The Nokia 1600 mobile has a speaking clock, which was a novel feature when the phone was launched in 2005. A user could use the speaking clock by pressing the asterisk ("*") button during the display of the home screen. The phone also includes a ringtone composer which allows creating custom ringtones. Pre-composed ringtones can be transferred through a data cable. The phone has a basic calculator which can perform only addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. There are 14 pre-defined themes with 14 wallpapers and menu backgrounds. The menu features animated icons.