Saturday, November 14, 2009

Long Term Notes: Nokia 6650 Fold

After having used my free phone for a few more months, I thought I'd jot down a few more details on its state of being and what has and hasn't worked out.

The best thing about the newer smart phones is that once the manufacturer gets the hardware and software stable, a lot of the best things about your phone come from new and exciting ways to utilize its features through new software.  This has largely been the case with my 6650 Fold, so the majority of my discussion will be about the trials of various software solutions to my problems, some of which I never knew I had.

The only real complaints I've had about this phone have been about the button layout, which I discussed in my ealier post, and apparently haven't bothered doing anything more about since then.  I did purchase a USB cable, but haven't yet felt the need to actually attempt to make the changes so that I'm not always tapping the key to open the AT&T Navigator.  Maybe later...

One thing that has changed since I first wrote about my 6650 Fold, was the addition of an internet data plan.  This has allowed me to augment many of my favorite text-only services with new features.

The biggest shortcoming I've found with this phone is that it lacks a comfortable amount of RAM. There is a great web browser for S60 and WM phones called Skyfire, which I could only run after rebooting the phone or it would protest that there was not enough memory available.  SInce installing another helper application, I can't even run it after a reboot, but it was fun to use while I could.  If you have a data plan, and an S60 or Windows Mobile device, compare Skyfire to your packaged browser.  I'm willing to bet Skyfire will take you places you never thought possible from your phone.

Similar to Skyfire's problems with running short of memory, the same can be done with my built-in browser from time to time, so my browser of choice for this phone is Opera Mini. I use the full screen interface, almost exclusively, and it hardly ever malfunctions.  The Opera Link feature allows me to manage bookmarks and notes from my desktop, then synchronize with the browser on the phone later.  I only wish I could use it as my default browser.  Unfortunately, I have not found any way to do this yet.

Google has a full suite of applications for S60.  The ones I use are Search (accessible by pressing the C key from the idle screen, and now featuring voice recognition), Maps with Lattitude, Sync (SyncML or Exchange ActiveSync), and YouTube.  From Opera, I use Google Voice, Calendar, Reader, and iGoogle.

sync.gifI would like to make special note of the Google Sync features for a couple of reasons.  The first is that being able to access your contacts and calendar features from your phone AND anywhere you can access the internet, is very, very handy.  The second? Something strange was happening when I was synchronizing both contact and calendar information that was causing the birthdays of my contacts to drift, making them all a few days younger!  Disabling the calendar sync has not helped, so I'm going back to the SyncML method.  Google? FIX IT!

The music application works well, and can be accessed with the phone either opened or closed, and there are many playback options to configure to your taste.  There isn't any 3.5mm headphone jack, so you're options are limited to using the somewhat proprietary 2.5mm headset jack or Bluetooth.  I'm using bluetooth, and it works great.  This phone does not appear to have any limitation as to what sort of audio is being listened to in order to pump audio through the bluetooth connection. One of my previous phones required a headset that supported A2DP in order to play back .wav or .mp3 files, or it would play throught the phone's speaker.  Nokia does not have that limitation.

locationtagger.PNGOne of the features not included with this phone is picture GeoTagging, but it can be added by installing Nokia's Location Tagger software.  This is built into many of their phones, but is not included with the 6650 fold, probably due to RAM constraints again. It loads up when you start the phone, grabs your location with the GPS, goes to sleep, then wakes up the GPS when you launch the camera application.  Any pictures taken after the GPS has reaquired your location are geotagged.

In closing, I have to say again that while there are a lot of limitations to what this phone comes with, there is plenty it can do if you know where to look, and while there are many signs saying Symbian might not have much longer to live in this world, the fact is that it allows for plenty of added functionality for a very cheap (and fairly durable) flip-phone. Thank you, Nokia 6650 Fold, for being a great temporary measure.
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