Nokia 6030 review: Cheap, yet a show off

Passive means slow

Unfortunately, this holds true for the 6030 display. It has been manufactured with CSTN technology. In terms of quality, the display fits into the middle class category. Yet, although passive, the display is quite easy to read under direct sunlight. It is able to show 65K colors, having 128×128 pixels on a square of 27 mm sides.

Fortunately, the plastic plate of the display is even. The convex "glass", that is sometimes used instead, often makes things worse.

Keys are huge

The keypad is watery. Although the main four-way control button moves in a sure and pleasant way, it waggles too much. The most impeding part of the whole phone, however, turned to be the confirming joystick. It sticks out a lot over the main control button, which results into the user brushing against it much more often than they might be happy to.

Keys are made of glossy plastics • joystick sticks out a lot

Placed around the control button are the context keys and the standard keys for accepting or denying a call. All four fields are really large and are therefore very easy to press. They feature low uplift and excellent reactions.

The numeric keypad is relatively good. It allows for comfortable writing, with all keys being effortlessly reached by one's thumb. When pressed, instead of sharp clicks it gives out pleasant muffle sound. Although the backlighting of the keypad is even, it is relatively weak. Some residual backlighting works under the confirming joystick, too, and helps you take bearings in the dark.

Keypad backlighting is insufficient • the phone in twilight

Well known menu

The design of the menu is a copy of the menus of all other current Nokia phones of the Series 40. You can either pick up items and organize them into a matrix, or use the model of a long list with individual icons. The menu search is possible due to the four-way control button and the cursed on confirming joystick.

One of the most serious minuses of the display is its inability to change the font color. This disadvantage becomes especially obvious on dark wallpapers, where texts are almost, if not completely impossible to read. A perfect example of the mentioned color problem of the display is the following picture of underwater world.

View setup of the main display and the main menu

The left context key has been assigned the "Go to" function. Its menu contains all important items, which are possible to organize. The right functional button as well as all four ways of the main control button can be assigned one selected menu function.

Contacts

Nokia 6030 uses simultaneously both the phonebook, which is saved on the SIM card, and the entries in the phone's memory. The memory takes in up to 300 names. It is not much, but on the other side, this is an amount, of the whole of which the target customer of 6030 will hardly ever make use of.

The phonebook • types of numbers • contact details • searching

Each name can be assigned 5 different phone numbers, an email, a web address, a street address and a note. Individual contacts cannot be given neither a picture, nor a ringing melody. This disadvantage could possibly be made up for by filing the contacts into groups, which can be subsequently differentiated by using different melodies. This is however an emergency and inconvenient approach.

Contact groups list • only groups can be assigned different melodies and thus get demarked

The phone does not have call filters. Even though you are offered earphones with a microphone, you will not be able to dial a number by using your voice. Searching is based on consecutive entering of the relevant characters. As for the phone call itself, one can listen to it in the speaker using the loud handsfree. The latter may be good quality and loud enough for the owners of Nokia 6030, but as far as the opposite speaker is involved, there is no doubt he/she will complain about the weak factuality and the noise.