Pros -1) Good reception and this phone beats Sony-Ericsson, Samsung, Motorola (Razr) and Blackberry in this regard.
2) Sturdy but small and compact. Drop it you won't break it.
3) Bluetooth 2.0
4) Flip design means the screen does not get scratched.
5) Good speaker/mic good sound quality both inbound and outbound and on speakerphone.
6) Customizable menu put stuff where you need it. Not where Nokia thinks you need it.
7) Basic VGA camera with usable surprisingly decent pics (good color and resolution but grainy under low light). Video also usable.
8) Good battery life.
9) Quad band means can be used worldwide with no reception problems (Tri-band suffers from reception issues).
10) Keys are nice, large and easy to press with a solid click. All nicely backlit.
11) Micro SD for storing data/music etc 2 GB works fine in mine. All sound/photo/video recording can use this card by default. Can thus record for ages..
12) Battery lasts 3 4 days with some usage thrown in.
13) Loud ring. Robust vibration you won't miss that call.
14) Good mp3 player.
Cons -
1) Does not use USB jack for data or charging.
2) Not as cool looking (like this junk called Razr)
3) Headphone jack proprietary. Charging jack proprietary. Data jack proprietary
4) FM radio requires use of proprietary headphone.
Inspite of cons listed I give this 5 stars for its great reception (my #1 criteria).
Note The other word for "T-Mobile" is "Bad-Reception". This phone will alleviate your woes to a great degree and allow you to continue with the cheaper cell phone provider.
With respect to volume of the voice of the caller, there is a button on the case that controls that. But you can be sure that you can increase the volume at least as much as with any other phone, and probably more than most. I called a friend to test the phone and was told I could be heard loud and clear.
Other pluses, at least for me, are the large keys and the large numbers that appear on the screen when you are dialing a call. Additionally, there is a setting where you can use large letters in the address book and elsewhere.
Being one myself, I think this phone is a very good choice for senior citizens.
For those who want them, there are camera and video, but you must provide your own SD card. You also have a media player, music player, recorder, internet capability, and Bluetooth. I note from the comments of others that they are not up to snuff compared to some of the higher-tech phones that are available, but they are fine for me since mostly I use a phone to make calls. Being able to easily hear the ring tone and the person I am speaking with is reason enough for me to give the phone 5 stars.
The so called "Cellular User Manual" that came with the phone is terrible. Just a couple of pages of text, no illustrations, and of little value. It took me far too long to put in the SIM card, for example, because the directions were not clear. I kept doing what I thought it said to do, but that was not correct. I then went on line with my computer and found a complete user guide, including illustrations, and highly recommend that anyone who buys the phone do the same if the "manual" that comes with the phone is a murky to you as it was to me. You will save a lot of time and frustration. I tried to include the link to a pdf user manual but Amazon apparently does not permit this since it was left out of the published review. I am now editing the review to recommend a Google search for a Nokia 6085 User Guide.
The phone is good looking and has a solid feel. I've had Nokias at different times in the past and know they give good service.I am an international traveler and thought of buying this phone so that I can use local GSM SIM card of the country I travel to. It works well with Germany, India & Australia service providers. I received only phone and AC wall charger in the package but did not receive hands free. This is the only drawback of this phone. So I am removing one star from this rating.Here's what I needed from a phone, which this Nokia 6085 delivers quite well:
1. Does *not* require a data plan. I.e., cheap monthly bill. I currently pay about $42/month for my T-Mobile service, and this phone allows me to keep that plan.
2. Has a decent amount of customizablility. Before I ordered this I tried the Samsung Gravity TXT, which is a current T-Mobile offering that doesn't require a data plan. It's a decent enough phone, but, for example, for its main shortcut menu, the Samsung had a very limited number of options you could assign; in contrast, on my 6085, I can put pretty much any app or setting screen in the shortcut menu.
3. Syncs with my Mac. After pairing via Bluetooth, iSync recognized the phone and transfered my contacts (over 300 of them) without any fuss whatsoever. I didn't even need any 3rd-party plugins. I tried a lot of different things to get the Samsung to talk the Mac, and nothing worked. (Yes you can use iSync with Lion. You just have to save a copy of iSync somewhere before you upgrade to Lion, because iSync isn't included with it. Then, after upgrading, you just put the saved copy of iSync in your Applications folder, and it works just fine!)
4. Cheap up-front cost. I bought one of the refurbished ones listed on this page, and paid $38 including overnight Prime shipping. Now of course, there are many current phones that cost nothing. But this was unlocked, and required no contract extension (although I'll never leave T-Mobile if I can help it). And, if you consider that most talk/text/data plans start at around $80, this phone paid for itself in one month.
5. Easy-to-use buttons; easy navigation. The Samsung had a full QWERTY keyboard, but Nokia's predictive text entry is so good, that I don't really miss a full keyboard. The 6085's buttons are nice and big, with good tactile feedback; my fingers aren't huge, but they aren't small either. The Samsung had an "optical" joystick that drove me nuts; the Nokia has the usual four directional buttons.
Other notes:
I had the 6085's sister model, the 6086, many moons ago, and it was perfect; I kept it so long the case started to get really beat up, but that was after three or four years of use. And the phone's innards worked perfectly until the day I recycled it. (The 6085 and 6086 are exactly the same, except the latter could make calls over wi-fi; I don't need that feature this time around.)
The 6085 was offered by AT&T, so it has that logo printed on it. But this was an unlocked phone, and it works flawlessly with my T-Mobile SIM card.
Another thing that's handy, that many newer models don't have, is its external micro SD slot. You don't have to take off the back cover and remove the battery to get at the memory card. I'm pretty sure that if you buy the USB data cable for this phone, you can plug it into your Mac (or PC) and use the phone as a card reader. (Note that the biggest card this phone will take is 2GB; bigger cards will be un-formattable and unusable.)
If you're looking for a music phone, there are obviously tons of better options than this old shcool Nokia, but it's worth noting that even though you can't plug in a regular set of headphones (at least not that I know of), it *will* stream stereo sound over Bluetooth. And it's got an FM radio, although I don't use it so I can't speak to its quality.
Voice recorder: worked great on my 6086 (used it to record lectures, albeit from the 1st or 2nd row), so I'm pretty sure the 6085 will be the same. If there's enough room in phone's memory (or on the SD card, if you're recording to that), it can record up to 60 minutes at a time.
Voice recognition. Here's another reason I like Nokia. I don't have to pre-record my friends' names before using them for voice dialing. Occaisonally the phone guesses wrong, but most of the time it works quite well.
In conclusion, if you want an Android or iPhone-like device, a big screen, a 7-megapixel camera, or more storage than 2GB, you're obviously not going to get this phone. But if you just need a cheap, reliable, *very* useful talk-and-text device--one that syncs contacts and calendars with your Mac's iSync application right out of the box, then this phone is perfect.Nokia phones have great easy to use menus, always. And, this phone has an added "plus" in that it's buttons are really good for "bigger" (you know like GUY) fingers! The buttons themselves are not "bigger" but they are slightly rounded (as opposed to so many phones with cool flat button pads) and so the buttons feel really secure and you just can really tell what you're pushing...I bought this phone for my husband and I really like it...and so does he.
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