The Nokia 6610 is one of those phones that strikes a good balance between all extremes. Its screen is not as bright as my
Audiovox CDM-9500 because it is not active matrix, it is a passive matrix screen. Yet, the screen is still damn good. The 6610 does not feel as rugged as my
Samsung R225m because of its XpressOn covers. Yet, I can customize it to my heart's content. The list goes on, but there are a lot of very positive things about the 6610 that make it a great phone and not just a regular phone.
I had my heart set on a Sony Ericsson t68i since I saw the phone on display. I had tried to win the phone on eBay, but could not convince myself to pay up the big bucks. When I saw that the Nokia 6610 had almost the same feature set as the t68i, I did some more research on the phone. Lucky me,
T-Mobile had run a special on the phone and I was able to pick up a 6610 for only $35.
Hardware
The Nokia 6610 is a tri-band GSM phone. It is essential the same (internals) as the Nokia 7210 phone, but with a more “business” or elegant design. The phone operates on GSM900/1800/1900 and will work with all GSM carriers in the US.
The phone comes in the classic looking Nokia format, it is not a flip phone. The phone is pretty small at 4.17”x1.77”x0.69” and weighing in at a measly 84g. The phone is roughly the size of a Sony Ericsson t68i. The phone comes with a color LCD display that has a resolution of 128x128 pixels. It is capable of displaying 4096 colors. The LCD as I mentioned before is just a passive matrix screen and does suffer from ghosting from games, but otherwise the display is bright, well saturated and pleasing to the eye – it beats the 101x80 pixel, 256 color display on the t68i.
The 6610 has the standard 12-keypad for dialing. Then there are two toggle-like buttons on either side of a four-way navigator on the top of the phone. The two toggle buttons click up for the soft-button functionality and down for connect and disconnect. The layout of the buttons is very classic and not outlandish like the buttons on the Nokia 3650. The buttons are well-sized and are easy to use and find. They do feel a bit cheap and wiggle a lot when used – not solid feeling like the buttons on my Samsung R225m. The buttons are also not tiny like the ones on the t68i. On the left side of the phone there is a rocker switch that lets me adjust the volume of a call, this is very important for me and was sorely missing on my R225m. The one big complaint that I have about buttons is the power button which is located at the top of the phone and needs a fingernail to push. This thing is not only small, but really thin. The power button on Nokia phones usually brings up the Profiles menu for changing profiles quickly. Since this button is so small, it makes changing profiles difficult – or just longer if I have to use the Menu to change profiles.
Next to the power button at the top of the phone is the infrared port. On the bottom of the phone is a PopPort for connecting cameras, headphones, or hands-free adapters. Next to the PopPort is the power jack for charging the phone. Oh, and there is no protruding antenna like every other phone (except for the
SonyEricsson t206) that I have had. The antenna is internal and works fantastic, more on this later. There are not external LEDs on the phone. This is a blessing for me since the bright blue one on the Samsung R225m was ultra-bright (enough to light up a room when it blinked on).
Inside
The phone takes a new lithium-ion battery that yields 3.5 hours of talk time and 225 hours of stand-by time. I haven't worn the battery out yet and it seems to last forever for me. I do charge my phone every night though.
The 6610 runs Nokia's Series 40 OS. It does all sorts of things that have acronyms. Get ready for a list of letters: GSM, GPRS, WAP and MMS. GPRS allows the phone to connect to a high-speed data network. With T-Mobile it is called t-zones and with AT&T it is called mMode – it is all the same, it just allows you to semi-surf the web depending if a site is written in WAP format or not. A tip though is to look up the site via wap.google.com and then surf to it via Google since Google has a WAP translation engine that will make the page viewable on your phone.
It comes with Java 2 MicroEdition built-in for running games and applications that can be picked up all over the web. The 6610 comes with four Java applications by default. Two are applications (Portfolio II and Converter II) and two are games (Chess Puzzle and Bounce). Of the four, I like Bounce the best since it is pretty entertaining as a game – though the physics of the game are a little screwy and take some time to adjust to.
The phone is polyphonic, but it can only do 4-chords at once (compared to the 16-chords that the t68i can play). The volume of the 6610 ringer is loud and I mean it is really loud. I need to put the ringer down to about half in order to make it not annoying when it rings. This is a good thing since with my R225m I could not hear it ringing a few rooms away in my house. With the ringer on the 6610 it is loud and clear.
The 6610 has a built-in FM radio. But the drawback is that the hands-free needs to be plugged into the 6610 in order for the FM radio to work. I am guessing that the 6610 uses the cord on the hands-free as an antenna to receive the FM signal. I have yet to use the FM radio because the hands-free boom that is included in the package is probably the ugliest thing I have ever seen. One day I will order a nicer hands-free set.
The 6610 also has a built-in speaker phone, which works very well. It is loud and clear and just plain works. Unlike my CDM-9500, there is no physical key for activating the speaker phone function. It is assigned to the right soft-key when a call is made. The 6610 also comes with a calendar and to-do list capabilities.
The phone book function inside is excellent. It allows multiple numbers per entry along with email addresses and notes. If you want to store your phone numbers on the SIM card, you'll have to stick with the single number per entry, but storing them on the phone makes it more convenient. Phone entries can be assigned to categories and then those categories can be taken into account with different profiles (ring only on “family” calls and stuff like that).
GPRS is the data-side of the phone and that works out very well – as well as surfing the Internet on a tiny screen. T-Mobile offers an Internet portal named t-zones, which is a nice starting point for getting information, games, ringtones, and what not. But don't get stuck using it because most everything there is for sale and not for free. Look on the Internet for different wap sites that offers free J2ME games and ringtones to download to your phone.
Unlike the R225m, the 6610 is able to synchronize its clock with the network if the functionality is available. Here in NorCal, the Cingular network (in which the T-Mobile services runs on) does allow it, so I don't have to set the clock on my 6610 (or adjust for lost/gain of minutes). This is a nice function that should be in all phones, too bad it was missing in my R225m.
The built-in IrDA (Infrared) port is amazing! Instead typing entries into my phone on the keypad, I am able to do it on my computer and “beam” them right over to my phone. I can also use the port for sending over background images, ringtones, and games. For data purposes the phone can be used as a modem through the IrDA port (though I have not tried the modem functionality yet). If you don't have an IrDA port on your computer, you have two choices: Buy an USB-to-IrDA adapter or buy the Nokia data cable. My suggestion is to get the IrDA adapter instead since in the future the data port on the bottom of your new phone may not be compatible with that data cable. The chances of a phone having an IrDA port is higher than the chances of a compatible data port in my books.
There is a limited amount of memory that is shared between images, ringtones and applications. I haven't figured out exactly how much there is, but it is enough to hold quite a few calendar events, games, ringtones and images. I wish there was more though since I do have to delete stuff in order to get new stuff on the phone. Am I a digital pack rat? Yea.
Sound and Reception
The major test of a phone is its ability to get reception in my house. My house is built like a tin can and reception inside is not the greatest. I have used many phones through my house, SprintPCS, Verizon, MetroPCS, and T-Mobile phones. All of them get pretty bad reception. The Samsung R225m was the first to get a semi-decent signal inside the house. The Nokia 6610 gets better reception than the R225m, which is something specail because in certain places where no phones would work, I get a decent signal from my 6610. That is outstanding.
Outside, as with most T-Mobile reception, it is crystal clear. 1900MHz has penetration problems with buildings, but outside it is great. The 6610 has no problems getting and locking onto a signal outside. Because my fiancee and I have been doing a lot of wedding planning stuff and visiting different vendors, I have been able to test the 6610 in all different areas of the Bay Area. I have tried the phone in downtown Los Altos; around University and High Street in Palo Alto; the Stanford Shopping Center; on Treat Street in Concord; Walnut Creek; in and around Valley Fair in Santa Clara; and in general all around North San Jose. Reception is exceptional all around.
What is nice is that the 6610 gets all this good reception with a built-in antenna. There is no stub of an antenna sticking out on the phone. The antenna is integrated into the back of the phone and the manual shows a good picture of where it is and where I should not put my fingers if I want to get really good reception (basically the top quarter or third of the phone on the back).
My Samsung R225m was a very loud phone. The 6610 is unfortunately not. The loudest setting for the phone is still a bit too soft, it is just about the same volume as setting my R225m at around half. It is OK for quiet environments, but I don't imagine that it would be loud enough in some louder environments (like crowds or at the mall). Some have complained in the forums that the ear piece makes weird vibrating noises when the volume is set for maximum, I have not experienced that with my 6610. The sound quality of the phone is good, on par with my R225m. The voices are very natural sounding without much distortion. Like the R225m the phone has a hiss that accompanies sound, I am not sure if this is an inherent part of GSM or if it is just the design of my two GSM phones.
Observations
The 6610 comes with T9 text prediction for messaging. And it works pretty well, I like the ability of being able to switch between T9 and regular entry with a single key instead of the R225m where I had to do it via a menu. I have not yet messaged too much on the phone, but it does have the facilities to add words to the T9 dictionary. That is a definite plus since there are names and stuff that I would end up editing all the time on my R225m.
The menu system on the phone is pretty easy and straight-forward. There is a little bit of exploring to do if you want to turn on some stuff (like the call timer is not turned on by default and I had to find where that was. The date and time are not displayed by default and I had to find those too).
The Pop Port is the only want to attach a hands-free set. I wish that there was a standard 2.5” port on the phone along with the Pop Port for accessories. As it stands, there are hardly any hands-free sets for the phone because of the proprietary connection.
I wish the phone also had Bluetooth and conformed with the SyncML standard. Then I would be able to synchronize it with my iBook (with iSync, iCal, and Addressbook). As it stands I have to use Nokia's PC Suite with Outlook on my PC. The PC Suite is not a bad piece of software though, I just wish I could have the phone interface with my iBook instead. You won't get PC Suite in the box with the phone, you'll have to go download a copy from www.nokia.com, it is free and if you have an IrDA port, it is quite useful. Also check out Oxygen Phone Manager II for Nokia at www.oxygensoftware.com for a good third party tool for interfacing with the phone.
Conclusion
For $35 the Nokia 6610 is a steal! Even for the retail price of $149 (with activation) the phone is a great deal. This is one good phone that has impressed me from the start. It has awesome reception, an easy to learn menu system, a good set of features, and a pretty good color screen. It may not be the best at everything that other phones offer, but for the price it is a great deal. Minor drawbacks like low call volume and a tiny power button should not turn off a potential buyer. This is a great phone and a great upgrade from my Samsung R225m (which now sits in its box as a backup for my Nokia 6610!) If you are thinking about purchasing the Nokia 6610, go right ahead, you won't be sorry.
