Controls

The buttons on the 6200 are fairly large compared to other phones nowadays. For large thumbed people this may be a blessing.

The numeric keypad is molded with 2 grooves indented. This is nice for when you're in a dark theater and you need to feel keypad to turn off without illuminating the phone. Instead of all the keys feeling the same and fumbling around until you find the right keys to press, you know exactly where you are relative to the keypad.

One thing to note is that the numbers on the keypads are all attached, meaning there are no spaces between the numbers. Some people may find this annoying since if you don't press directly on the keys, you may hit extra surrounding keys.

The navigation uses a standard 4 way directional keypad. Up, down, left, and right to scroll through menus.

Battery

A 780 mAh Li-Ion battery is used with the 6200. Nokia claims the battery will work for 4 hours of talk time and 240 hours of standby, however those numbers are maximum times. Realistically the times are much lower.

Minimum Rated Standby Time: 165 hours
Minimum Rated Talk Time: 145 minutes

Many variables, including carrier signal strength at your location, signal consistency (including incoming and outgoing calls), display and ringer settings, and battery charging methods and history, will affect performance. When handset manufacturers and mobile phone carriers list talk-time and standby-time ratings, they usually include disclaimers about variable performance and often refer to the times they publish as maximum times. Some quote expected battery life ranges, and in this case you're probably safe to assume you'll experience at least the minimum rated range.

Storage

The 6200 comes with a measly 500 KB of internal memory for text messages, emails, and Java applications.

As one of the major downfalls of this phone, the memory is dynamic, and is shared between ring tones, pictures, and games as well. Expect to be deleting things a lot from this phone to free up memory space.

Connections

The Nokia 6200 looks like any ordinary phone. However, underneath this seemingly unsuspecting device lies the world's first 3GPP compliant EDGE phone.

Nokia gave us a peek at its new EDGE cell phone at COMDEX in Las Vegas. EDGE, or Enhanced Data rate for GSM Evolution, allows for high speed rates of up to 118 kbps on existing GSM networks. Currently, AT&T and Cingular offer EDGE in the US, although Europe and Asia have been slow to incorporate it. Often times called 2.7G, EDGE has been referred to as a bridge between current GSM technology and WCDMA and cdma2000.

The migration of GSM to EDGE results in less strain on current voice traffic bandwidth and allows for higher transfer rates. Building on existing technology, EDGE allows for more than double existing GPRS rates. While theoretically the 6200 could transfer at speeds of up to 384 kbps, Nokia has decided to limit it to 118 kbps. Actual rates will be less than that. Judging by the technology, you can safely assume that Nokia had a particular type of user in mind when designing the 6200.

The 6200 also comes with SyncML. The SyncML client allows you to synchronize your contacts, calendar, and to-do lists between PCs, handhelds, or network servers through the internet. So just sync it up before you go in the morning and you can read and reply to your emails on your way to work.

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