The 6680 makes a splash as Nokia's first dual-camera smartphone with 3G; can it outperform its high-ranking predecessors? A review by Jørgen Sundgot.
A quick look at infoSync World's smartphone chart will tell you everything you need to know about Nokia smartphones in a split second: they reign supreme. Despite competition from Windows Mobile and Series 60 based smartphones from other vendors, the company is for the most part competing with its own products in the high end, and the 6680 is the latest addition to the venerable family tree. Let's find out if there's anything about it which sets it apart from the rest of the crowd.
Quit. Messing. With. The. Looks.
With a slightly unfortunate arrangement of its frontal components and an aesthetically unpleasing pale ice blue colour scheme, the 108 x 55 x 21 mm, 133 g Nokia 6680 looks a tad ungainly - which it really isn't. In short, its design is a bit unfortunate, and in our opinion Nokia would have done well to stick with the more pleasant appearances of the maker's other camera-equipped 3G smartphone, the excellent 6630.
Fortunately, however, first impressions can be deceiving, as the 6680 plays host to a typically excellent interface including a more than decent and relatively quiet blue backlit keypad as well as a good five-way navipad. We're less than impressed by the chromed buttons flanking the keypad as reflections make them hard to spot at times, yet are even less so with concern to the input alternator button (also know as the ABC button) being placed to the right of the numerical keys. For right-handed users, this means alternating between text input options and selecting multiple objects are now progressively cumbersome affairs; a bit of an oversight.
Similarly, a hot-swappable RS-MMC slot placed on the right side is a step in the right direction, however although the hinged cover is now of aluminum (as opposed to the plastic variety found in the 6630), we're not entirely sure where its tolerance level resides.
Moving on, we find an utterly superb 262K colour display with a resolution of 176 x 208 pixels and user adjustable brightness, which is what we've come to expect in high-end models from Nokia. Visibility is good both indoors and outdoors, and there's also an ambient light sensor to automatically adjust brightness to conserve power; a nice touch.
I'm ready for my close-up now
Naturally, the highlight of the 6680 is its inclusion of not one, but two cameras - finally enabling proper video calling on a Nokia handset for the first time. Unlike the cyclops that was the 6630, the 6680 not only has a 1.3 Megapixel camera protected by a handy slide-down cover (which cleverly also activates the camera application when opened) on the back, but also a 0.3 MP camera mounted in the upper right corner on its front.
Quality-wise, both cameras deliver impeccable results whether for video or stills, and video calling proved pleasantly lag-free during our tests. A LED flash is also present on the back, but as one would expect has a limited range and effect. Similar to other recent smartphones from Nokia, the 6680 also comes with a full compliment of video and imaging tools, including an alternative 'rolodex' style image viewer, video and image editors and also printing tools.
The 6680 is also well equipped in the connectivity department, with tri-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE 900/1800/1900 Mhz under its belt along with support for the classics including CSD, HSCSD and Fax. Also, 2100 MHz WCDMA - or 3G for the rest of us - is present and performing admirably, as is a comfortable selection of Bluetooth profiles and USB 2.0 connectivity courtesy of Nokia's proprietary Pop-port.
As we've come to expect from Nokia, voice quality and signal reception proved outstanding in the 6680, however we're a bit disappointed that speaker independent voice dialing still hasn't made its debut on Series 60. On the upside, the loudspeaker mode works very well indeed, and battery life proved exceptionally good despite heavy 3G use; a couple of days and in some cases more could easily be squeezed out of this particular smartphone.
Under the hood
Like the 6630, the 6680 comes equipped with 10 MB of non-volatile memory, which is sufficient - but nothing more - in this day and age. A bundled 64 MB RS-MMC card provides additional storage and is also loaded with several high quality applications; we would certainly have preferred for several of these to be loaded into system memory, but expect most users will simply offload images and video periodically to a PC negating a potential memory crisis.
Fitted with the usual assortment of Series 60 applications, the 6680 shares both the strengths and weaknesses of so many of its predecessors on the software side. With general performance being snappy, the 6680 impresses with high quality PIM and messaging software, also adding a very apt suite of productivity applications in the Microsoft Office compatible Quickword, Quicksheet and Quickpoint trio. Worthy of particular mention is improved e-mail support, with the client now supporting scheduled retrievals, the subscription of IMAP subfolders and a range of attachments including .ZIP files.
The usual drawbacks remain, however, with local synchronization of PIM data towards Lotus Notes or Microsoft Outlook not only being partial but also an agonizingly slow and cumbersome process - a problem that, incomprehensibly, has not been addressed since the introduction of the 7650, Nokia's first smartphone, over three years ago. Proper built-in support for over-the-air groupware synchronization could to some extent have mitigated this issue for business users, but as is it remains a royal cock-up.
There is one surprise in the 6680, however, which is the transformation of the standby screen into a more functional area as opposed to merely a picture holder. Now, the standby screen holds a line of application shortcuts, as well as a list of upcoming calendar appointments; the latter a concept first introduced by Microsoft at the unveiling of its Pocket PC platform - and, incidentally, an utterly brilliant idea.
Availability
The Nokia 6680 is at the time of press available throughout Europe, selling in the 600 EUR range without subscription.
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