Nokia 3510

Modern mobile phones include features previously found only in handheld computers and Nokia's 3510 is typical, offering Wap, GPRS compatibility and Multimedia Messaging Services (MMS), as well as five games, a basic organiser, a stopwatch and a calculator.

Nevertheless, its main appeal is to those who like fun phone features - it offers Midi ring tones and can also download new games.

We find the majority of mobile phone ring tones slightly less appealing than the sound of car alarms, so we weren't especially impressed by the more musical polyphonic ones. Rather than spewing a single beeping tone, the 3510 sounds like four types of harmonious beeping at once, so its ringing is made up of irritating chords rather than irritating beeps.

When used for calls, the phone's maximum volume was insufficient to hear callers when on noisy pavements or inside pubs, and the cover colours clashed so much that they seemed to be picked at random.

Despite all of that, this is a reasonably good phone. Nokia claims that the 3510's battery lasts for up to 13 days on standby and 4.5 hours of calls, and we found it very impressive indeed - the best we've seen on a phone so far.

The monotone screen is large and the menus are easy to use. They include settings for vibrating ring tones, memory space for 400 contacts and the usual voice-activated dialling, predictive text messaging, text chat, games and Wap service options.

The newest facility it offers is MMS, a service that allows you to receive and use sounds (such as more ring tones) and images added to text messages. However, you can't create your own ring tones or send MMS messages.

At £149, we'd hesitate to recommend this phone wholeheartedly because you can get smaller, lighter models for less. Compared with any phone more than a year old, however, the 3510 is probably smaller, lighter and lasts much longer between charges.

If you want to see MMS and like the sound of more musical ring tones, you'll find this phone is ideal.

DETAILS
Price: £149 with Virgin Mobile contract

Contact: Virgin Mobile 0845 600 0070
www.nokia.co.uk