Nokia C2-01 review

Nokia C2-01 review: Battery life

The 1020mAh battery in the Nokia C2-01 sounds unbelievably under specified, but in fact, it doesn't have to drive a huge screen or manage incredibly power sapping processes, and we found it was quite adequate.

Nokia says the battery is good for up to 8 hours 45 minutes talk on GSM, 4 hours 30 on 3G, and on standby it will last for 430 hours on GSM, 450 on 3G.

We found that we easily got two days of life from the Nokia C2-01, and with frugal usage that might well stretch to three. Long battery life is a key advantage of an undemanding candybar handset.

With no GPS or Wi-Fi to rock the boat and fancier things like DLNA nowhere to be seen, there's really just music playback and 3G to drain the battery.

Apps

The mapping application of choice is Ovi Maps, but with no Wi-Fi for downloading data and no GPS for pinpoint accuracy, we'd suggest it's best forgotten about. If you want mapping on a mobile phone, do yourself a favour and find a smartphone with Wi-Fi, GPS and a much bigger screen.

There are lots of apps pre-loaded. We've already mentioned the likes of a stopwatch, countdown timer, notes taker, calculator, to-do list, alarm clock and calendar. There's also a unit converter, Flickr client and size converter for clothing. And there's a smattering of games, too.

You can download more over the Ovi store, so you can keep the Nokia C2-01 refreshed with new stuff. But doing so is nowhere near the compelling experience it is with handsets that have bulging stores that are easy to access and which offer fast downloading over Wi-Fi or faster HSDPA. Think of any Android phone, such as the Samsung Galaxy Ace, or the iPhone.