Simon Reeve

Nokia 6220 (Front and Back)

It’s been a month since migrating from the N73 to the 6220, and as promised, here’s my take on living with the 6220.  Read on to find out about The Good, The Bad, and nope – there’s no Ugly

The Good

It’s quick, far faster than my old N73.  You can multitask too, having maps open, playing music and viewing quick office docs at the same time with ease.  It’s light and more compact than the other smart phones, in particular the N73, and everyday use to date has confirmed my decision to go with light over some other features.  Since I don’t use a handbag, it’s nice to not have to lug around a lead weight in my suit trousers.  It’s typically Nokia easy to use – I’ve not bothered reading the manual.  The navigation button in the middle is easy for the thumb to drive the menus, far better than the N73′s smaller button.

Sound – despite only one speaker, it’s still great for a phone.  Using loudspeaker in the car for calls is more than adequate.  Playing back tunes is OK; I’ve found it useful to entertain my toddler when he’s attention span is waning!  Sound through the headphones is great – stereo widening did wonders whilst playing back tunes on a long walk.

Screen – OK, a bit bigger would have been nice, but it seems crisp and clear and even big enough to view maps whilst the phone’s mounted on the car dashboard. 

Software – There’s quite a host of useful stuff and if there’s something missing, there’s plenty of Symbian apps out there.  Nokia Dictionary is useful and you can download free dictionaries for translating. 

I downloaded a free Nokia app called Sports Tracker.  Sports Tracker tracks your rout using GPS, gives you all sorts of stats real time, saving the data for later comparison with other trips.  A cool feature is the ability to export for upload to Google Maps or Virtual Earth, where you can then see you route overlaid onto satellite image.

Nokia Maps – this one features in the good and the bad.  The good?  Well it does seem to work and it is rather cool to have a ‘TomTom’ in my pocket without having to carry around a separate device.  Having 3 months free Nokia Maps guidance, I’ve used it to and from work, though ignored its route, since as with all GPS guidance, it doesn’t understand where and when the school run is!  I did use it for real, going to somewhere new to me in an emergency, as I didn’t have my TomTom (it was typically in the other car).  Using Maps was easy to see whilst mounted on dashboard and the map seemed very recent.

Camera – Good, especially in terms of speed compared to previous phones.  It’s a little bit blurry (see below).  Video is acceptable.  Best of all is the flash, it actually works!  OK so it’s not going to light up 50 people in a group shot 20 feet away, but for close up snapshots at parties etc, it does a good job. 

Fancy stuff – Having the 6220 read you text messages or email out load is quite interesting.  However, it’s funny when it reads the word Nokia incorrectly (at least for the English) saying Knowkia instead.

The Bad

Maps – why do I have to pay for voice guidance after the trial period?  Who’s going to do that?  Is guidance not the whole pint about having a GPS device?  If I buy any other device, TomTom, Garmin, etc, they’ll give me guidance for free.  Sure I expect to pay for keeping maps up to date, but for guidance?  It’s like buying a DVD player that allows you to look at any frame, but you can’t press play!  I’d love to know how many people use the 3 moth trial period and then go buy other software, as I will, such as Co-pilot.

Camera – Picky I know, but this is still annoying.  You have a camera.  It has a timer delay function.  What do you do with the timer delay function?  Take group shots when no-one’s around to take the photo for you.  Oops!  Nokia failed to realise that with the N73 and the 6220 – the side you’d lay the camera on isn’t square to the front, so the phone just falls over. 

It’s a little bit blurred – I have yet to do a proper comparison, but I do think it’s blurred compared to the photos produced by the lesser pixel N73.  Sure it’s crisp on the phones small screen, but on the PC it’s not quite there.  This is a real shame as the camera is good otherwise, especially having a proper flash. 

I do wish you could disable the sound.  I know it’s probably something to with privacy, but the sounds are naff and sometimes there’s legitimate times when one wants to take a photo quietly!  Like not wanting to scare animals or wake up your two year old, who just so happens to look cute scrunched up asleep in the car seat. 

Connectivity – Why use micro USB, when it seems only a tiny bit smaller than the more common Mini USB?  You have to carry around the cable, as they’re not so common, which is frustrating for a portable device. 

Shame too that use a 2.5mm audio jack – means you have to buy an adapter to use the ‘normal’ 3.5mm jack.  To me it looks like there’s room for it.

TV out – A really useful feature, if you remember to take the cable with you.   It works, but….  There seems to be a delay from the phone’s display to the TV, but you can live with this.  The worst thing is you can’t rotate photos – or rather you can rotate the display, but only the phone’s display rotates!  So it’s back to the early digital camera days of having folks tilt their heads to view your portrait shots!

Display – My old Nokias often suffer from dust creeping into the display.  Then you’re for ever taking the cover off to clean it.  In the pre picture phone days, this didn’t matter, but now you’re taking photos and surfing the web, it can be annoying in bright light.  At first glance the cover of the 6220 looks closer bonded to the screen, but alas, there’s a speck of dust there already!  Arrrgghhh.  Picky, but never the less it’s annoying.

Battery – mmmmmm this isn’t brilliant.  It’s ok if you leave it alone and only make the odd call.  If you play with the thing, using Maps, Web etc, then you don’t get long.  I can easily get the battery dangerously low in a couple of days, and so always have a charger nearby (if possible). 

The Keys – They could do with a bit more definition.  It’s not easy texting without looking - quite a useful skill if you want to avoid walking into lampposts.

Summary

In general it’s more good than bad.  For its size and weight, it takes some beating.  It’s responsiveness is the biggest upgrade over the earlier Nokia Symbian phones, plus the GPS. 

I guess people will start harping on about the N96 now it’s out, but it wasn’t an option for me at the time and it’s big and bulky.  (Can you spot the envy?)

I’ve not commented on the web or emailing capabilities, as I haven’t really used it much, I prefer a proper machine.  It could come in handy every now and then though – so I’ll reserve judgement.