Say hi to the latest Nokia 6131. This clamshell phone is encased in a layer of soft touch paint that feels like rubber, and flips open with a press of the button at the top right hand side of the phone. Quite a smooth idea, but closing it back is not as easy. If you try to do it with one hand, you will feel as if the phone is going to slip and drop anytime. When it's closed, this phone is quite compact, only 92 mm long and 48 mm wide. It's also very light at 102g.

Contrary to the slider Nokia 6280, this new clamshell does not support 3G, which mean users will not enjoy video calls or streaming videos from the mobile community. However, this shell still offers the 2 most popular technologies, GPRS and EDGE Class 10 to cater to all your web activities. When a connection is needed with another device, it could easily be connected through Bluetooth, via Infrared or by USB cable (not included).

The most exciting thing about this phone is the many different themes that comes with the phone. There are 5 different themes and each theme provides its own special ring tone and message alert tone. There are also unique tones that accompany each time you flip open or close the top shell. For example, for the "billiard" theme, you will hear the billiard balls hitting each other when you flip open the phone. Some of the themes like the soccer one also has its own unique animated icons with a soccer ball printed on each icon. Each theme also comes with its own unique screen saver.

The phone comes with email, text messaging (SMS), Xpress audio messaging, instant messaging & multimedia messaging (MMS). The predictive text input & recently used contacts list makes messaging easier for the user. The active standby mode can be activated so that you can set your most frequently accessed functions as icons on your screen. It also allows you to turn on your music player and radio through this virtual menu easily.

32Mb of internal memory is available by default. You can also use the hotswap microSD memory card slot to extend the phones memory if required. The slot is hidden inside the back cover, not so easily accessible.

You can find two interesting inter-device in the phone. The Presenter allows you to control your PowerPoint presentations with your phone via bluetooth. The Sensor, on the other hand, allows you to put pictures and other media files into a folio that can be accessed and used by other Sensor users.

This new shell phone comes with 2 pre-installed Java games, the new Soccer 3D and Snake 3. On top of its Java capabilities, it has a very new ability to run .swf flash files. Thus, users can enjoy their very first mind challenging Sudoku puzzle on their device in Flash file format.

The simple media player plays many music formats like MP3, MP4, AAC, AAC+ and WMA. Music quality on the speaker sounds better now with its new improved technology. When music is played when the shell is closed, the name of the current song played and artist strings itself on the external mini display. The music player is quite satisfactory, but we still expect a better one to rival the Sony Ericsson Walkman Series. The phone also comes with the usual FM stereo radio and Visual Radio.

The phone supports the highly melodious 64-chord/voice polyphonic MIDI ringing tones. You can also set MP3 and AAC music files as your ring tone if the MIDI bores you too much.