In the month of august when I saw the SE K750i featuring in a magazine, when I went through its features, it actually excited me a lot, with it’s features of 2MP cam, extendable memory which I was craving for, the missing factor in K700i, also the sound quality of the SE phones is excellent, I had developed a stigma for Nokia handsets and wanted to try something new and different with my handsets, so I also shifted my desire from k750i, to W800i, still compared to its features, I was put down somewhat by its look, which was too sporty, else that handset is a steal with the features it is offering and if one has the money to buy the handset, you should surely go for it… well again I shifted my focus from SE W550i, which has a sound widening feature, but I am already happy with my Nokia 3300, which I use it in office since Camera phones are banned in most of the BPO firms and it provides me a pure audio bliss, still I was feeling the need to upgrade from my K700i to either K750i or W550i, then I read about Nokia 6681 and I always used to envy Symbian OS based phones, as Symbian OS gives you freedom to use many Applications and also there are many exciting Symbian games available for a Symbian OS
I then zeroed on to Nokia 6681 as I was skeptical about this handset in beginning, as I read some reviews of sticky OS with the handset, also Nokia has not placed FM Radio in this handset, else I was very much convinced with the resolution of pictures taken from this phone, listed by other users on review sites, the zoom function in the handset is very smooth and gives you up to 6X zoom facility. The slider given behind maybe a irritating feature as it seems to be too loose and one may feel that it may come off any time, but that is not the case, its well placed and held on the panel behind.
I got this handset from Vashi for 17200 bucks, as In Pune it was costing me 17500 bucks, I just missed out the black model of Nokia 6681 as the dealer whom I approached was not having the stock of that colour, and I could not wait any further, I had my eyes over Nokia N70 too, but it was too much to buy for me right now, I was also running short on my budget, there is not much difference in Nokia 6681 and Nokia 6680 as Nokia 6680 has 3G and a dual camera feature, which is not that relevant to me as I’m not a mobile photographer freak, and neither a avid handset surfer. Nokia 6681 still packs a lot of features to keep you hooked on to it.
The handset is slim enough, on handset ergonomics I would rate it 3/5 as the handset keys are comfortable with a plastic material cover over it, the menu option, call answer and call reject buttons are placed too vertical and straight, leading to slight inconvenience, the joystick button in top center of keypad is well positioned and smooth to operate.
The screen is big enough in level to Nokia 6230 or Nokia 6630, crisp and clear, 262K colour screen, equipped with light sensor, allowing the handset to adjust the screen lights according to the external light source. Sound quality is rocking, never a problem with Nokia handsets, battery life is strong, also network reception, the handset software does not hang, but tends to get slow only once in a while, only when you could be using a memory consuming application. Else the handset also come along with default application to play music, it is stuffed with a Opera Browser, WAP browser, full HTML support, also flash and JavaScript support, Real Player, a snowboarding game, card deck game, and Kodak mobile image printing application, “muvee editor”, image editors are fun to play with, still you have plethora of options in Symbian apps which can help you play around with your Symbian OS.
I have loaded one such application Smart Movie converter, which can allow you to watch a whole movie on your handset as the corresponding Smart Movie converter app on PC can compress a DVD copy movie within 100 MB, and you can watch movie on full screen landscape mode, which is quite a cool feature, the hot swap memory function is given on the side of the handset, it comes along with 8 MB of internal handset memory and 64 MB of RS-MMC dual voltage memory card, not enough for handset with such cool features.
The handset will also not disappoint you on music front; it has a stereo feature and has a fully functional mp3 player the headset provided along with the phone is innovative in design and has more of treble output compared to bass output. Going ahead the handset also packs Quick Office package which allows you to use this feature to view word files, excel files and PowerPoint files is perfectly compatible with MS Office package, you will not be able to create office documents on the handset, but the same can be overcome by loading smart office package, also the handset allows you to view PDF files with Adobe Acrobat Viewer 1.1 for mobiles. So this handset has good balance of entertainment and productive function, that’s why it comes under a “smart phone “category. The handset does not have a Infrared feature, has Bluetooth connectivity, one can use the handset to send and receive mails using POP3 and IMAP facility.
The browsing experience on the handset is very fast, you can browse with full screen on Opera browser and experience true edge speeds(dependent on your mobile network), as I also use this handset for Bluetooth internet surfing on my computer.
The video recording in the handset is also excellent you can create short clippings else record at length to the capacity of memory card, the handset gives you night shot mode in both image capturing and video recording, with a flash feature, along with other capturing modes like grayscale, sepia etc….
N70 surely has some unmatched features like 20X zoom, dual camera, 3G support, 2MP camera, FM Radio included, but 3G services is yet to hit Indian markets, so the handset may not be that useful to all its features.
My verdict to this handset would be 10/10 as it is a refreshing change for me after using SE K700i for 1 and half year, its total paisa vasool handset.