Well worth the money. Review on Nokia 6600

I had used the T230 for around 2 years and had no problems whatsoever with it. Hence I had become a Sony believer and when I lost my mobile, I went to the show room with a determination that I would buy only the K700I which I thought was the best phone I could get for my budget of around 10K. So went to the show room and almost got myself fixed on the K700I when the sales person suggested having a look at the Nokia 6600. I was against it at first, as I do not like phones which are bulky and huge. But he was determined and I gave in.....and I liked what I saw.

When I compared it with the K700I, I found most of the features to be the same. The only difference, and this is a pretty big one, is that the Nokia 6600 supports extending the phone's memory while the K700I does not. This in itself is a big deciding factor as the other phone has all features but is defeated by the 41MB memory limit that has been imposed upon it. So, this one difference became my deciding factor and I went in for the Nokia 6600. I have been using the phone for a month and here is what I feel about it.....

Display - One of the better displays which I have come across. You may feel that for a guy who had owned T230 before, anything will be a better display!! Partly true, but the 65K colours along with the extra large screen has a really good display and is worth the money. The display is very good at night and fair when exposed to daylight

Buttons - After using a T230, I took some time to get the hang of the various buttons(especially) the Copy-Paste function, but once you get used to it, it is a breeze. People who regularly message though, may find it a little irritating as the buttons are close together and the messages may get jumbled up :)

Menu - One of the best Menus I have seen. Nice, simple GUI which is quite simple to comprehend and get used to. Simple, but effective. Also, you have the options of Listing the Items in the menu or see them side by side. There is also an option where you can chose the 2 things that you use most...say if you use the camera and the messaging service the most, just simply chose them to appear on the Wallpaper screen....pretty cool huh?

Camera - The Camera is nothing out of the world, but it does take decent enough pictures which you can circulate. The images do become a bit grainy when you transfer them on to a PC though. There are 3 modes, Standard, Portrait and Night mode. The night mode is really effective to the extent that there should be atleast some light. Do not expect it to take snaps when it is pitch dark. It will take, but there wont be anything to see :). There is also a Video recording facility but the catch is that you can only record for a max time of 10sec. This can be overcome by downloading software which increases the time of recording to the capability of your memory card

Connectivity - This phone has good connectivity. I have used only Blue tooth and Infrared and they are really incredible. The range for Bluetooth is around 20 feet which is good enough. You can connect to the PC using blue tooth and if your PC isnt Bluetooth enabled, just buy a Blue tooth Dongle and you are all set. Fast and Hassle free, as everything is without wires.

Extendable Memory - The major bonus when I compared it with K700I. The memory can be extendable upto 512 MB( I think) and that is more than enough. You can store as many pictures, ringtones, songs as the memory allows and chill....I have a 64MB complimentary card and am not even half way through yet !!!

Apart from all this, the phone runs on Symbian OS. Any software can be downloaded from the net and used on the phone. MP3 player, DVD Player you name it and you have it. There are a lot of other cool stuff also available such as the Full Screen Caller, Blacklister, Call Cheater etc....and the list simply does not end. Other pleasantaries include the Loud speaker, which though not too loud, is enough if you are not surrounded by traffic and stuff. The 6600 supports midi,wav,amr,awb ringtones or what we call them as Truetones. The only hitch is that though MP3s can be stored in the phone, they cant be set as ringtones. But as usual, there is a workaround. Just convert the MP3 into a WAV and you can set it as your ringtone with good clarity. The reception and the sound clarity is good,it has not let me down till now. The phone needs charging once in 2 days for the moderate-heavy user. Once the euphoria of buying the phone settles down, I guess its enough if you charge once in 3 days

Coming to the cons, the biggest Con is that there is no Radio for such a wonderful phone. why I ask why? Having a Radio would have really made this phone complete and a world beater. But you can always store MP3s and listen to them. Also, once the memory gets used, the phone gets appreciably slower. There is no facility to automatically lock the keypad :(.... and the alarm also has to be set daily, there is no concept of recurring alarms...something which I miss dearly from the T230.

All said and done, it may not exactly be a bargain at the 10000 bucks which I had to shell out, but its well worth the money. Thinking of buying a cell phone? What are you waiting for? Go for the 6600