Larry Garfield looks at Nokia's followup to the 3600 line of smartphones, the 3660, and finds both more of the same and some new and welcome improvements.
Nokia's 3650 broke new ground design-wise with a rounded keypad design based on old rotary phones and elongated body. However, few people seemed to care for the retro button layout. Nokia's 3660 takes a more conservative design, but keeps many elements from the 3650.
Design
At first glance the 3660 is built much like the 3650, with a large, elongated body ending in a rounded bottom. It measures 130 x 57 x 26 mm, and weighs a not inconsiderable 130 grams. The front gray plastic faceplate is exchangeable, although not bad looking on its own. A large 176 x 208 pixel screen takes up the bulk of the front face, now upgraded to 16-bit color, with a large key area below it. The power / quick feature button is on top, while there is an IR port on the left side. The sides are otherwise bare, as the included 0.3 megapixel (VGA) camera is high on the back. The bottom of the device includes a charging port and mini-headphone jack.
 | The 3660 offers good features but an unwiedly design
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The keypad is the 3660's largest change from its predecessor. While dropping the unusual circular layout, the 3660 still includes a stylized design with a distinctive "swoop" effect to the keys. The menu button has moved up to next to the directional pad, while the call and hangup buttons are unchanged.
The 3660 has two main drawbacks. The first is its size. It feels more like a skinny handheld than an oversized phone, and while better balanced than the 3650 it is still a bit top heavy when held low enough that the user's fingers don't hit his head.
The other is still the buttons. While the more traditional layout is an improvement, the 3660's buttons are angled forward at the bottom and are of varying sizes. They are also not colinear, which means that finding them by feel can be difficult, although not impossible. Also, because they are so far below the center of balance of the phone it accentuates the phone's top-heaviness when dialing one handed. The menu button is also far too close to the directional pad, resulting in frequent accidental presses.
The main draws for this phone in particular are mostly based off of the camera, which, despite its lack of a flash, offers very good picture quality as well as video recording capability. Images look washed out and grainy on the phone's screen, but once transfered to a better display are surprisingly crisp.
Connectivity
The 3660 sports a tri-band GSM 900/1800/1900 MHz radio, compatible with most GSM markets around the world. It also sports a Bluetooth radio with a healthy set of profiles, as one would expect from Nokia.
As with many Series 60 phones, the 3660 includes an MMC slot to supplement the included 16 MB of RAM, tucked neatly away underneath the battery, thus requiring a power-down to exchange it. When used more as a hard disk than exchangeable storage it works well enough, but power users may be annoyed by it.
Specifications
The processor model and speed for the 3660 is stil a well-kept secret, typical for Nokia, but the included 16 MB of RAM adequate for smaller tasks. Users planning to install a lot of 3rd party software will want to add an MMC card, however.
The replaceable 850 mAh Lithium Ion battery is rated for 10 days standby time or 4 hours talk time, both of which should, naturally, be adjusted for application usage. We found these a bit optimistic, but it still lasted comfortably long.
Software
The Nokia 3660 runs Symbian OS Series 60 with all the usual accoutrements. That includes the usual set of PIM apps, an XHTML capable browser, and an e-mail client that speaks both POP3 and IMAP4 as well as assorted smaller programs and utilities. Multimedia viewing is provided by an included RealOne player.
In most functions the 3660 was adequately snappy, although some programs took a long time to load. Reception was never an issue, which is always a good sign, and voice quality was fine. On the flipside, as is sadly typical of Series 60 devices synchronization is by no means speedy, and leaves out Tasks and Notes, which defeats one of the main purposes of a smartphone in the first place.
Availability
The Nokia 3660 is available now for $330 USD without service agreement. Price with service will vary depending on the carrier.
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