Introduction
Newer and newer phones are getting released at an astonishing rate. Nokia’s also working hard, phones with similar features and price are coming one after the other from the manufacturer, but we shouldn’t think of these simple mass products: the real dumping is in the high-end. N82 and N78 are also quite similar and now here’s 6220 Classic, which might even be an alloy of these two.
These Finnish guys are packing such features under the new Symbian Series60 Feature Pack 2 that just keep us with our mouths open. Something, however, is always left out intentionally, this time for example we could mention the lack of WLAN support as a flaw, but there is a GPS and a 5 megapixel camera. The interesting is that these three similar phones are not much different in design either, as none of them are sliders or a clamshell, all of them are classical candybars. Of course both N82 and N78 have a kind of uncommon keypad and the most conservative member of the trio is undoubtedly the subject of our current review.
The huge box we got from XXL GSM has lots of accessories inside, but there was no memory card in the package. This of course can change based on the market where it’s sold and I have to put it forward that the phone we were testing would have been launched in the Asian region… but it still got to us somehow. This of course has its downsides (maps), but the differences are not so significant. Functionality is the same, we’ll be telling of the camera a bit again, but the essence doesn’t change.
Exterior
6220 Classic is no extraordinary phone. It’s simple, black cover is shiny like 3120 Classic, while the back is rather interesting, it’s a strange contrast. According to this the handset’s keypad is a great dust collector. The blue label and backlight of the keys might be strange at first, white might be more pleasant for the eye. There is a violet edition too, let’s just say it’s strange.
6220 Classic is a normal, human-sized phone. The silvery stripe running along the sides surrounds the microSD slot and the navigation hotkey on the left. There is a small, blue, star-shaped light for this, which is lit when the gadget has GPS connection. On the right we can see the volume control keys and the camera’s hotkey.
On top of the handset there is the usual Nokia power and profile changer key, while on the bottom there is the microUSB port, a charger port and a 2.5 mm jack connector.
On the back the camera is emphasized and finally there is even a protective bolt on the lens. There is a nice little xenon flash too, the only thing that’s problematic is the case’s material. General assembly quality is okay, although I was missing some metal from the whole thing.
Menu, hardware
As a not-so-surprising fact the operating system is Symbian 9.3 with Series 60 platform as a user interface and of course the Feature Pack 2 extension is also here. There are a series of new features in this compared to previous Nokia phones, but we have discussed these in detail at the review of N78.
The new things are not significant from the point of view of functionality, but increase user experience. Animated menus are not annoying, but spectacular, while the automatically rotating screen at some features (picture gallery, camera) is also nice. An elegant feature is that in case of an active keylock, but still lit up display, the picture fades to grayscale. We could be writing a lot about these, but you should rather see it for yourselves. Here comes a 7 minute video:
Hirdetés
Customizability is still great and themes come in handy in this matter, and since FP1 we can choose different menu views besides the grid layout (still, all of my acquaintances who use Series 60 said that the good old interface with icons is the best) and the active standby screen can also have a different layout.
I can’t (and won’t) say anything bad about the QVGA display, and although I could imagine something larger than 2.2”, but in that case 6220 Classic would be better than its direct opponents from Nokia. The software is fast, it lags only at a couple of applications, mostly when data has to be downloaded from the net (Nokia Maps, browsing…), I had a series of apps opened up in the background continuously, Bluetooth was turned on, but this meant no problem for the system, it did its job perfectly. No wonder, as there is 128 MB SDRAM besides the 369 MHz CPU.
Basic functions
The contact list is the usual. Which is no problem, as in our case it’s more than perfect with its dynamic storage space, editable fields and thanks to Feature Pack 2, images associated with names are now visible in a normal size. As for me I still don’t like automatic voice IDs, but somehow Nokia tends to stick with this solution – of course not all languages are very fortunate when using this feature.
Messaging is also great, we have anything we’d like, SMS, MMS and email client too. The latter did its job perfectly (again), and although it happens rarely with me, now I have been around a place where there was only GPRS network, I was prepared to wait for minutes until mail is downloaded, but the client got the headers very fast and after that I could choose those which I wanted to. Of course there is attachment support, as 6220 Classic also has the QuickOffice package installed, which works in read-only mode, if we’d like to use it for editing then we have to buy the extended edition.
The calendar, the alarm clock and other organizer features are the same as we had in N78. The active entry feature is new, this is an interface where we can put text, pictures, videos, all kinds of files and even contacts. This can be sent (and I’d like to pause for a moment, as I managed to make the software hang up for good with this feature, although I swear it has been working fine for the last 5 days), in which case content is compressed in a zip file and we can even attach such a note to a contact, which results in the note being displayed when we’re talking with the contact.
There is a PDF reader, a calculator and unit converter, but the dictionary is probably present only on this Asian edition, as it would have liked to force me to use mandarin language, but I prefer kiwi. The message reader is a good old friend, while in the list of games there is a single one, Marble.
Multimedia
Five megapixels, Carl-Zeiss, xenon flash. Still, the phone is very fortunate for not being present in our mega comparative test, as it would have clearly taken the last place. I took pictures in the morning, in the evening, with and without flash, but the 6220 Classic we had for testing had a great affection for image noise and so it placed this effect on all areas of any image where there was no sunlight.
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The flash is of course powerful, the number of settings is high, there is a self timer, image sequencing, we can set picture quality, size, white balance, exposure correction (-2, +2 range), ISO value (but not in numbers, noooo, we can just set this to low, medium or high), but we can’t disable camera sounds. The phone is good in video recording, as usual, as it can record VGA movies at 30 fps.
The musical part, however, is pretty good. There are no changes here either, but the software knows everything that’s important, there is an equalizer with user presets, repeat mode, stereo Bluetooth, filtering by ID3 tags. The single speaker on top of the phone is quite loud, of course it’s not good in bass, but compared to being made of plastic it’s really fine. The included accessory is absolutely simple, we’ll need an appropriate headset for some more serious music experience.
There is an FM radio which now finally supports RDS and it can download the locally available stations list from the internet. The handsfree is also okay, I managed to fill a 50 square-meter room with it. This time there is no FM transmitter, possibly because of the marketing.
GPS
This handset has the new Nokia Maps software, version 2.0. It connects finds position lightning fast, and uses the cell phone network to do so, and then when there is GPS signal (which also comes pretty fast) it locates the user precisely on the map. It is not yet known if all countries will get the proper maps, this test phone didn’t have one, so the current location was downloaded from the net.
Of course it is usable this way too, but navigation costs extra, as usual. For me it first asked some money for the maps (€69 EUR) and then it would have liked another sum for voice navigation. Lacking these two we can only search the database (anyway this is downloaded from the net too) and we can see where we are.
The design didn’t change much we can set almost every important parameter in the settings. There are now satellite and hybrid (satellite + streets) views available. Searching from the main screen works quite well, I found the streets damn fast and the maps shipped by Navteq seem much better than the horrible ones from TeleAtlas, which was last time seen in a Mio navi.
Altogether I still think (and most of my colleagues agree) that phone-based navigation is just a quick help, rather than a real GPS solution, on one hand because of the screen size and on the other hand because of the other features this is not the best way for machines to help us navigate. And furthermore this costs extra in case of Nokia.
Data transfer, battery
We have everything except WLAN. Although it’s true that nowadays mobile internet doesn’t cost much either, but there are not many inventions such great as free wifi. We unfortunately have to do without this one; the phone tries to make up for it with GPRS, EDGE, UMTS and HSDPA. The browser is still flawless, web browsing can’t really be much better on a screen of such a size. Other features include Flickr, Vox and Ovi, these are community, online sharing services, but all of them need a separate registration.
At local level we can use Bluetooth 2.0 and USB connection of the same version number. PC Suite (version 7.0.7.0) will do much good in the case of the latter one. It did its job flawlessly; data important for testing (screen capture software, pictures, music) was copied in a matter of seconds. The phone won’t charge through the microUSB cable (why is it so hard to do this?) so we can only use the usual Nokia charger to feed the phone.
And it will want to eat, as even when not used much it will scream for more energy every second day, it just couldn’t take it for a weekend, that was surprisingly calm even for me.
Summary. 6220 Classic – just like N82 and N78 – can be a very pleasant telecommunication and business partner. Design is subjective, it knows the important stuff, it looks reliable (if I don’t count that one McFreeze “event” with the active entry), it’s fast and easy to use. Still, those who choose to buy it will have to make a compromise. The lack of WLAN is a great flaw and the camera is a huge disappointment in its current state. There are more who could do without a GPS instead of wifi, but N78 has to be sold somehow. Nokia will soon have too much handsets in this segment, but at least there is a large selection.
The starting price of 6220 Classic is around €325 EUR. This is 10% less than N78’s current price and is even less than the older N82, but this latter one still seems a better choice. But if in a couple of weeks there is a price fall to happen, then 6220 Classic would clearly deserve a Recommended award, but until then we can only give this much:
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| Nokia 6220 Classic |
Bog
Translated by Szaszati
Nokia 6220 Classic has been provided by XXL GSM. The handset can be purchased at:
Budapest VI. Jókai tér 6.
Budapest VI. Teréz körút 18.
On-line at www.xxlgsm.hu.
Specifications
| Nokia 6220 Classic | ||
 | General | |
| Technology | GSM, UMTS, HSDPA | |
| Size | 108 x 47 x 15 mm | |
| Weight | 90 grams | |
| Available colors | black, violet | |
| Display | ||
| Display diagonal | 2.2” | |
| Display resolution | 240 x 320 pixels | |
| Display type | TFT | |
| Number of colors | 16.7 million | |
| Memory | ||
| Phonebook capacity | dynamic | |
| SMS memory / max. MMS size | dynamic / 300KB | |
| Internal memory | 120 MB | |
| Memory expandability | microSD | |
| Data transfer | ||
| Freqyency bands | 850/900/1800/1900 MHz | |
| GPRS / EDGE | Class 10 (4+1/3+2) / Class 10 (236.8 kbps) | |
| UMTS / HSDPA | present (384 kbps) / present (3.6 Mbps) | |
| IrDA / Bluetooth | none / 2.0 (A2DP too) | |
| WiFi | none | |
| USB | microUSB 2.0 | |
| Push-to-talk / RSS | present / none | |
| GPS receiver | present | |
| Basic functions | ||
| Profiles | present | |
| Vibra function | present | |
| Built-in handsfree | present | |
| Voice dialing / voice commands | present / present | |
| Sound recorder | present (max. 1 hour) | |
| Alarm clock | present, also when turned off | |
| Predictive text entry | T9 | |
| Software | ||
| Platform | Symbian OS 9.3 Series 60 Feature Pack 2 | |
| WAP / HTML browser | present / present | |
| E-mail client | present (POP3, IMAP4, authenticated) | |
| Java | present, MIDP 2.0 | |
| Games | 1 + installable | |
| Currency converter | present | |
| Extra software | QuickOffice, Adobe PDF, Zip | |
| Multimedia | ||
| Main camera | 5 megapixels, autofocus, xenon flash | |
| Secondary camera | present, CIF resolution | |
| Video recording | present, VGA, 30fps | |
| Music player | present, can run in background | |
| Equalizer | present | |
| FM radio | present - RDS | |
| Battery | ||
| Main battery | 900 mAh Li-Ion | |
| Standby time | 250 hours | |
| Talk time | 210 minutes | |
| Other | ||
| Nokia Maps 2.0 | ||
