Nokia 1661 Prepaid Phone, Black
Stay in touch with all your contacts and keep your busy life organized with the Motorola Renew W233, and pay the way you want with prepaid and postpaid calling plans from T-Mobile Pay As You Go. A great choice for those looking for a simplified cell phone for on-the-go communications, the Nokia 1661 offers essential mobile phone functionality. It also features an FM radio (headset required), speakerphone for handsfree communication, calendar, phone book with storage for 500 contac…
Buy Nokia 1661 Prepaid Phone, Black at Amazon
Sep 10th, 2009 at 9:59 am
For $20, this is a bargain replacement phone. I put in my existing T-mobile SIM and it worked perfectly.
Pros:
-Bright colorful screen
-Slim
-Flashlight
-FM radio that works
Cons:
-People report they cannot hear me well.
-The keys are slippery, noisy, and hard to press. If you do a lot of texting, you may want a better keypad.
-FM radio require Nokia plug
Sep 10th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
So my wife’s nice T-Mobile cell decides to quit 2 months before the end of her contract. Naturally, getting a replacement from T-Mobile was a big rip-off, they got you vs you got them when contract expires. So, I stumbled on this prepaid, and since the other review confirmed it would accept the regular SIM card from the T-Mobile cells, and with its $20 price, became a no brainer. Got it activated with its own SIM, then swapped in my wife’s original SIM card and vola, she got a working cell for couple months until she can get a real one.
Now, this cell is small, light, kind of cute, but has no volume adjustment (so little hard to hear the other caller), even thought they hear you fine. The other problem was the way it jumbled up the contact list that came on the old SIM card, (when a contact had more than 1 number, it ended up showing multiple name listing for each number, so John 1 was for work number, John 2 for Cell, John 3 for home …etc). Another issue is the reception, we always had full T-Mobile bars at our home, but this one was fluctuating between 1-3 bars, so it may prove to be a problem with dropped calls, lets see. Furthermore, wife complained about the keypad, sending a text message was a chore when compared with her old phone, but it still worked fine. Don’t expect blue tooth capability, but it did come with a wired head phone (useless for her since it is an insult to use it, lol). The charger had an odd port (not the standard USB, what is the problem with these manufacturers)????
Anything good?!! Well, it works, is stylish and is very cheap, so I stretched it and gave it 3 stars.
Sep 10th, 2009 at 2:52 pm
Very nice basic phone. I think they’ve deliberately gone with a cheap-and-cheerful look on the side and back plastic to avoid looking too good next to more expensive phones. Shame, as the front is very clean and stylish.
For me it replaced the Nokia 1608 – the previous cheapo candy-bar phone from T-Mobile prepaid. This is a major step up and addresses everything I didn’t like about that phone. Very good high resolution screen showing plenty of text, keys which are much nicer to use (not perfect), it looks better and it’s very slim and unobtrusive in a pocket. It has a ringtone which isn’t an annoying tune, which is a major step up!
The keys could be easier to use – I wouldn’t want to try to use them by feel in a pocket, though they work much better than they look like they would. They also click a bit loudly, so any kids wanting to text unnoticed in the pocket in class will not like this phone.
Shame the radio doesn’t work out of the speakerphone speaker.
In case anyone misses it, ear volume is left-right on the 4-way, during a call.
If it dies when overcharged I’ll be back to change my review, but I assume the other reviewer was just unlucky.
Edit: I did see some wierdness when it refused to take a charge. I popped the battery out and in and all is well again. We’ll see.