Not everyone wants a phone that plays music and takes pictures, and not everyone wants a phone on a contract. Some people simply want a mobile base suitable for voice calls and a little more interested in using their phone from time to time only, and want to keep their payments current on Pay As You Go

For these people that Nokia made its entry level as 1200, and if you’re willing to pay 15 pence a minute for the first five minutes of calls to landlines and mobile phones on the same network and after that 5p , 35p a minute for them on other networks, 3p for texts to other on the same network and 10p for texts outside the network, then Virgin Mobile is the ideal place for the Nokia 1200.

There is really no other word to use to describe this mobile than “basic”. The hardware design and features are precisely all. So go ahead in this review with eyes wide open on this front and you’ll fine with him.

What we have here is a small mobile phone which must be adapted in most pockets without causing a fuss. It is a little fatty 17.5mm, but short enough to 102mm and 44mm thin. It is also held just 77g.

I have the impression that the physical design of this device was set in a manner that does not faze the future user, which I judge not to be too technologically sophisticated or unwilling to become.

With this in mind that the basic black and grey color is conservative, and the simple and minimalist buttons offer the bare basics of what a mobile phone. There are no side buttons at all.

The phone charges via Nokia stuck small power adapter and plug so, plus a 2.5 mm headphone jack, sit on the lower edge of the phone. There is no helmet provided with the mobile, si. Anything you get in his small box is itself the phone, battery, charger and a user guide. Even this last point is absent from my review sample, so I can not tell you if it is printed or on CD - but I suppose that the old one, given the low-tech target user group for this phone. There are a couple of features at your fingertips that even the least technically-minded should be able to get around their heads.

You can configure the right to access a series of shortcuts to the things you use frequently. You just hit the button, then scroll to offer and click the button again when the one you want is highlighted. The configuration utility is linked to the key you have no trouble finding when you want to change things.

Perhaps even more useful is the light on the top of the phone whose sole function is to be a flashlight. You can turn it on and off via the right button, and I must say it is practised on a number of occasions.

Meanwhile, three of the four directional buttons on the navigation pad can lead to the creation SMS, the phone calendar and contacts book.

Now do not get all excited about smartphonishly the calendar. Although that is what Nokia calls, it is actually a simple way to note that you want to receive a reminder. You can make a brief note and give the alarm. It is probably good for birthdays or appointments, but not good for anything that requires more than a few words of notes. Even if you could bother T9, there is no place for more than a dozen words in the notes.

The keypad and other keys are located under a rubber protection. Although this design is nothing like the plume of different keys, I find striking is what I wanted to be unproblematic.

The navigation button is a bit more of a challenge. Its outer rim has a function as I explained earlier, but its center is not a key selection. In fact, the centre has no function at all. It did catch me by a number of times, but probably not trouble anyone who chooses the Nokia 1200 phone as the first.

The screen is woeful by modern standards. It presents 96 x 68 pixel display in a space that measures 2.8cm by 2.3cm wide and deep. It is black and white, which means black pixels on a dark (not white) background.

The Nokia 1200 operates in 30 series. This might not ring any bells, but a few years ago, it was at the cutting edge of Nokia user interfaces. Basically you scroll horizontally through the application groups and click the left button SoftMenu to delve into our offer. It May be cheap for Nokia to implement because it is on the shelf and ready to go, but I’m not sure that the nested menus that work well for the technophobe who might choose this phone.

The device is dual-band GSM without higher grade-capacity communication. Given its target audience I’m not really see this as a question. There is no camera, no browser, no music player, and nothing much more sophisticated than the voices calling and texting offered.

You can set up five different telephone directories with a limit of 200 entries, which could be useful, I think, if more than one person shares the motive, and there are only 60 SMS messages in memory.

On the plus side battery life is extraordinary. Nokia rates the camera as a good seven hours of discussions, 390 hours of standby time. I billed left alone and a few calls and use this flashlight for a full twelve days before starting to write this review, and its battery is almost always alive.