Nokia 6630 > Reviews > 3G Whats the hype

Author's product rating:   

Look & Feel	Good
Durability & Robustness	Strong
Reception quality	Excellent
Battery standby time	Excellent
Value for money	Reasonable
Range of features	Large selection

Advantages:	1 . 3MP camera
Disadvantages:	No forward video camera

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

I was coming to the end of my 12 month contract with Orange, so started to look around for the phone I wanted to upgrade to. Being a complete techy I really wanted a third generation phone (3G) and Orange obliged by launching their service just before Christmas, which was handy as I didn’t really want to go through the pain of number porting exercise. Looking through the range of 3G phones that they had on offer I decided on the Nokia 6630, and below are my thoughts on the phone.

********The Package*********
What you get from Orange is of course the phone, a battery, charger, data cable, software, manual and a 64MB mmc card. The manual supplied by Orange is quite basic and really only contains information to get you started on most of the features. The software installed easily on my XP machine and after the first charge I was ready to go.

********Size and Weight*********
All 3G phones are more bulky than the 2G phones that we are all used to, mainly because of the extra technology that has been packed into the phones. The 6630 is a candy bar type of phone, I prefer these to flip type models, and it’s dimensions are 110 mm x 60 mm x 21 mm which is pocket sized and weighs in at 127g. I find it a little more noticeable to carry around than my old T610 but it is acceptable.

********Imaging*********
The camera sorry phone comes with 1.3MP camera (actual image size 1280 x 960 pixels) which seems to be the standard for all new phones launched now. It has a 6 x digital zoom which is ok but as with all digital zooms you lose resolution when they are used so I have not really explored this. Unfortunately Nokia have not put a light on the phone so pictures in the dark a quite poor even with the night mode on, although they have brought out a flash module that connects to the bottom of the phone. The lag on the camera is about standard for a phone 1 sec. The photo taken can of course be sent as an MMS or with this phone as an e mail, an e mail that will take forever you are saying but this is where 3G comes in as the data speed can be over 300k so it is quicker than you might think.

I think the best part of the imaging on this camera is the ability to take video’s which are quite fun, although with these the resolution is reduced to a poor 174 x 144 pixels, using the supplied 64MB MMC memory card the phone quotes a recording time in excess of 50 minutes, which is very good. As with the pictures the video’s can be sent by MMS or e mail.

The screen on the phone is a 64K with a resolution of 176 x 208 pixels, which is good quality and can be seen well on bright winters sun, I think this is because of the automatic backlight which adjusts the screen depending on the lighting conditions.

********Calling and Messaging*********
I suppose being that it is a phone I should talk about the main reason why I purchased it which was to make calls and send text messages. The phone is actual more like a PDA than a phone, making calls is fairly easy but there seems to be about 5 button clicks to get the number and make the call, this is partly due to the extra video calling that is available with 3G . Once you have selected the users number you get a further choice over whether you want to video call them or normal call, more on video calls later. Once the voice call has been started you can chose to use the handset normally or use loudspeaker I find the loudspeaker option very handy as it doesn’t fry your brain, and it doesn’t suffer from the cut out you sometimes experience when you and the other party talk at the same time.

Sending messages is again a bit more of a button bashing exercise than it was on my old T610, again this is because the phone is more like a PDA sending a text is more like sending an e mail. Once you have got used to the way the phone operates and the software it is quite easy to send messages even with the additional key presses.

Video calling is available on this phone but Nokia for some reason only known to them decided to leave off a camera on the same side as the screen which means the person calling you only gets to see what the back of the phone is looking at. You can for somewhere in the region of £70 buy a stand that adds a camera that allows proper video calling but it is not something you can carry around with you!

********Tones, Internet and everything else*********
As the phone is 3G it has high bandwidth 384kbps as long as you are in a 3G area which is very handy for browsing the web and getting your e mail etc. The phone as I mentioned earlier is like a PDA and runs the symbian operating system which gives it the ability to run software such as GPS navigation or anything else that some one has written for the phone.

The phone has true tones and polyphonic tones, which means you can download pretty much anything and have it as your ringtone. The phone has Bluetooth 1.1 but no infrared, it comes supplied with a USB connector which allows the phone to be connected to your PC for management of your ringtones and contacts etc. There are numerous other things on the phone such as MP3 player, video player calander etc far too many to mention.

********Summary*********
The phone lives up to the Nokia reputation and is built to high quality, I like tha ability to be able to load software on the phone and the high speed internet connection. I do have one major criticism which is why didn’t Nokia include a camera on the front of the phone to allow video calling without additional kit is anybodys guess.

The phone is retailing at £120 with an Orange contract although I managed to get it for £35 as I was threatening to leave Orange, so try your luck if you want a deal.
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