Review summary of the Nokia 6600:
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 Price: $500.
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Cons:
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Full Nokia 6600 Review:
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Drawing the overall impression of connectivity down, the Nokia 6600 also sports an MMC Card expansion slot. Although there is of course added benefit in memory expansion itself, Nokia's choice of format is a poor one as support for this particular standard is waning - and to make matters worse, not only is its upper limitation 128 MB but the expansion slot itself is placed under the battery of the phone requiring complete disassembly upon insertion or removal of a card.
 | The VGA camera of the Nokia 6600 is possibly the best on the market
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Specifications
Although it is not known what processor powers the Nokia 6600 at the time of writing, it appears to deliver performance fully on par with its predecessors, and as such the 6600 is comfortably snappy when performing the vast majority of functions. Its internal, non-volatile memory has been expanded to 6 MB, although it is fair to expect the bundled 32 MB MMC card to quickly come in handy for users wanting to do more than a bit of desktop synchronization and picture-snapping.
Powered as it is by a 850 mAh Lithium Ion battery, the Nokia 6600 is listed as offering a talk time of up to 4 hours and up to 240 hours of standby time; its performance fell only marginally short of these claims. By comparison, the Nokia 3650 utilizes the same battery model, but achieves far shorter standby time.
Software
Based on version 7.0 of the Symbian OS, the latest version of Series 60 bears few direct signs to end users that there has been a change under the hood. The graphical user interface remains the embodiment of user friendliness, and although power users might find it overly simple at times, the general public is sure to appreciate its approach to navigation. Performance is, as in the 7650 and 3650 models, best described as snappy, and compares well to that of other current smartphones based on competing platforms from Microsoft and PalmSource.
Nokia did introduce some changes, however, such as delivering audio support in its video recording application from day one; a combined Gallery application for browsing multimedia content; support for themes that alter the graphical aspects of the UI to a larger degree; and support for profile and application switching by way of voice command. Although minor, these are still welcome improvements over past models, while the 6600 retains past highlights such as the embedded RealOne Player enabling streaming video playback; the excellent, multi-protocol e-mail client; its XHTML browser; and more.
The arrival of the Nokia 6600 also marks Nokia's first foray into bundling both trial and full versions of applications with a smartphone. Full versions include among others a Reuters News Reader and the Opera microbrowser, of which the latter is the highlight of the collection, enabling users to browse full-size web sites. Racking up additional points, the Nokia 6600 now also supports Java MIDP 2.0, and as such is compatible with the widest possible range of Java applications for mobile devices.
On the desktop side, the Nokia PC Suite delivers functionality on par with what one could expect; sadly, Nokia still hasn't added support for synchronization of Notes content, but at least the synchronization process itself is a smooth affair - as is image management.
Availability
The Nokia 6600 is now available throughout Europe and North America, and sells in the 475 EUR / $550 USD range without subscription.
Price and availability
The Nokia 6600 will start selling for $500 () in November 1999.
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