Nokia 6233

Discontinued
1st December 2005

The Nokia 6233 is a business-orientated 3G phone with a 240x320 pixel display, expandable memory and a 2 megapixel digital camera, expected to be available during Q1 2006.

This is a fairly conservatively styled phone, and as the model designation suggests, Nokia are pitching this slightly above the popular Nokia 6230i handset. Although it's a hugely more powerful phone than the 6230i in terms of specifications, the Nokia 6233 is only slightly heavier at 110 grams compared to 99 grams for the 6230i.

It's not a smartphone though - unlike the N-series and E-series 3G phones, or even the Nokia 6680, this is a Series 40 device which means that the software in less sophisticated than a Nokia smartphone, and it's not expandable in the same way. However, we understand that the Nokia 6233 will be priced at around €320 before subsidy and taxes, which makes it pretty good value.

Overall, the Nokia 6233 comes with a pretty feature rich package. Starting with the screen, the 240x320 pixel TFT panel is capable of displaying 262,000 colours - which is hugely better than the 208x208 pixel panel in the 6230i. The 2 megapixel camera on the back is a pretty standard affair with 8X digital zoom, but no flash. There's no video calling either, as Nokia don't seem to think that this is important in a business phone.

The Nokia 6233 takes microSD (TransFlash) memory cards to expand the 70Mb of internal memory up to a maximum of 2Gb. We're disappointed to see that Nokia have chosen to use yet another type of memory card in this device, when we're already seeing a proliferation of different cards in Nokia handsets (RS-MMC in the E60, MMC in the 6680 and N70 and miniSD in the 6270).

Multimedia support is average - the 6233 can play back MP3 and AAC audio plus MPEG4 and H.263 video plus some other formats. There's no support for Real or Windows media types though. One nice touch is a built-in FM radio. Of course, as the 6233 is a 3G phone it can also play back streaming multimedia, and it supports Nokia's "Visual Radio" application too. As an added bonus, the 6233 has twin internal speakers too.

The email client on the 6233 comes with a spam filter, which is a nice touch. On top of that there's a WAP 2.0 browser and the usual array of PIM functions and utilities that you get with a Nokia handset these days.

It's a tri-band GSM 900/1800/1900 device with WCDMA/UMTS 3G, plus GPRS, EDGE and HSCSD data. Local connectivity is through Bluetooth, a USB cable or infra-red. Physically, the 6233 measures 108x48x18mm, weighs 110 grams and has a maximum of 3.1 hours talktime on 3G and just 4 hours talktime on GSM (which is on the short side). Maximum standby time is 14 days.

The is also a related handset, the Nokia 6234 which is almost identical but has been customised for use on the Vodafone network worldwide.

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