Nokia 6315i (Verizon Wireless)

THE GOOD: The Nokia 6315i has decent call quality and a broad range of features including Bluetooth, a speakerphone, and EV-DO capability.

THE BAD: The Nokia 6315i's design is dull, and the controls are poorly designed. Also, music and video quality were uninspiring.

THE BOTTOM LINE: Though it works fine as just a phone, the Nokia 6315i doesn't quite deliver on its 3G multimedia promises.

I'll be frank by saying the Nokia 6315i doesn't offer much in terms of design. Instead of resembling the slick 6305i, it looks more like its other Nokia/Pantech sibling, the basic Nokia 6215i. Sporting an angular, boxy flip phone shape with a dull black and silver color scheme, the 6315i hardly looks like a multimedia phone save for the dedicated music-player buttons on the front flap. At 3.5 by 1.9 by 0.7 inches and 3.5 ounces, the 6315i is neither big nor small, but it does make a nod toward the thin-phone craze. The stubby antenna adds a bit more girth, but the phone has a solid feeling in the hand; the opening mechanism felt somewhat loose.

The external display measure 1 inch (96x96 pixels) and shows 65,536 colors. It's a nice effort overall as it displays not only the date, time, signal strength, and battery life, but also photo caller ID. You can change the wallpaper and the clock style on the display, but no other options are customizable. It also acts as a viewfinder for self-portraits, but you must go into the camera option to activate this feature. Speaking of which, the camera lens and flash are inconveniently located on the top rear of the phone.

The 1.3-megapixel camera takes pictures in five resolutions (1,280x960; 640x480; 320x240; 176x144; and 160x120) and comes with a 3-, 5-, or 10-second self-timer; brightness and white-balance controls; landscape and portrait modes; three color effects; and three shutter sounds, plus a silent option. There's also a flash and a 2X digital zoom, though it's unusable at the highest resolution. And if you're ever lost in the dark, the flash provides a meager amount of light. The video camera records clips in one resolution (176x144) with sound and at 15 frames per second. The flash and the zoom are usable here too, and you can adjust the brightness and white balance. Clips are limited to a short 15 seconds. Once you're done with your work, you can save it to the 6315i's internal memory--it comes with 21.5MB of shared space--but you're better off using a Micro SD card. Despite being somewhat blurry, photo quality was average for a 1.3-megapixel camera. Colors were fine, but objects were a bit fuzzy.

Excellent phone. I used it for one month before discovering I actually need a full PDA phone for work. Lots of great features including a very stable bluetooth signal. Takes awesome pictures and plays music pretty well.