Good feel in the hand, high-speed data service, and a crystal clear camera. Those are some of the highlights of Nokia's 6620. Larry Garfield looks under the hood for more.
The Nokia 6600 won high praise when it was launched last year. Nokia has followed up with the 6620, which adds faster data service and tweaks various features. The result is something of a mixed bag when compared to its parental unit.
Design
Despite its "pleasantly plump" appearance, the 6620 has a good solid feel in the hand. Almost the same dimensions as its predecessor, 10.9 x 5.8 x 2.3 cm and 124 g, its light silver plastic exterior offers a snazzy but professional-looking image.
In a wise move, Nokia opted for a traditional keypad rather than the circular variety introduced with the Nokia 3650. Tke number keys themselves are well designed but a bit on the small side, yet still offer decent blind-dial capability. The backlight is, unfortunately, the common and poor soft blue. The four-way joystick of the 6600 is sadly not particularly comfortable, as the plastic of which it is made is slightly slippery, and tactile feedback is barely adequate. Slightly sharp edges also make prolonged use somewhat uncomfortable.
 | The 6620 is a modest upgrade to the 6600
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Fortunately, the display of the 6620, like its predecessor, is a pleasure to behold. Crisp, clear, and bright, it appears larger than it actually is and sports excellent color fidelity and warmth. Also, the Nokia 6600 shines in the audio department, with excellent quality during conversations whether in handset or loudspeaker mode. On the downside, the 6620 drops the standard 2.5 mm earphone jack in place of the Nokia-proprietary Pop-Port. That precludes using the included wired earphone and USB cable at the same time.
The Nokia 6620 also harbors a VGA resolution camera, which offers superb image quality across the board. Sporting a 2x digital zoom, the camera's color quality and white balance are first rate. It even has auto-leveling, so that images are slightly realigned to eliminate slight tilt and make lines straighter, a feature that officially qualifies as "brilliant". Nokia's unmatched night mode is also still present.
Connectivity
The 6620 brings back the company's Pop-Port serial connector for USB connection to a PC as well as the wired handsfree earpiece. A side-mounted infrared port and Bluetooth are still included, fortunately, for the wireless set.
In the WAN department, the 6620 boasts healthy support for tri-band GSM 850 / 1800 / 1900 MHz, as well as GPRS and EDGE data services and Fax services, all of which laptop and handheld users will be pleased to learn is a breeze to utilize either by means of Infrared or Bluetooth.
Drawing the overall impression of connectivity down, the Nokia 6620 also sports an MMC Card expansion slot. While the ability to add extra storage capacity is always welcome, MMC is limited-capacity and slowly dying as its offspring Secure Digital takes over the market - and to make matters worse, the expansion slot itself is placed under the battery of the phone requiring complete disassembly upon insertion or removal of a card.
Specifications
Powered by a 104 MHz processor, the 6620 delivers performance fully on par with its predecessors, and as such the 6620 is comfortably snappy when performing the vast majority of functions. Its internal, non-volatile memory has been expanded to 12 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 240 minutes and up to 200 hours of standby time; our own estimates put it at somewhat less than that.
Software
Based on version 7.0 of the Symbian OS, the version of the Series 60 platform powering the Nokia 6620 bears few direct signs to end users that there has been a change under the hood. The graphical user interface remains very simple and attractive, albeit perhaps too simple for some power users. Typical users should find it easy to pick up and use, however. Performance compares well to that of other current smartphones based on competing platforms from Microsoft and PalmSource.
Default applications on the 6620 are nearly identical to the 6600. Those include a combined Gallery application for viewing multimedia content; audio support in the 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.
Unlike the 6600, however, the 6620 does not include any significant 3rd party software, at least not full versions. Trial versions of an assortment of productivity applications and games are included, but the only full version programs Adobe Acrobat Reader 6.0 and Adobe Photoshop Album 2.0 Starter Edition, both on the included CD. Java MIDP 2.0 is also absent from the 6620.
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 6620 is as of this writing available through Cingular Wireless in the US for $299.99 USD with two-year service agreement after mail-in rebate. Price without service is $399.99 USD.
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