Touch and go

MANILA, Philippines - How much easier would life be if all we had to do was push a few buttons and everything got done?

I wish.

In a world that often seems topsy-turvy, and where the quick fixes don’t normally work, I rely on the comforts of a good cellphone to keep a push button order in my life.

I have often been asked what kind of cellphone works the best. To that, the answer always is it depends on the user. There are some people who will swear by a QWERTY keypad cellphone, others who prefer touch screen and still others who prefer the ever-reliable candybar cellphone.

For as long as it works at getting the message across, it doesn’t really matter what kind of cellphone one uses.

Or does it?

I recently got a chance to try out a Nokia C6-01.

I truly enjoyed the experience because the cellphone was a basic candybar-shaped cellphone. OK, so it was not so basic. But it had that classic look which is always something I welcome when it comes to handsets.

Let me share with you 10 reasons why I enjoyed the Nokia C6-01... although I am not too fond of what it’s called. Because although this cellphone might have some techie-sounding name, it is really quite easy and fun to use.

10. The Symbian 3-powered Nokia C6-01 offers a 3.2-inch touch-screen experience without a slider keyboard. Everything that one needs to do on the phone is done on its touch screen which was simple to configure and even easier to navigate through.

9. Although the cellphone did not have a keyboard it was easy to get a hang of the non-QWERTY keyboard on the touch screen.

8. I liked how quickly I made my Wi-Fi connections. Once connected the Internet browsing and Facebook checking were a breeze and really quite fun. It must have been the HSDPA that made for the faster downloads of music and videos.

7. Shooting photos are also really great. The C6-01 is equipped with an eight-megapixel camera with a flash. I just loved how I spent an evening shooting my dogs as they tried to sleep. I don’t think they were too happy, but I did get some cool photos of the doggies. It made me happy.

6. The two GB microSD card included in the Nokia C6-01 is a blessing since I did take quite a few photos and did do quite a bit of downloading.

5. It also has a very clear screen. The 3.2-inch, 640 x 360 pixel screen is made up of 16 million colors. It looked liked that even if I kept pressing on the screen. I did not get bad visibility because of fingerprint smudges.

4. Scrolling between screens is easy and the use of a double click minimizes accidental presses of the wrong key.

3. Holding down on the screen lets you add custom widgets to the main screen. They can be anything from messages, mail or the calendar to specific websites, apps and games. The simplicity of simply holding down then clicking “Done” when a selection is made is simple. 

2. The texters among us will love that the virtual keys are responsive. That is really important when we are texting in a rush, which for me is 100 percent of the time.

1. Simple, simple, simple. I just love that the C6-01 is such a simple cellphone. There is nothing flamboyant or showy about it. It gets the job done without making the work seem so hard.

Sometimes it is the simple gadgets that make all the difference. The next time someone asks me what cellphone I would recommend, the C6-01 will definitely be on my list.