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It's the Finnish manufacturer's third crack at a smartphone as Nokia launches the 6600, heir to the wildly successful 7650 and 3650 models. With big shoes to fill, this most recent model still boasts Series 60, albeit the most recent version of the platform - based on the latest Symbian OS version. Apart from this, not much is new, but improvements are aplenty in a device that comes across as rock solid in every aspect.

Deviating slightly from the standard Nokia candy bar shape, the gray-and-black Nokia 6600 is relatively nondescript--don't expect passersby to point and stare. With its curved, bulging sides, the handset is short and squat, only slightly smaller (4.3 by 2.3 by 1 inches; 4.4 ounces) than most other smart phones in its class. That said, the 6600 felt comfortable in our hands, and it fit snugly in a jeans pocket.


Short and squat: The 6600 has a slight barrel shape.
Nokia wisely took advantage of the 6600's spacious real estate, giving the mobile a generous 65,000-color, 2.25-inch (diagonal) display that's roomy and easy to read, even in direct sunlight. Our thumbs didn't have much trouble with the five-way toggle or the keypad, but we had to press pretty hard to register a keystroke; we prefer a lighter touch. A clever addition is the dedicated Edit key to the left of the keypad, which provides one-button access to editing options such as symbols, numbers, and word-predicting text. It did take us a few seconds to get used to the Talk and End buttons, which are placed on either side of the screen rather than below it. Also, there are no dedicated speakerphone or camera-shutter keys. Instead, those features are activated by the soft keys.


Buried treasure: though the 6600 has an expandable memory slot, you have to remove the battery to put in your cards.
The icon-driven menu was easy to navigate (you can scroll sideways through selections), if lacking in eye-catching animations. We did notice that the Symbian OS 7.0 was a little sluggish; it sometimes took a few seconds for menus to load or for pages to redraw. We also had a complaint with the placement of the MMC media slot. As with the Nokia 3620 as well as the Nokia 3300 music phone, you have to remove the 6600's battery to change the card. Also, since there are no volume-control buttons on the side of the mobile, you'll need to remove the Nokia from your ear to adjust the sound level in the middle of a conversation. The camera lens is located on the upper half of the back of the handset, almost giving the 6600 the look of a real camera from behind.
Connectivity

As previously mentioned, Nokia has foregone use of its Pop-Port connector in the 6600, focusing entirely on wireless for connectivity purposes. In fact, cradle or cable connectivity are entirely out of the question as Infrared and Bluetooth are the only two means of communication possible, each of which performed flawlessly throughout testing.

In the WAN department, the 6600 boasts healthy support for tri-band GSM 900/1800/1900 MHz, as well as HSCSD, GPRS and Fax services, all of which laptop and handheld users will be pleased to learn is a breeze to utilize either by means of Infrared or Bluetooth.
Drawing the overall impression of connectivity down, the Nokia 6600 also sports an MMC Card expansion slot. Although there is of course added benefit in memory expansion itself, Nokia's choice of format is a poor one as support for this particular standard is waning - and to make matters worse, not only is its upper limitation 128 MB but the expansion slot itself is placed under the battery of the phone requiring complete disassembly upon insertion or removal of a card.

Specifications

Although it is not known what processor powers the Nokia 6600 at the time of writing, it appears to deliver performance fully on par with its predecessors, and as such the 6600 is comfortably snappy when performing the vast majority of functions. Its internal, non-volatile memory has been expanded to 6 MB, although it is fair to expect the bundled 32 MB MMC card to quickly come in handy for users wanting to do more than a bit of desktop synchronization and picture-snapping.

Powered as it is by a 850 mAh Lithium Ion battery, the Nokia 6600 is listed as offering a talk time of up to 4 hours and up to 240 hours of standby time; its performance fell only marginally short of these claims. By comparison, the Nokia 3650 utilizes the same battery model, but achieves far shorter standby time.

Software

Based on version 7.0 of the Symbian OS, the latest version of Series 60 bears few direct signs to end users that there has been a change under the hood. The graphical user interface remains the embodiment of user friendliness, and although power users might find it overly simple at times, the general public is sure to appreciate its approach to navigation. Performance is, as in the 7650 and 3650 models, best described as snappy, and compares well to that of other current smartphones based on competing platforms from Microsoft and PalmSource.

Nokia did introduce some changes, however, such as delivering audio support in its video recording application from day one; a combined Gallery application for browsing multimedia content; support for themes that alter the graphical aspects of the UI to a larger degree; and support for profile and application switching by way of voice command. Although minor, these are still welcome improvements over past models, while the 6600 retains past highlights such as the embedded RealOne Player enabling streaming video playback; the excellent, multi-protocol e-mail client; its XHTML browser; and more.

The arrival of the Nokia 6600 also marks Nokia's first foray into bundling both trial and full versions of applications with a smartphone. Full versions include among others a Reuters News Reader and the Opera microbrowser, of which the latter is the highlight of the collection, enabling users to browse full-size web sites. Racking up additional points, the Nokia 6600 now also supports Java MIDP 2.0, and as such is compatible with the widest possible range of Java applications for mobile devices.

On the desktop side, the Nokia PC Suite delivers functionality on par with what one could expect; sadly, Nokia still hasn't added support for synchronization of Notes content, but at least the synchronization process itself is a smooth affair - as is image management.

Conclusion

The 6600 is more of an evolution than a revolution. In spite of this, Nokia's third generation smartphone finally performs the long-anticipated, proverbial slam dunk as a number of scattered improvements raise the overall impression to one of utter reliability and versatility. Frustratingly, it still lacks Notes synchronization with desktop PIMs, but this aside the Nokia 6600 presents itself as a potentially excellent tool for business users and one very smart phone for everyone else.

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