Nokia C2-01 review

Nokia C2-01 review: Messaging

We've already noted that the Nokia C2-01 is most certainly not the handset to choose if you're a social networking fan. However, if you're into SMS things are different.

It's easy to quickly start a text message. Out of the box, pressing the left side of the D-pad takes you to the messaging area, where you can start working on a text message.

To add a contact to a text message, you just hit the D-pad button and then you can choose to go to the contacts list, or opt for a recently used contact or group, a favourite contact, see the log or add a new number. It is fast and easy.

At the bottom of the screen, there's a menu that enables you to add a wide range of attachments, including video, images, sound clips, calendar entries, and streaming links. You can even jump out to the camera, take a photo and it will be processed and added to a message straight away.

We can't really fault Nokia for slickness and ease of use here. That also goes for keypad itself, which is comfortable and enables you to knock out text messages at good speed.

Messages are threaded, so it's very easy to see the trail of a conversation and reply to incoming messages.

Mobile email is a slightly different matter. You go through Ovi and can use an Ovi Mail email address or another email address. Like us, you may well need to enter SMTP and POP server details in addition to your user name and password if you don't want to use Ovi.

Unfortunately, you're only offered this option after an attempt has been made to find server details automatically, which in our case meant an unnecessarily wait.

Add to that the slowness of typing out replies and the smallness of the screen and mobile email on the Nokia C2-01 is all a bit too much of a faff for us.

You can also do IM, but even after updating itself our Nokia C2-01 only offered Ovi IM and not other popular services such as Yahoo or Google Talk, so it's all a bit limiting.

If you're interested in mobile messaging for anything beyond SMS, our best advice is to look elsewhere.