I’m really not a negative person, but I find myself complaining a lot. I think there are a couple reasons for this. First, because I’m an optimist, I think there are generally good ways to do things, so it bothers me when I see things done poorly. Second, it’s really not interesting to write about things that don’t bother me.
For example, I really enjoyed my egg and toast sandwich this morning, but I just don’t feel strongly enough about the sandwich to write about it.
So it’s a pretty safe bet that if I write about a product, it’s because I’m not very happy with it. So it is with my Nokia 6682 telephone.
Background
I’m not a cellphone power user. Basically I want a phone that I can use to make and receive calls and drop without worrying too much. So I’m probably the wrong customer for the Nokia 6682; apparently this is one of the “Smart Phones”, which is a euphemism for “Real Pain To Use As A Telephone”.
I arrived at the 6682 through poor judgement; I was visiting Whidbey Island with a friend who was looking for property. He connected his laptop over the cell phone to the internet (via bluetooth) to check on property listings. Later, he was IMing with his wife on the phone, took a picture of a scenic bridge, and just sent that on to his wife. It all looked very slick.
That was over a year ago, and I decided that my next phone would have the same capabilities. Not because I necessarily thought I would use all those features, but because I wanted to give them a try.
Getting The Phone
Table of Contents
So when our contract with Sprint ended, I picked up a 6682 from Cingular (my wife got a SLVR). For the first couple days, I was in love. The Nokia interface was light-years beyond my wife’s SLVR, and was flexible enough to satisfy the computer geek in me.
But after a few days of playing with the phone, installing apps, shuffling things around, the warts began to show. So here is, in no particular order, the warts that I can remember right now.
The Interface
Remember when I said that the interface was flexible? Yeah, well it’s also a real pain. It’s got too much stuff. Getting to common apps takes several button pushes, and it’s tough to remember where you stored less common apps.
Maybe this is a shortcoming in my brain, but I’m not especially stupid and it’s not easy for me. Perhaps if I used the uncommon apps more frequently, I wouldn’t forget where they were. Whatever.
Stability
This thing crashes if you look at it funny. One of the nice features of the 6682 that my last cell phone lacked is an alarm clock. But unfortunately, the alarm clock tends to cause the phone to lock up. An alarm clock that crashes the phone isn’t very useful for trips, because I can’t rely on it to work when I need it to.
Audio Quality
Maybe I’m expecting too much from a cell phone. But when I talk to someone on a regular phone, it sounds like they are right there. When I talk to someone on my 6682, it sounds like they are talking to me through a Pringles can. Perhaps all cell phones do this? Even so, my 6682 sounds far worse than my old cheapo Sanyo.
There is also an annoying buzz that comes and goes when I’m talking on the 6682. I wish I knew what it was, but it makes me worry that my phone is frying my brain.
Interference
My 6682 causes all kinds of audio interference with my ipod, and even my computer. It’s really annoying. I blamed my iPod for a while, but it turns out it’s just the phone. Don’t the Europeans have stricter RF pollution regulations than we do? My wife’s SLVR doesn’t do this…
Form Factor
This is the first “candy bar” phone I’ve had. My last phone, a Sanyo, was a clamshell. Every time I put this phone in my pocket or the seatbag on my bike, keys get pushed. It has a keypad lock feature, but I don’t want to lock the keypad just to walk from my office to my car.
The phone is also big. Way big. like 4.5″ by 2.2″ or something.
And the keys are really tiny and spaced poorly. It’s tough to enter a phone number without making a mistake.
Durability
Durability of this thing sucks. I treat it like a cell phone, which means I don’t throw it around or drop it but I do shove it in my pocket and my bike’s seatbag. Already there’s an entire vertical line of dead pixels on the screen, which is annoying to look at and will make it difficult to sell the phone. The lens cover is really flimsy; it hasn’t broken off yet, but I have no doubt it will even though I never open it.
Audio
I don’t listen to audio on the phone, but I can see how that would be an interesting feature. The phone comes with headphones, but they don’t fit my ears. No problem, you say; use your own headphones. But the phone doesn’t have a standard headphone jack!
If I were ambitious I could probably solder a jack onto the proprietary connector that came with the Nokia headphones, but why is this necessary? Why do they make a proprietary connector?
Caveats
You’ll notice I’m not writing about any of the applications or advanced features on the phone. That’s because I don’t use them. As I said earlier, I’m completely the wrong customer for this phone.
You can read good reviews of those features at various sites, such as brighthand.com, russellbeattie.com, or saunderslog.com. These guys seem to actually be the target market for this phone, and they speak in fairly glowing terms about it.
Conclusion
So my conclusion is, if you just want a phone stay away from the 6682. If you lead a moderately active lifestyle, stay away from the 6682. If you want a device that is reliable and compact, stay away from the 6682. But if you are a smartphone power user, apparently this one is worth considering.
As for me, I’m going to try to pick up a cheap quad-band flip-phone from ebay.
