GEM - Great Exciting Mobile. Review on Nokia 6610

-- You don’t know what you have got....

This review is dedicated to my friend who passed away last week. Now, as I collect the shattered pieces of my heart, I pen this review in the memory of my closest friend for the past year and a half, Nokia 6610.

I had a Nokia 3310, which I used, abused, battered, shattered, crashed and banged until one fine day it gave up. And the search for a new phone began. I just wanted another phone. For me a phone is a phone is a phone is a phone… well you get the point. All I want in a phone is to send messages, and talk. I really don’t care for all the other frills, like WAP, GPRS, Bluetooth, Camera and other stuff. Just give me the basic functionality in a phone and I am a happy person. I was on a phone hunting mission, when I came across the 6610.

My Experience with the 6610

The review is based purely on my experience with the 6610, please excuse me if I may have missed out on (and I have) some points.

The first thing I noticed about this phone was its lightness. After having used a 3310 for a long time, one can immediately feel the difference in weight. “It’s feather weight”I said to myself. It’s got colour display too, another novelty for a 3310 user. What really made me lose my heart to this phone was not the colour display or its lighter than a feather weight. It was the voice clarity. I bought the phone and immediately made a call to a friend to test the sound, battery etc. I was amazed. There I was, at Churchgate station, with chaos all around me, and I could hear everything that my friend spoke to me. All clear sound, as if she was standing right next to me talking to me.

Crystal clear sound, that’s what I was looking for, and I got it. The other thing I wanted in my phone was to send and receive messages. That too I got. The 6610 has an option to create folders, where you can save messages. No more No space for new messagesanymore. I could move the good messages (idiotic jokes, mainly) to my personal folders, and leave the inbox free for more. Another feature of the 6610 that I really adored was the inbuilt FM radio. The FM radio was a life saver during the times that I spent (cursing) in bumper to bumper traffic.

The other features of this fantastic phone, sadly I couldn’t explore. I wasn’t just interested. But here is what I experienced, and I want to share with you all. These are the only features in the 6610 that I used.

1. Polyphonic ringtones : 6610 has about 10 built in polyphonic and an equal number of mono tones. The tones in the polyphonic category were all melodious, easy on the ears. In addition to these, you also have an option to download and save ringtones. Just create a folder using the Galleryoption and save the tone there.

   
   




2. Wallpapers : Another upside of having a colour display. Some pretty images provided, never bothered to change the wallpaper. Continued with the default “blue sky” wallpaper. Again, just like ring tones, the 6610 provides an option to save all your downloaded or received images in folders.

   
   




3. FM radio : You have the choice to tune and save upto 20 FM channels. The hands free also doubles up as a FM earphones, or if you are in the mood to bore every one around you, there is also a speaker option. Just select the speaker option and take those earphones out of your ear. What you get is clear FM reception. Almost everytime, except when you are in an enclosed or really cut off from the world place.

   
   




4. Organiser : A great feature, for all the forgetful souls out there. Wow, remembering birthdays, n other events was never so easy. All I had to do was, enter the event, the time and date to remind me. Voila, my phone transformed into a personal assistant. I could also set the event type, that is what I have to be reminded about. For example, call someone, or remember someones birthday, or even exam dates (yes, I need to be reminded about that too).

   
   




5. Phone book : The best thing about the phone book was the multiple phone number entries for one person. Now, I could enter the cell number, office number, residence number and even fax and pager number of a person by creating just one phone book entry. In addition to the phone numbers, I could also save email addresses, and postal addresses.

   
   




6. Alarm clock : A very inmportant feature and a must have in any phone. If the alarm clock comes with the snooze functionality, great. The snooze function is a real gem, specially in the winter months, when the alarm clock screams “ 6 o’clock WAKE UP” and your brain says “go back to sleep, you bird brained idiot”.

   
   




7. Battery life : The best. I have heard lot of friends and collegues, crib about how their battery goes phussssafter just a couple of long (duration, not distance) calls. I am thankful and proud to say that I never had any such battery related problems with my phone. On an average, I used the phone for about 2 hours daily listening to FM. Those 2 hours are excluding the talk and messaging time. I would set the phone on vibrator mode (very often) whenever there was a team meeting, and vibrator mode shortens battery life, they say.

   
   

That’s all I had to write about the 6610. If you are still reading this (I admire your patience), please comment or atleast enlighten me with information about what I could have included. Can’t really blame me, all that I can think about phone features is message and talk.

…. Now I must be going, got to carve a few lines on the gravestone,

Nokia 6610 (June 2004 – November 2005)

Faithful friend .RIP

P.s After the mourning period is over, I am going to get myself a new phone…. Any suggestions?

another P.s - The title of the review sucks, sorry about that.

• Thank you for your patience -