Hello all,
Today we shall examine the nokia 3660 - Series 60 Smart phone.
I must confess, I read all the reviews on this site before I finally bought the phone...
I picked up this phone off Bazee, for a nice bargain about a month back. First of all let me say , its a very handy gadget to have. After fiddling around with it quite a bit, I came to some fancy conclusions (discussed later)
After two days of use, the first thing that popped into my head was,
’Smart phone maybe, it doesnt make me feel any smarter..’
Features:
Display : 176x208 (nice and big) TFT (clear)
Memory : 3.6 MB of shared memory in the phone (scores over SE T610/630)
* 16 MB MMC card included in the bundle ** (way cool)
So far (3 points ahead of SE T610)
The keypad is bearable, but I feel that the keys could have been shaped a little better (maybe convex) to facilitate easier typing. The D-pad is a bit tricky at times unless your thumb is at the centre. (I miss the 6600 joystick here)
The phone comes with Symbian OS. This is good in a way, you get loads of applications and games to install ( and you have mem.) However, the simple features that normal phones can do very well are missing or not implememnted very well.
>> For a 10K+ phone with polyphonic ringtones, it has a LOUSY alarm. The alarm is HOPELESS and you can set only one (unless you use the calendar).
>> The contacts on your SIM have to be copied to the phone or the name will not show up during a call or a message . (terrible)
>> If you receive a message from an unknown number, even after entering this into the directory, the name will not be displayed. (way useless)
>> Sometimes, the call log displays the time of call as half an hour earlier than the actual time. (this had me confused for a day)
>> Names in the phonebook appear last/first , no option to change this. (however, the 6600 has an option for this)
>> No Themes (big mistake...) They dont need a rocket scientist to figure this out. 6600 has go themes...
>> No radio. (some ancient superstition of putting bluetooth and fm together. How come the ngage has it? and the ngage QD doesn’t)
>> no file manager (Master Blaster mistake I there ever was one.) I struggled for around 4 hours with a memorycard reader AND a gprs connection to finally get a File Explorer onto the phone.... Once you get it, life is simple...
>> mono (when the phone has allll these nice features, why in gods name did nokia make this mono? stereo , where art thou?)
>> no way to attatch a cord to carry it around (very big mistake)
>> Composer (naam ke vaaste) There is something called a composer. However, even with it at full volume I cannot hear the notes being played.
>> No zoom , (6600 has 2x digital zoom)
>> You can add multiple entries for each name in the phonebook. However, when you are adding the recipient f\to send a message, it shows only the first part of the detail -->
I gave numbers like this: name, mobile (hyd) , mobile (blr). Finally when I tried to add the number, it showed it to me as
Add:
mobile.... xxxxxxxxxx
mobile... xxxxxxxxxx
So I had to guess which number was which and select one..
>> Different OS than that of 6600. ( I wonder why. This phone is newer with less memory and they give us a crappier OS. no themes, no zoom etc)
>> ** it has an end task mechanism!!!! by pressing the menu key till you get the program, and pressing C , you can kill the program! ( windows ishtyle)
Final conclusions. The TFT screen, more memory, possibility of adding memory cards, and the already supplied 16MB of memory make me jump to this over the SonyEricsson T610/T630.
By installing apps, you can make this an MP3 player, watch full length movies (check out SmartMovie Converter), get CameraFX (for zoom), record unlimited length movies using Camcoder Pro (nokia recorder allows only upto 10 secs), listen to Streaming radio through GPRS. ( I tried but Hutch GPRS is way too slow...)
If you have the dough to spare, go in for the 6600, other wise the 3660 is a killer deal.
-tta-