The Somewhat quirky style was not to everyone's taste and initially LP refused to be seen with it but then after a bit of convincing (known locally as a few beers) he took it out for the night. Now we don't mean he took it to a nice restaurant and bought it flowers, instead it became his only communications tool for one night in the big smoke of London.

First up it was a bit of a reunion for LP who has been a convert to Sony Ericsson for the last 3 years after becoming bored with Nokias lacklustre design. Well the Nokia 6230 is not lacklustre that's for sure and while LP kept it in a pocket most of the time there was a hint of recognition when he managed to easily navigate through the excellent Nokia menu system.

Using the Nokia 6230 it quickly dawns on you that this is pitched squarely at a segment of the market, it is an advanced phone with many "business features" but it is not trying to be a PDA replacement or smartphone, the PIM features are fairly sparse, no calendar fields or lengthy contacts details instead just the basic phonebook for storing your contacts details.

Navigating the 6230 menus is a breeze, Nokia got this bit right some 10 years ago and While Sony Ericsson seem to have cracked it Motorola are still playing catch up, the 6230 has a 27.3mm square screen which gives good colour representation and a sharp image.

Measuring 103 mm x 44 mm x 20 mm and a shade under 100 grams the 6230 is not small but then it's not too big either, in fact it feels pretty spot on, the build seems to be good and the plastic manages to look fairly classy despite it being just a bit more workman like than other phones in Nokias range. Under the back cover lies a BL-5C lithium Ion battery which is good for about 5 hours of talk time and in the right conditions 200 hours of standby time which should be enough even for demanding road warriors.

We'll get on to application in a minute but storage is key to this phone, there is a shared 6mb of memory within the 6230 and it has a MMC (multimedia card) slot for external memory of which a 32mb card is provided with the phone, using MMC means a whopping 512mb can be added to the phone for just £60 which should come in handy given the memory eating capabilities of the Nokia.

The First memory hungry application is the VGA resolution camera, it can take snaps at 640 x 480 pixels which can equate to a 55 - 100k file, the images were not bad considering its just webcam resolution and the 10 second self timer is a novel add on to a camera phone, but the optics are already outclassed by the next generation of mobiles with 1 mega pixel cameras inside.

On the Tube there are very few things you can do, apart from reading all the adverts several times and not looking at the other travellers the most popular pastime is listening to music, but LP was without Ipod on this trip but then that was a deliberate ploy to get him to use the MP3 player in the Nokia 6230. Driving the music player was easy in the usual Nokias style and with a 512mb card loaded there was a wide range of mp3's on the phone, the standard wired headphones do an ok job in blocking out the background tube noise and we'd have to say that this is an excellent feature for the daily commuter, who needs a £200 Ipod?

Once the tube got back above ground LP had a play with the SMS and MMS capabilities sending a few texts using predictive T9 and also making an MMS from a shot of a rather drunken young lovely who was also on the "vomit comet" as the last London tubes are often known. Use of the 6230 on a tube proved that the phone is quite tenacious when it comes to holding onto a signal. It was often still able to make a call when both the Motorola V600 and SE T68i were long dead, the audible quality of calls is also good with a nice loud earpiece for those noisy environments.

Data is provided for with 2.5g GPRS and Edge technology, allowing the 6230 to send a receive emails and surf using a wap browser, the EDGE system should provide up to 236.8 Kbit/s connectivity but as its about as widely available as Shergar it should not be a factor in buying this phone.

Additional connectivity is provided via Bluetooth and IrDA plus the ability to use a cabled connection, the Bluetooth worked well with both Nokias and non Nokia headsets and also we managed to use the audio gateway from a Bluetooth equipped PC.

Overall the Nokia 6230 is a very competent phone, packed with features that all work (unlike some phones) and with a great menu and a nice feel and high build quality. It is not a smartphone it stops short of providing office communications tools but then how many of us use them? this is a phone for talking , texting and listening to music with the MP3 player being its strongest feature. Available for £175 without sim or contract its one of the smartest moves for a contract free upgrade available right now.

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