NEC 515
Average Ratings
PIECE OF JUNK!!
This thing is a piece of junk! Today i was talking on the phone while walking through a target store, and i got disconnected several times due to signal strength. It also has about half of the battery life that it should. most of the battery life is probably being used in the 2.5 inch color display, which is really nice but the features on the phone are not. I have talked to others about at&t's cell phones and i have heard really good things about the Siemens M56. It is not a flip phone, but it has the best signal strength. For those of you who like it, i think you are crazy.
Antenna is at the bottom = poor phone
The phone is beautiful. The signal strength is not. The internal antenna is located at the bottom, therefore giving the phone wild fluxuations with signal strength.
I kept my phone and my wife's phone (also AT&T GSM) on my desk for an hour and watched the signal. Hers went from 3-4 bars every 10 minutes or so. Mine went from bars to 4 bars, and back again, several times.
I did this test in several locations with the same results.
Also, for being a "gamer's phone", this phone severely lacks games. There are only a few on the AT&T website, and 2 are included. One, the star fighter game, is pretty cool. The base ball game sucks, its based on 1 button push and a random number generator. There is no strategy.
The IR port is useless. It can only connect with another NEC 515 phone. Fortunately, it does have a USB port.
Not having a belt clip is rather annoying too.
All in all, I've had the phone for a few days and plan on returning it for a Panasonic GU87.
It was a good start for U.S. NEC phones, but...
Pros:
No external antenna
Sturdy design
Excellent screen for pics and messaging
Decent battery life
Easy menus (once you figure them out, of course)
Easy mMode access
Easy email access
Excellent SMS/EMS/MMS/email messaging design - very easy to use
Excellent calendar design
Text copy and paste feature
Excellent phone book design
Excellent call records design
Killer screen resolution and color depth
Cons:
Signal strength fluctuates (due to internal antenna placement, I'm sure)
Poor web browser implementation
Web browser apparently not up to current spec making some websites useless (AOL IM site, for instance)
Uses DoCoMo Java VM
Split second cross talk when making calls
Not all buttons light up
Expensive for features included
Voice volume buttons on outside of case could have been used for other functionality such as ringer volume
No MP3 support
Limited storage space (1M)
Up to opinion:
No external display
No BlueTooth
No Camera
Poor selection of stock ring tones for those who hate music as a ring (like myself)
There are a lot of cons.. yet I still have the phone. The messaging, menuing, phone book design and calendar were my biggest needs. I still like it even though there are some issues. The 525 (as most have stated) addresses most of those issues from what I've read.
--Russ
NEC 515HDM
Bought this phone through AT&T yesterday and receive it today. Phone is great specially the colored screen and the reception is excellent. I was a little disappointed because it didn't have a voice dial and external caller id. I'm still getting use to it, but when I went on this site today and saw that a 525 was coming out with the features I wanted plus a built in camera I might return this phone back and wait for the 525 instead.
It's ok......
I used this phone Unlocked on Cingular, but it was AT&T branded.
Being a quadband phone, I thought that this phone would have pretty decent RF. I was surprised by how many dead spots there are in my house that this phone hcan't handle... I go around the house with my RAZR and Nokia 6620 and I get no dropped calls, but for some reason this phone is a lot more picky....
The screen is beautifull, and the phone is pretty light.
As far as features go, I was upset that it didn't have a speakerphone. I think if they would have added that, it would have made a HUGE difference in my rating of this phone.
So, on a features to price ratio.... this phone bites...
Thought it was just Me
Can't believe how lousy this phone is! I switched to GSM and had worries about all of the alleged drop-outs I heard about two years ago. I bought the 515 because it was quad band and needed it for European travel.
PROS:
Nice idea with the different LED colors that can be assigned to individual callers. Lets me see who is calling right a way without opening phone.
Big screen that is clear.
Like to assign individual ring tones too.
CONS:
Terrible drop out rate.(didn't realize antenna is on bottom) signal strength varies too much. Drops out on full bars.
No regular ring tones in it except one.
LOCKS UP-- constantly having to remove battery and reboot.
END button does not respond properly.
Often drops out and locks up at the same time requiring a battery removal and a restart. By then the other person has given up.
Does not always display message light for VM. Very frustrating when I leave a message on the wife's 515 and she does not get it!
H8t the phone!
this is crap..
i work for cingular( formerly att wireless) this is a junk phone.. nec are probably the worst ever. it will freeze up and literally you have to pull the battery out to even turn it off. when we were under att this was one of our models.
WORST PHONE EVER MADE IN THE HISTORY OF BAD PHONES
this would have to be the worst phone i have ever owned. Why? When ever i tried to talk on it and no matter where i was i alway got disconnected and it wasn't the 2nd party and the carrier it was the darn phone. The signal was alway bad and i was not happy with their product. I went back to cingular and told them i want another phone and i swiched it to some motorola phone and the service really good and i could talk for as long as i wanted and where ever i was i never got disconnected. In the end what tryin to say is that the NEC company made the worst possible phones and it could pick up good signal causing line disconnections and it was getting pretty annoying.
Horrible Phone
This was my first phone, and by far the worst that I can imagine. It frequently freezes up when I am in the middle of the conversation and I have to take out the battery to get it working again. Other than that, even if I have 4 bars of service, it periodically does not receive calls, text messages or show the icon that says I have voicemail. Eventually, I get my voicemail and text messages all at once. My service provider was AT&T and I was on a local plan, so out of my state I was on roaming. I went on a trip to visit family, and the phone did not say that I was on roaming, so since it was a new phone I was using it a lot. Also, with the Mmode feature, it told me I had a month free of browsing. And of course, this wasn't true so I was charged an extremely large amount of money. On top of everything else, it has horrible wallpapers, and definitely horrible ring tones. I couldn't find a sensible ring tone, so that I wouldn't be embarrassed when I had a loud and annoying ring tone. This phone is also VERY bulky.
Another problem is that if I dialed a wrong number, it would take me probably over 5 seconds just to end the call because the phone wouldn't respond to me pressing the end key.
Also, one of my friends sent me a picture and it would not let me set the picture as my .
Although, there were a couple things I liked. I liked being able to set the color for the LCD on the front for different people. The phone book was also pretty good, although they didn't give me an option to add an extension.
Overall, don't buy this phone. It's a waste of A LOT of money, and you'll end up being frustrated with it.
