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The 3230 offers a talk-time of four hours, a standby time of 150 hours, and full charging in and hour and a half. Battery life was just about reasonable and I had to charge every second day or more frequently with heavy use - call quality was fine. There’s 6MB of internal memory and the phone uses RS-MMC cards for extra storage with a 32MB card provided and this is hot swappable by taking the cover off, even with the phone on.

Bluetooth is included and I was able to pair with my Motorola HS850 without issue. However, to get it to answer calls automatically when I opened it, as I do with my V800, I had to tell the phone to connect to the headset automatically without prompting, even after pairing. This is an extra step that isn’t necessary with Sony Ericsson and seems redundant to me.

I have to admit that my initial scorn for the 3230 was worn down by the wealth of features, which are plentiful and on the whole fun. However, thanks to the Series 60 OS, it can be used as a serious tool and applications such as Navicore’s GPS system could be used with it. However, the some of the included applications have only novelty value, and some are not supported in the UK. There’s also no getting away from the fact that the phone looks and feels more like a toy than a tool. This is probably why it’s already available for free on contract form Vodafone and 02.

Verdict

If you ignore the Smartphone tag, the 3230 impresses as a fun 2.5G phone with reasonable battery life and a wealth of features. On that basis it’s worth considering especially as it’s available on contract for free. However, as a business phone it falls short - the keys are far too small and it just doesn’t feel like a quality product.

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