The Finnish mobile phone veteran is really under a lot of pressure to pull of a rabbit out of its mobile phone hat. To its credit, Nokia did try out various smartphones handsets in the recent past like the Nokia Lumia 920 and the Nokia Lumia 820, etc while simultaneously upgrading its Symbian platform. But somehow, it has not been able to come of this mess completely.
A major effort that it did that managed to grab some positive attention was to bring out some highly functional 'Touch and Type' smartphone devices. The Nokia C2-02 is one prominent member that falls under this category of smartphone handsets brought out by the old war horse of the mobile phone industry.
Touch and Type can be a boon or a bane!
The `Touch and Type smartphones are those devices that get you the dual advantage of getting to use the conventional alphanumeric key board as well as indulging in some bit of touchscreen activity. The objective here is to pack of the best of both the worlds – typing on the more familiar physical key board and also getting familiar with the magic that a touch sensitive screen offers. Nokia has in the rent past brought a few smartphones that extend this combined advantage to its users. The Nokia C2-02 is of them that did made a decent impact on the cash registers too.
You may readily point out that this is a great thing for any smartphone handset to have. True. But the problem (if one may call it so) with such dual attractions holding phone devices is that they have one of the features done not very satisfactorily. Thus, you have either the key board slipping up or the touchscreen failing to meet your expectations. Somehow, for most users, the magic that at touchscreen holds is really high. Hence, they get might pissed of they do not find the touch sensitiveness of their phone not up to the mark.
Let us see now, how exactly this observation sees the Nokia C2-02 handset standing up to. Well, we have to say here that Nokia has done a damn good job in the design part of it. The Nokia C2-02 does look and feel like a superior quality and sleek smartphone with its slider that opens to reveal the alphanumeric key board. The touchscreen is also designed and placed nicely and in the right way ion the handset. So far so good.
Touchscreen is unimpressive!
But alas! The Nokia C2-02;s touchscreen fails to leave a happy impression because of the fact that the touch sensitiveness is only of a restiveness kind. Now, this is major, major let down. Come on Nokia! How could you let this golden opportunity to let go by simply not willing to go the distance and offering a classic capacitive touchscreen. This is the need of the hour.
The problem with most resistive touchscreen sporting smartphones is the even those users who are all too familiar using a touchscreen need to poke at the screen more times and often. This can be a major irritant. As at times, all you want is for your handset to either open up quickly enough or worse, clam up! And the wretched screen refuses the device to do either of these seemingly simple but at the same time vital tasks.
The other more deeper problem lies in the effectiveness of, well you guessed it right its fledgling Symbian platform. The Symbian S 40 operating system was expected to perform lot of things. But unfortunately this did not happen and we are left with a situation of seeking most Nokia smartphones (including the present one) possessing splendid hardware but lagging behind miserably on the software front.
Why Nokia has not been able to infuse multitasking and smart dialling features into its operating software is something that will stay in the minds of the mobile phone experts for a long, long time to come. If only Nokia could have somehow got more life into Symbian, we would have witnessed a totally different story unfolding before us.
Even the absence of 3G and Wi-fi would not have hurt this much as the lack of mulch-tasking and smart dialling features. Nokia cannot deny the simple fact of life that these are features that have been around in smartphones since 2005.
The Nokia C2-02 still has plenty on offer!
This is not to say that Nokia C2-02 does not carry any positivity on it at all. Well, to be honest, it afforest one of the form factors as mentioned above. The 2.6 inches screen does hold your attention. The alphanumeric key board more than does its job. The camera is is. The bluetooth and USB ports also manage to keep you smiling. As does the media player.
And the relatively low prices has always been a major attraction with all Nokia phones. The Nokia C2-02 is no exception.
Conclusion
The Nokia C2-02 has been badly let down by its operating software. Still, we would recommend the smartphone device to users who are only beginning to come to grips with a touchscreen handset. And are not heavily on to mulch-tasking.
