A few weeks ago, I took a look at Nokia 1200, available for less than £ 20 on Virgin Mobile Pay As You Go The 1200 is a really basic and, therefore, it has limited appeal. So if you want something with a little more class and can afford to spend a little more money, and the aircraft in the spotlight this time could be a better bet.

A £ 44 Nokia 1650 is the competition for customers as Fly SLT100, again available on Virgin Mobile PAYG. The advantage the Nokia 1650 has is that a SIM free handset, you can shop around for a good SIM only tariff that suits you.

I must say that I took for the Nokia 1650 immediately. Of course, it is plasticky feel, but it is rather neat in black, silver and cream delivered to the version I was sent. The online store Nokia also has a red and silver option if you want something that stands out from the crowd a little more.

In terms of size and weight, there is not much between the present and the mobile Nokia 1200. At 104mm high, 44 mm wide, 18mm thick and weighing 80g, it is very close to 1200 of 102 x 44 x 17.5mm and 77g. Indeed, these two devices are very light and very pocketable.

What differentiates the two, however, is their ease of use with 1650 are significantly improved in all three important aspects of it, namely, data capture, quality screen and software.
The 1200 has a rubbery numberpad, shortcut buttons and navigation key. This time it is the same for everyone, but the navigation key which is a physical button. The build quality is better, but molding and rubber around the numeric keys offers a raised bottom edge which makes finding and beat them easier rather than on 1200. The same goes for the call and end keys. Only two SoftMenu keys are completely flat. If I have one gripe is that there is no press to select function of the navigation pad. You must use a button to select an item selected.

The screen measuring 35 mm in height and 28 mm wide and I measured 1.8 inches on the diagonal. It is 65 miles CSTN color 128 x 160 pixels on offer. Not quite to the point, then, but a big improvement over the mono screen 1200, and to be honest, it was fine for basic operations such as the number of numbers and reading text messages.

In the absence of Web or WAP browser you will not be tempted to stretch on the screen software. Indeed, large print used for the number of numbering and with other information such as text messages, it is very easy to see what you’re doing.

This could be extremely useful to former users who are squinting at small text can be something of a trial. By SMS reading, however, it means that you must scroll if the messages are more than 20 words.

The user interface on the 1650 is far superior, even if it uses the same series 30 operating system, as 1200. It is a long way behind the curve in terms of capacity, but with options arranged vertically in a menu you can see three choices at once, which makes it feel more accessible than is the case the 1200.

You can set the right button to offer a variety of menu choices, including software and settings, so you can quickly get to what you use most frequently. One of them is something that the 1650 replica of 1200 - its torch feature.

It is an LED on the top of the phone, which can be turned on or off at will. As it is a useful little feature that I’m surprised more mid-range and high-end devices do not take into account.

There is little in the ultra small box of the aircraft. Besides supplying the charger, which uses teeny Nokia handset connector, you get a thin and small printed manual and stereo headphones. It is reasonable quality, although its 2.5 mm connector is disappointing if not surprising.

The headset can be used for hands-free calling, but not for listening to your own music as there is no player in. It is an FM radio, though. I had more than two business days of the music of this situation. Indeed, battery life is quite impressive in general. Nokia says it is good for 8 hours of talk and 420 hours of standby time.

It is the type of device, you can leave for several days on the trot between refills. The danger, of course, with this long battery life is that you forget to charge it at all and find the phone is dead when you want to use it.

You probably will not be surprised to learn at this stage there is no capacity expansion memory on the handset. Its internal 8 MB is what you get. Really, for a phone without Media Player and no camera this should be sufficient. In some cases, memory is limited, for example, you can store up to 250 SMS and 500 contacts (and SIM card capacity).

The device supports five directories so you can share the phone between several people and they can have their own list of contacts. Each contact entry can belong to more than a telephone directory. You must enter the “shared contacts list rather than a specific directory so that it works, if. It might have been easier to be able to allocate contacts Directories once they were in the device, and move about as necessary.

Bluetooth is absent from the Nokia 1650. There is also no real timetable. Instead it is a “reminder”. You can save things you need to remember and attach them to a date and time, but it is. Nor is there synchronization with PC, although it is still understandable given the phone limited functionality.

Other applications include a talking clock, which you can use as an alarm - in this case, a human voice continues to tell you the time until you turn it off. You can also use the FM radio as the alarm in this case, you wake up to your current pre-selected radio station.

Rounding things, there is also a calculator, unit converter, expenditure recording, timer, stopwatch and ringtone composer. Oh, and, last but not least, the phone is dual band.

The Nokia 1650 is certainly a step up compared to 1200. It is still really only for those who want a basic device with a minimum of extras, but if you can afford extra cash of its free SIM card, it is a viable alternative.