Great phone for travellers - Nokia C-100

We recently traveled to Europe from Australia for 7 weeks and I didn't want to take my normal Aussie 'smart phone' in case I inadvertently ran-up enormous data charges by using my carrier's very convenient, but not cheap, Global Roaming service. Global Roaming allows you to make and receive calls and texts while using your normal phone account in a different country. Except for some reason, and dispite our carrier claiming that you could, we couldn't use Global Roaming with our Aussie phones while in New Zealand early last year. And yes, we had 'turned-on' the Global Roaming service through our carrier's website.

I had heard horror stories from friends who took an iPhone or equivalent smart phone that uses data services with them and they returned to Australia to be greeted by phone bills costing thousands of dollars.

I guess like most families we've outgrown several mobile phones and as I'm somewhat of a hoarder I don't usually throw them out - um, recycle them, I mean. Every couple of years we seem to update our phones as our mobile plan changes over. So we had a few phones lying around in different states of usability. But they were locked to our Australian carrier. It wasn't difficult to unlock most of them and it didn't cost anything to do so because they were out-of-plan. So our kids each got one of the recently superseded phones, unlocked so they could use overseas SIMs in them while they were traveling (separate to us), and I needed another phone that I could use for Beth and me while we were traveling.

I was in Officeworks for another reason and saw that they carried a few unlocked, 'purchase outright' phones for sale. Officeworks was selling this cute little unlocked Nokia phone for something like $59.

What made me buy this Nokia C-100 instead of less expensive phones was mainly because the C-100 supports two SIM cards in the phone at the same time. There are two different SIM carriers within the phone. You can't use both of the SIMs at the same time, you have to switch between them. Having two SIMs in the one phone let me keep my Aussie post-paid SIM card and use a pre-paid 'Mobicarte' from French carrier Orange for most of the calls and texts, and switch between the two through a couple of easy button clicks to 'Activate' the other SIM.

Why would I want to do this? Well, I was able to daily check for any messages sent to my Australian phone then respond using the French account as that was cheaper to do, and it became very handy when we were traveling in Italy and my Orange pre-paid Mobicarte was out of credit, but we couldn't purchase a recharge until we got back to France. (Don't get me started about trying to purchase a recharge on-line...) Using my Aussie SIM I was able send texts or make calls from that account to let the kids know we were still around. Sending texts using the Global Roaming did add significantly to my Aussie phone bill when we got home. But it was like a communications safety blanket.

Here's my very informal review of the C-100.

Likes:

• It has an extremely easy-to-use calculator in the phone, lots easier than any other phone I've used. Handy when my wife couldn't remember what the AUD/EUR exchange rate meant when considering buying those wonderful shoes/bags/purses/coats/jumpers...
• It has a built-in flashlight (torch) that was handy in preventing broken toes caused by crashing into furniture at night while searching for the toilet in a different hotel room every second day or so. Night time in some of those rooms was very dark!
• It is very easy to switch between the two installed SIMS - there's no need to turn the phone off to activate the different SIM.
• All my contacts were on the Aussie SIM, yet I could access them while using the French SIM. But I had to have the Aussie SIM activated in order to edit the contacts (like when I needed to add the international prefixes onto phone numbers that I needed to call or send texts to.)
• It's very small and easy to carry around.
• The battery life was excellent! Probably because I was mainly using it simply to receive and send text messages.
• And come-on, looking like that, who's going to steal it? Pickpockets ran away when I flashed it at them.

Dislikes:

• My major complaint about the C-100 is that the keypad is very loud, giving a substantial 'click' sound each time a key was pressed. Not a problem for me, but potentially annoying for people close by while I was texting. Or a wife trying to sleep while I'm wide awake and checking my messages (I was told it wasn't just 'potentially' annoying in this case.)
• The screen is quite basic and small.
• It's not a very 'fast' phone; more expensive phones operate faster but for the price I paid for this phone it is a very minor gripe.
• The central 'button' inside the navigation buttons doesn't actually do anything, unlike my 'smart' Nokia. This just took some getting used to.

Well there you go, the number of 'Likes' outnumbers the 'Dislikes', so it must be a good phone.

Now I think I'm kind of hooked on a dual SIM phone when travelling. And I'd certainly recommend this little Nokia if your needs are similar to mine.

Enjoy!