Our Nokia 6650 review dazzles with chameleon LED effects, then gets down to business. Find out why AT&T's newest compact smartphone is not one to be underestimated.
Review summary of the Nokia 6650:
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 The Nokia 6650 is a rarity among U.S. phones, a carrier-supported phone running the Symbian S60 OS. You don't have to know that Symbian is the world's leading smartphone OS to benefit from all the potential locked away in this device, especially for business users who will find a range of e-mail and address book synchronization options with some simple digging. Unfortunately, most of the out-of-the-box apps are either dull, like the multimedia player, or buggy, like the GPS in AT&T Navigator, and the Symbian S60 interface design is convoluted and unfamiliar to American eyes. Still, great battery life and solid phone features make this a great choice for business users who want a capable, casual phone. Release: November 2008. Price: $70.
Pros: Thanks to Symbian S60 this phone has surprisingly developed business features. Love those color-changing LED backlights.
Cons: Symbian is not a great-looking or well-organized interface. Keys are kind of flat. Multimedia apps are kind of dull. GPS was buggy.
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Full Nokia 6650 Review:
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Design - Very good
Call us a sucker for shiny objects, but we actually liked the simple, understated design of Nokia's 6650 fold. It's a classic Nokia look, and we love the color-changing LED backlighting. It's a gimmick we can get behind. Nokia offers a choice of colors, and you can change the keypad to match your mood. If only these settings weren't buried under layers and layers of menus and settings screens. That's the problem with the Nokia 6650 in a nutshell. It's a sleek, modern exterior design with a clunky, aging interface.
The phone has Nokia's classically sharp internal display, but the external screen is no slouch, either. Forget its postage stamp size; it can handle plenty of vivid color and looks great animated, as well. The external screen made for a nice viewfinder for the camera, as well, though we would have cut all that enhanced functionality short just before the touch-sensitive buttons. We like hardware keys, and the Nokia keys were unresponsive and a bit clunky to use.
We also had trouble with the volume rocker. It had a strange shape, not an intuitive see-saw. Also, it ran very close to the PTT button, so one wrong move and the phone was asking us to subscribe to AT&T's push-to-talk service. This happened quite frequently. Just as frequently, we would miss the "down" action on the 4-way button at the center of the phone, causing us to activate AT&T Navigator, which gets its own dedicated key right below the 4-way. So, buttons placement is something of an issue on this phone. Otherwise, the phone puts all the important stuff where you need it, mostly behind tiny closed doors. The microUSB port (nice choice), the additional power port, the microSD card slot and the 2.5mm headphone jack were all hidden behind 3 little doors, though the phone still maintains a sleek and nearly seamless look.
Calling - Very good
Calls on the Nokia 6650 sounded very good in our tests. We even tried the phone barreling down the highway with our windows down, and callers had no trouble hearing us over the wind noise, though we couldn't say the same on our end. Still, under even the worst conditions, the Nokia 6650 delivered a satisfying, clear sound. We had no trouble picking up full reception on this device, which uses AT&T's 3G HSDPA network. For battery life, we taxed the phone heavily using GPS navigation, and it never died before our trip was over, even with the screen set to remain bright. Nokia estimates 4 hours of battery life, but we managed calls that came closer to 6 hours, so we think those official estimates are conservative.
We didn't bother entering much contact information by hand, as Nokia has some nice software to take care of all this. The Nokia PC Suite software isn't included in the box, but since this phone is, almost covertly, a Symbian S60 Series 3 device, there's plenty of great software out there that doesn't come in the box. We started with the PC Suite, which let us synchronize our Outlook contacts and calendar items to the phone.
Otherwise, the phone has an adequate speakerphone, though it was not quite loud enough for our taste. The phone uses speaker-independent voice commands software, but it was difficult to find, buried under a few menus and folders. We always like voice dialing to have its own button, or at least a quick, preset shortcut.
Messaging - Good
Depending on how you look at it, the Nokia 6650 is either a consumer-level simple messaging phone, or a full business smartphone. Out of the box, it comes with access to AT&T's Xpress Mail client, which only has a basic list of e-mail presets. While trying to set up Gmail, we stumbled upon a separate e-mail client for POP3 and IMAP4 accounts, and we were able to tweak the settings to work with Gmail's IMAP setup. So far so good. But then consider Nokia's Mail for Exchange app, which works with any Symbian S60 phone. We were warned during installation that the AT&T version of the Nokia 6650 wasn't supported, but it worked very well on this phone. Nokia's MfE app let us check our corporate e-mail, and it also synchronized our corporate address book and calendar entries. For the price of this phone, it's a remarkably smart device, and perhaps its being underestimated even by AT&T as a boon to casual business users.
Otherwise, the phone has good SMS and MMS messaging options, but nothing outstanding. Likewise the instant messaging client. The Nokia 6650 has IM for AOL, MSN and Yahoo, but if you want more you'll have to find a third-party Symbian developer.
The keyboard on the Nokia 6650 wasn't great, but it wasn't too bad for simple T9 text input. The keys are glossy and flat, and we missed our choice plenty if we tried to type to quickly. Still, did we mention it lights up and changes colors? It's pretty cool in person, especially typing in the dark.
Multimedia - Good
The Nokia 6650 has a fairly simple music playback app, but it gets the job done nicely. There are a few audio enhancement options, including an equalizer with a few presets, but without a 3.5mm headphone jack, these were harder to take seriously. The phone doesn't have any real onboard memory, but can accept microSDHC cards up to 8GB, and the slot is at least external, with easy access. On the Windows side, we'd recommend the Nokia PC suite for music transfer. On the Mac side, we simply turned on the phone's mass storage mode and copied MP3 files directly to the storage card. The library found them with no trouble, but our album artwork didn't make the journey.
The external screen gets in on the act with music playback, and it actually does a fine job handling things. You can start the music player without opening the hood, and you can browse the music library or control playback, all with the three touch keys and the volume rocker. There's even an EQ-like visualizer that dances on the crisp, small external screen while songs play.
Web browsing - Very good
Again, the Nokia 6650 surprises for such a small device, as the phone gets the full Nokia browser treatment. The Nokia S60 browser renders complicated pages cleanly. It isn't the best on the market, but the browser does have a great mini map tool that makes scanning through long pages a breeze. The phone was also fairly speedy over AT&T's 3G network. We think Wi-Fi would make this a real powerhouse device, and the phone certainly has the battery to support the extra radio, so we're disappointed the Nokia 6650 didn't come equipped.
GPS - Good
The Nokia 6650 uses AT&T's Navigator app, which is essentially TeleNav's turn-by-turn directions. The phone had some trouble with GPS. At least on our test unit, the phone would occasionally lose our signal at predictable moments, going through the Holland tunnel, for instance. The problem was that it would never find us again. A quick power-down restart of the phone always solved the problem quickly. Otherwise, AT&T Navigator worked well on the device. Maps loaded quickly over the 3G network, though the app leaves plenty to be desired in GPS response. Still, traffic re-routing is a nice feature, and helped us out during some of our more harried commutes.
Camera - Mediocre
The camera on the Nokia 6650 takes images that are noisy and completely unusable. Here, Nokia's own crisp cell phone screen can reveal the defects in the images, and when you can see how bad a cameraphone picture is on the phone itself, you know there are serious problems. Noise was like a circus in low-light shots, and even in cloudy mid-day photos. The camera couldn't capture a sharp image, and under the bright LED flash, images were only bled dry of their color and life.
Street scene
Lights on a tree
In these photos, the images may look just okay on the small screen, but at 100% crop, the images become a hodge-podge of noise and blurred details. The oranges and reds explode like they're radioactive, but the more subdued greens and browns look painted on.
Guard rail and skyline at night
We tried this shot from stop and go traffic on the Jersey side of the river. The Nokia 6650 has a night mode, and this greatly improved our shot. Still, this was the best we could get.
Self portrait
We let the Nokia 6650 go full auto and make the choice to light us with the LED flash, producing this disturbingly corpse-like self portrait shot. In reality, that wall behind us is white, by the way.
One last trick
Among the other neat business tricks this phone can pull off is tethered modem support. Through the Nokia PC Suite, the phone can act as a 3G modem. In our tests, the Nokia 6650 provided speedy access to AT&T's 3G HSDPA network, and we saw download speeds in the 1.2Mbps range, which is very nice. Unfortunately, our Nokia 6650 didn't charge while plugged into the microUSB port. The fact that the phone uses a separate port for the old school, pin-like Nokia charger gives us a bad feeling about the prospect for using this phone on-the-go. Still, if you don't mind packing a few extra cords, easy tethered Internet access is a great option for business users.
Price and availability
The Nokia 6650 is available from AT&T for $120 with a two-year contract. A $50 mail-in rebate brings the price down to $70, when you sign up for a qualifying plan.
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