want a player thats more integrated, i would go for the 6555, but you lose the flip function and I believe it has a smaller screen. That said, you can still use it to listen to music if you're truly bored, but a lot of people have alternative music players nowadays.
CAMERA- Grainy at night, fine in sunlight. Gets the job done if you need it. Nothing special, but then again, this phone doesnt brag that feature but rather considers it a standard for this day and age.
CONCLUSION: For the price, I dont think this phone can be beat by any other entry level phone. I was planning on getting the Sony Ericsson, but since its a slider, the keys are small and flat and I have big fingers. Plus I have a camera and music player so I dont see a need for it (although I REALLY wish cingular would bring back the Sony Ericsson K790). Also, I forgot to mention, the phones size and buttons are laid out very well and make it extremely practical to use, another reason I prefer it over the KRZR, which has that useless flushed D-pad that I cant stand. This phone wont turn heads, but it can keep up with you. Especially if your like me and need to jump between menus quickly and get agitated when phones lag behind. Look for its review on youtube so you can see it in action, you'll see what I'm talkin about.

UPDATE: Okay, figured out how to extend battery life to almost a week (on standby). If you're like me and too cheap to get the data plan, go to MENU>SETTINGS>CONNECTIVITY>PACKET DATA and turn the Packet Data connection to "when needed". This stops the phone from being constantly connected to the data network and saves a ton of battery life. Also, for the first few days, plug in the phone to charge as much as possible. Li-Ion batteries DO NOT have a memory, they actually benefit from being partially discharged and recharged over and over again. You will definitely notice an increase in battery life after a few days. The battery needs some "warming up time". I hope this helps! I'm a huge advocate for this phone.

I read reviews before I buy products, and I was a little scared to buy this phone because everyone kept saying the battery life was really bad, the camera button always gets pushed "accidentally" in your pocket, and the sound is really bad (in the headset). Well, after I bought the phone and used it, none of these became a problem. The battery life is fine - those people probably got some of those recalled lithium-ion batteries. Also, when my phone is closed, the keypad automatically locks so my camera button does not take pictures of my packet, or whatever. The headset is a little low, but then if you use the "volume up" button, it gets louder (gee, what a concept). Also, some people have complained about the camera being "grainy." It's a 1.3 megapixel camera phone - which is pretty standard at this time. Some phone have a 2 megapixel or possibly 3 megapixel camera, but they are more expensive (by the way, the less megapixels, the more storage, so I like that I can put more songs on my phone for ringtones).

There are the 6131 and 6133 phones available, and they have FM radios, but does anyone even listen to the radio anymore? Also, the phones say what carrier they have on them. This one says Cingular, the 6133 says T-Mobile, and I think the 6131 says Sprint, but the 6131 and 6133 are only available in the UK and shipped from there, so I don't know if they have the same GSM coverage (this is a Quad-Band phone, and the others may be Tri-Band).

Long story short, works great, and has clip-on covers avilable so no scratches will occur! Also, if I get bored looking at black, I can change it whenever I feel like =)

My wife and I recently bought a pair of these phones, based on the recommendation of the sales person at the AT&T store. The good news is that the connectivity is excellent (at least in the Washington DC metropolitan area).

We both use our phones as business-like communication tools, not as personal entertainment devices (we have way better MP3 and digital photography devices). So what we most wanted from this phone is that it be a good phone and I'm not able to comment on its music or picture-taking ability. What I'm not happy with is as follows:

1. The voice quality is OK but not nearly as good as our previous LG phones. You will hear some distortion and fuzziness. Not a show-stopper but not great.
2. You may as well start by throwing away the manual that comes with the phone - it is totally useless. To use this phone, spend a lot of time walking through all the menus, which the manual will not help you with. The phone really does have excellent options in it, but you will definitely need to discover them yourself.
3. If you want to save the phone's contact list to your computer, don't bother with the free Nokia phone manager software. Like the manual, it is basically useless. You get what you pay for, so go to datapilot-dot-com and purchase their Datapilot software and be sure to purchase the bluetooth connector for this phone - Datapilot won't work with the Nokia USB cable but requires their own proprietary connection device (in the case of this phone, the Bluetooth connector, which is way cool). Datapilot is a good product that will allow you to edit the phone's contacts in a rational way. That software plus the Bluetooth connector cost more than the phone does, but it works with most cell phones so you'll be able to transfer the contact list between phones if you need to.
4. The phone uses Themes for the background graphic of the screen display. That's fine but if you're not a teenager and so you want a fairly plain, business-like theme, good luck. The phone, as configured for AT&T, only has one theme. Fortunately, it does have some plain ringer tones which you will ultimately discover by following #2 above.

The Nokia is basically a decent phone with a lot of capabilities, and is very inexpensive when purchased with an AT&T contract. Just be prepared to spend a LOT of time learning how to configure it (and I am a computer systems professional).

PS: we haven't had a problem with battery life but we only use our cell phones intermittently and charge them every night.

I've had this phone for about 5 months, and compared to my previous phone, which was a Motorola V557, the Nokia 6126 is just sad. I'm not even going to go into a full report on this phone, I'm just going to list the pros and cons:

PROS:
It plays mp3s, has a microSD slot for more space, has bluetooth, the display is very bright and colorful, the size is pretty good - not to small and not ultra slim, and I have never once had a problem with antenna reception (which partly will depend on your service and coverage area).

CONS:
-Battery life is horrible - one phone call can pretty much drain your battery, and once it starts to go down, it really goes fast.
-The connector for a headset is a Nokia pop port, which is not quite as easy to find and can be difficult with non-Nokia brand products.
-The button to open the phone is very unnecessary and has caused the phone to open in my pocket several times.
-The camera button is on the outside resulting in a couple pictures taken of the inside of my pocket (the way I found to fix this was to turn on automatic keyguard after a minute or two).
-When someone is calling, if the camera button is pressed, the phone answers in speakerphone mode - this I just found out today. I had this suspicion for a little while since my mom would sometimes call me and it would cut off after two or three rings and she said it sounded like someone was there but there was no one. Turns out the phone was bumped in my pocket, either by my chapstick or by my hand when I grabbed it, and what she was hearing was the inside of my pocket.
-The camera is horrible - really, really horrible. Compared to my previous phone, the pictures are bigger, but they have so much noise. Luckily, I didn't buy the phone for its camera capabilities.
-The outer display is pointless. I originally decided on this model over another Nokia because this one had an outer display. I thought it would be neat to assign a picture to friends so when they called, the picture would display on the outside. I never got that feature to work right - the phone seems to take too long to load the picture and I wasn't able to receive calls, or it would ring twice after the image loaded and then the person would have got my voicemail because, on their end, it rang and rang.
-I have never found a way to change how the phone lets you know you missed a call, I don't think you can. All it does is flash the outer display every so often (which REALLY drains the battery) and it says "1 missed call". The main screen displays the missed call if you open the phone, but it doesn't make a sound or vibrate to let you know or remind you.
-The paint is chipping off the exterior of mine, just like other reviewers said. It has been that way after about one week. This phone just was not designed to carry in your pocket.
-The main display screen sometimes gets dirty. It seems to at time collect every piece of lint, dust, and anything else that is in the air. This wouldn't matter if it would have been a flat surface instead of being embedded in the top of the phone. It looks nicer that way, but is not a good idea for something that will maybe be put in a pocket. Again, this is definitely not a pocket-friendly phone.
-The sound quality is absolutely pathetic. I have discovered apparently this is a Nokia thing, as my mom's sounds just as bad (she has one of the old Nokia phones). The speakerphone is not too bad, and there are times when you think it may be better to talk over the speakerphone rather then trying to listen through the ear piece. Sound does vary depending on the other person's phone and antenna reception, but, once again, I never had that problem with either of my Motorolas.
-There just aren't very many custom features, and there doesn't seem to be enough buttons for a techno-type gadget. Actually, this is basically a phone for people who are not techno-advanced people. It's more like a toy than a phone. I've only ever had Motorola phones, and I didn't realize they had so much more options than other new phones. The main things I miss from my V557 are the option to arrange phone numbers by speed dial number rather than alphabetically, and Motorola's "iTap" text entry. I would have got another Motorola, but I really didn't want the Razor, or any slim phone for that matter. Needless to say, after my contract with AT&T is up, I'll be switching to a company with better phone options. If you like the features of a Motorola don't ever get a Nokia.


EDIT: After I could finally upgrade and got myself a Palm Centro, I gave this Nokia phone to my brother who had broken his ancient Samsung phone. He used the Nokia for a very short time before he decided to use another old phone a friend gave him. He also had pictures of the inside of his pocket, and the phone also would open in his pocket because of the button. He has been waiting forever to be able to upgrade to a phone that allows MP3 ringtones so he could have the "House, MD" theme as his ringtone. Even that feature was not enough for him to continue using this phone, and he is an over-obsessed fan of House (has the same cane, sneakers, etc).

I ordered this phone form Cingular (ATT) and today my third defective phone came in the mail. A customer service rep told me that 85% of all her returns and exchanges come from this model phone. The first phone had a handset speaker that didn't work and the next 2 were, in the words of the customer service rep, "DOA" -- dead on arrival. It would be a really nice phone if it worked though...

I recently purchased this phone from AT&T to replace my old, low-end Motorola V180 phone. I am a basic cell phone user; I make maybe 2-300 minutes of calls a month, send a few text messages, and that's about it. This time around, I wanted a phone with a camera and maybe an MP3 player, and the 6126 fit the bill.

Pros:
- Both screens are excellent. Large, bright, and colorful.
- The user interface is good, much better than my old phone. It's more responsive and you can customize more of the phone's behavior. The address book is better designed.
- Camera resolution (1.3MP) is higher than other similarly-priced phones.
- Call quality is good. It sounds better than my old phone and gets better reception.
- Looks and feels nice. With its rubberized exterior and denseness (like an iPod), it feels high-quality. The keypad is raised and has good tactile feedback.

Cons:
- The battery life is terrible. My old V180 would last a whole week on standby, and it was the cheapest phone you could buy; my 6126 lasts 2-3 days. I fear how bad it's going to be when the battery starts to wear out.
- All the wired connections are proprietary, so you won't be able to use your standard USB cables, old wired headsets, or even normal headphones. Sure this phone can play MP3s, but are you really going to carry around a set of Nokia-specific headphones to do that? This part really annoys me, the MP3 player portion is useless IMO and was one of the major reasons I picked this phone. This complaint doesn't apply if you have Bluetooth accessories, though you still can't use the MP3 player (no A2DP profile).
- Camera quality is poor. Apparently this is generally true for cell phones.
- Speaker volume is low.

Overall, I'm ambivalent on this phone. I like the design and features, but the battery life and proprietary connections really annoy me.

I really tried to do my research before I purchased this phone, but unfortunately most of the available reviews were short term users. I was already expecting below-average battery life and a sub par camera, but the benefits I was expecting outweighed these concerns for me. The major problems began to creep in with more use.

There are several good points to the phone. It really is a good-looking and well-built phone, and it just "feels right." The sound quality is excellent for both calls and music (assuming you have a stereo headset), and even the Bluetooth headset sound quality is head and shoulders above my old Motorola. The audio player is AAC/M4A capable. The resolution of both LCDs is great. Nokia PC Suite can sync the phone's calendar with Lotus Notes, a rare feature. I appreciate the release button more than I thought I would. I'm sure I'll miss that if my next phone doesn't have it. The only problem with the release button is sometimes accidentally pushing it as you pull out the phone while receiving a call. If the phone is set to automatically answer when it opens, the release gets pushed accidentally, and it's a call you don't want to take at the moment, you're stuck holding the phone closed until it stops ringing. Still a nice feature.

Moving on to the phone's problems: One might assume that the combination of Bluetooth and stereo MP3 playback on a phone would imply that the A2DP (stereo) Bluetooth profile is supported. Apparently, one would be wrong. Admittedly, I probably should have assumed no specific mention of A2DP implied that the phone does not support it, but it doesn't help that searching the internet yields mixed results on the issue, and even Nokia tech support still can't tell me one way or the other. As I can't get it to work with an A2DP gateway, it's probably safe to assume at this point that it doesn't support the profile.

The rest of the problems stem from the outdated Series 40 operating system and the phone's music functionality. The music player has been tacked on as an afterthought, which has severely overextended the capabilities of the OS. First, the music controls are very cumbersome, using a cursor system to activate on-screen buttons rather than using the phone's keypad for controls. Track numbers may be entered manually in the main player view but not in the playlist view.

The phone has apparently not been tested with "large" music libraries. I purchased a 2GB microSD card soon after the phone, ready to load it up with music. However, the music transfer application included with Nokia PC Suite develops problems when trying to read a library of anything over 2000 songs or so. The main issue is that the database of meta tags breaks around that point. Nokia tech support informed me that their test libraries are all around 1000 files or under. However, I'm sure I'm not alone in having a library of around 10,000 tracks or more these days. Fortunately, you can load music files manually through either data transfer mode on the phone, or directly to the card.

The problems don't end with the PC software, though. The phone does not organize tracks by subfolders; all tracks within the main music folder and all its subfolders are loaded into one huge playlist. For more specific selection, you either have to use the clumsy folder navigation interface and constantly reselect the main music folder, or you must manually create playlists with the music transfer software, which is time consuming and problematic with the issues I mentioned above. I plan to experiment with generic M3U playlists, but I don't have high hopes. And it gets worse: after filling up my 2GB card and manually creating a playlist for every album, which was 77 in total, attempting to change playlists now completely crashes the phone. It restarts and then reloads the entire library. For now, I'm navigating the huge playlist by guessing at track numbers, although you can only enter three digits. It's almost humorous what happens after track 999: the phone increments the first 9 to 10, so you see track 10 000 (except the last digit is partially cut off). At track 1100, you see 10 100 in the list.

It has begun to feel like I'm beta testing the software in this phone, even though I paid for it and signed my life away for another two years to get it. It has crashed more than ten times in the three months I've had it. I especially felt like a beta tester when Nokia tech support had me carry out experiments with my large music library and report back. I'm still hoping for a major firmware update, but I'm not holding my breath. Frankly, they just don't seem that interested in working out the kinks in this mid-market phone with its outdated software components.

I'd still recommend this phone if you don't have a large music collection and only want to use the music player very occasionally. If you won't use the music player at all, please buy a cheaper phone that doesn't have it. If you have a large collection and plan to use it regularly, as in my situation, I'd highly recommend spending a little more for something with at least the Series 60 OS, if you buy a Nokia.

this is an EXCELLENT phone. if you do your research, you will find that compared to the other phones currently offered at att, this one has the least amount of and least pressing quirks or issues.

i love everything about this phone. the ease of use, the extensive cusomizations, the high quality sound quality and reception (which are obviously the two most important things in a phone after all... and this one really has the best of both of those things out of all 4 phones ive owned so far.) the bright, stunning screen... its a sleek, stylish, highly functional phone.

the caveats of this phone, which are not numerous or severe enough to drop this review to 4 stars, are decent battery life, the 24 mb of memory... and that is honestly all i can think of.

When I bought this phone, I had read that the battery wasn't the greatest... I guess I figured I'd have to charge it every other day which didn't bother me... But nothing prepared me for how absolutely horrible it really is. If I talk for maybe 20 mins and listen to a couple of songs, this thing is down to nothin! (I had even set the packet data to "when needed" but it didn't help.)

It's sad too because it would be a good phone otherwise. The style is cute with a little push button that opens the phone up, which I really liked. The sound of the little stereo speaker is really quite good. The reception is very good. And the format is very customizable (like most Nokias) if only the battery didn't drain like a leaky faucet!

I can't recommend this phone and unfortunately I'm going to have to return mine. And since I have read that the 6555 is just as bad as far as the battery life goes, I guess this year will be the first time in about 10 years that I've had to use another brand other than a Nokia. Oh well, I guess it's time for a change!