A few days ago I mentioned that Nokia might be on a comeback trail, thanks to a good mix of low-end and super premium phones, which do away with odd designs that plagued Nokia product line for nearly two years. The new line-up has a certain simple elegance to them, which allows the phones to be what they were meant to be: phones.
I am frankly tired of new fangled designs – the slider or the rotate phone – each one forcing me to learn how to use the phone ….
Again! Call me old fashioned, but I just want either a candy bar or a flip phone. Ironically, the mass market bears this out. Most of the phones which have been monster hits are either candy stick or flip-phones. Samsung made its reputation with flip phones, while Sony Ericsson plotted its return with a super successful T-610 phone. I think these are lessons of the mass market, and thankfully, Nokia is paying attention.
While the gadget lovers might be waiting for the N-Series multimedia phones, Nokia’s bread-and-butter phone for next 12 months is going to be Nokia 6680, a candy bar phone. In the US, it is going to be sold as Nokia 6682, better optimized for the Cingular’s network. (Russell has a mega 7000 word post on 6680, and basically it should be nominated for world’s longest blog post. Guiness Book of World should be calling him soon, I bet!)
Cingular customers, if you are looking for a high end smart phone with the simplicity of a low end phone, I can without hesitation recommend the new Nokia 6682 to you. It is not available as of now, but this will be worth the wait. An heir apparent to oddly designed 7610, this is a well designed phone, especially for business owners.
I got my hands on this phone yesterday, and precisely 24 hours after using this phone, I can safely say that it is going to be as successful as the Nokia 6600/6620 series – two phones that were whole heartedly embraced by the un-teens worldwide.
Sure it doesn’t may not have supermodel good looks of RAZR (which has brain of one as well) or the street cool of a Sony Ericsson s710, but Nokia 6682 is a rock solid phone, with great voice quality. Yeah, how quaint, but important – great voice quality!
But beyond the voice quality, the phone delivers admirably in pretty much every aspect. The keyboard passed my eyes closed test with flying colors. Eyes Closed Test is where; I close and punch a phone number, and checking out if I dialed the correct number. Nokia 6682 got an A+ on this. I like the big lush screen, which is amongst the brightest Nokia has used thus far. The four way navigation key is rock solid, and that should not come as a surprise to anyone who has used the Nokia 6630.
There is more – the camera, the music player, and of course the smart part of the phone, the smart phone. Okay the 1.3 mega pixel camera is better than average, though you are not going to win any photography awards. The built-in flash supposedly should help the photo quality – it doesn’t. The good bit is that Nokia has a little slider screen which covers the camera lens, because I don’t think I am going to be using it very much.
So what about the music player? Good, not great. The headphones which also act as hands free are stylish and have good bass. For people who have short commutes, this is not a bad option to listen to music, but more than 45 minutes of listening to music on this phone is going to become a painful process. However, others might like it, and would be well advised to purchase a fatter memory card (you can buy it here, $99 for 512 MB)
Now turning to the smart phone aspect of this little jewel! It works like any other Symbian device, and has a certain cleanliness to it which is missing in most Palm or Pocket PC smart phones. I have been able to sync the phone with a PC without a problem, though syncing with a Mac running is OS-X is impossible since the phone uses the latest version of Symbian OS and iSync doesn’t support it at present. So we Mac users wait! The browser is pretty good for mobile Web. The phone comes bundled with Lifeblog, so you can now moblog on Flickr, BuzzNet or TypePad. Shame they don’t support WordPress as yet. Still the EDGE support makes blogging a breeze.
The problem with the phone: it seems a tad sluggish compared to some of the older Nokia handsets, especially when switching between applications. Also, Nokia is not bundling any cool and free apps/games with this device, which is a shame, and yet another testimonial to the growing greed of the wireless carriers.
Bottom line: Will I buy this phone? Absolutely! Will I recommend this phone? Absolutely! On a scale of 1-to-10, this one gets 8 on 10, for it is a perfect blend of form and function.
Om,
Is this phone capable of displaying SVG graphics? When it is sold in the U.S. by Cingular, will be it be Triband or Quadband for worldwide use?
Tab
triband for world use. instead of 900 mHz it uses 850 MHz – the SVG graphics, I am not sure. i think you could check it on their website. i love the phone by the way 🙂
Psuedo-Trackback:
What we are interested in are the slider phones; the Nokia 6111, Nokia 6270 and Nokia 6280. It’s a little ironic that these phones were released one day after Om Malik wrote that Nokia’s “new line-up has a certain simple elegance to them, which allows the phones to be what they were meant to be: phones… I am frankly tired of new fangled designs – the slider or the rotate phone”
I’d say they still are pretty elegant… there are a couple of other things to note about the phones:
One thing I’ve always wondered is why it is easier to make a phone that supports both 1800 and 1900 MHz than it is to make one that supports 800 and 900 MHz?
jesse
damn good question, though frankly i don’t know the answer.
can we use 6682 in india(900/1800/1900)
because 6682 have (850/1800/1900)MHZ frequency range
Specs are awesome for the US (EDGE, Triband 850Mhz, big screen, 1.3MP camera) However there is too little RAM to make full use of it as a smartphone. If you have a browser session open and want to take a picture, you have to close the browser session. Basically it’s impossible to run any two or more substantial apps (Browser, eMail, Camera and other 3rd party) simultaneously as the phone has too little memory and apparently the Symbian S60 does not do automatic GC to free up memory. Instead what you get is an almost constant barrage of Out of Memory error.
sir ,
i would like to know if we can use the same GSM phone when we move on to india from US? plz let me know sir i would be very glad to hear from you.
Thank u sir,
Shankar
Hi there,
I’ve been using my 6682 for about 6 months now (on Cingular) and although I love the phone, it is extremely sluggish and slow (pressing a button, choosing a menu option, etc.). ALso, it freezes fairly frequently and I have to “reboot” (power off then on).
Anyone with similar issues? Do you think there might be a OS update to download?
While it may be true that the Nokia 6680 is more capable compared to its Symbian predecessors, it is certainly the slowest when it comes to menu and item navigation even when at its newest ROM upgrade. It may be on menus only that is sluggish, it is most annoying and certainly will drain your patience.