Feet up! : mobile/Nokia6680

Whoops

I should have clarified this earlier, my theory that Cingular had hamstrung the 6682 was very wide of the mark. There was a mention of what was really going on in Matt's comments, and Jouni over at the S60 MRKTNGman blog pointed it out too:

One nice usability trick is to hide features, which are not configured. Send via email option doesn.t appear in S60 Camera or Gallery application, if email is not configured.

~~So in this case Cingular are not guilty, surprising but true!~~

Update: Gah, corrections of corrections, Matt points out that on a Cingular branded Nokia 6682 this menu item remains disabled even after an email account has been configured.

Cingular hamstring the 6682?

So, Matt has finally got his 6682, but all is not entirely well in the land of Dorothy and the Tin Man.

Not content with being very late to the game (the N70 is now appearing in European shops), Cingular also appear to have hamstrung the 6682, you’d think the US networks would have started learning some lessons from the V710 debacle, and the subsequent class action.

I’ve got nothing much against operators changing the firmware on the phones they sell to improve the customer experience, I quite like the Orange home screen on my Nokia 6680, but I’m less than impressed when the networks take things away. Here’s one example of how the 6680 works for emailing an image taken with the camera.

Nothing too contentious there, open the gallery application, select an image, and choose to send it via email. Now, try this on a 6682 that’s been hamstrung by Cingular, and you won’t see the email choice. This may seem crazy, because Cingular are going to get your money anyway for the data traffic if you choose Multimedia (MMS) instead, with the major proviso that MMC images are frequently brutally cut down to size by the operators gateways, so your 1.3 megapixel image will look like a 256 colour vga sized image, hell you might as well have taken it with a RAZR…

After a few attempts at doing this, most people will take the smart route, they’ll either send pictures from their phone using bluetooth or by using a memory card reader, and the Cingular will have cut themselves completely out of the loop. I thought 3-UK took some beating for absolute stupidity, but Cingular are heading that way.

Update: Looks like I’ve got this a little wrong, for all 6682s (and 6680s I guess) the "Send via e-mail" menu option is hidden until you’ve configured an email account on the phone, whoops! However, Cingular still keep this menu item disabled.

Series 60 Call Timer

So you’ve got a shiny new Nokia 6680 or 6682 and you’re concerned about keeping track of the length of your current phone call. Like so many Series 60 features this is configurable and I think it’s turned off by default.

Turning it on (or off) involves a little bit of menu navigation, start the “Log” application, and change the “Settings” for “Show call duration” to your desired value. Gustaf shows you how in this nice set of step by step instructions.

Gustaf’s tried this on a Nokia 6630 and I’m sure it should work on any Series 60 phone.

6680 is old hat?

I’m hearing rumours that the Nokia N70 will be hitting the shops shortly, Vodafone UK are announcing it on their coming soon page as being available in September, and O2 are reporting October. Based on this I think we can look at seeing the 6680 becoming dirt cheap by Christmas time, and rapidly taking over Charlie’s mantle as one of the top selling Series 60 phones.

It seems a little odd to have a 4 month old phone that’s old hat, but maybe that’s the pace of progress…

The Phone Formerly Known As Cho?

The plot thickens...

According to a couple of my commenters, the Nokia 6680 was not called Cho during its development, one suggests that the Nokia 6681 was called Cho based on this manga series, whilst the 6680 was called Milla (based on the Finnish name for Magica De Spell - Milla Magia) and the 6682 was called Ginny (yet another manga character). However Nokia employee merely Antony Pranata refutes that the 6680 was called Cho and also apparantly airbrushes any mentions of Cho from the 6680's Wikipedia page. Maybe airbrushing is putting it too harshly, but still it's a little strange.

Odd stuff indeed, I've decided to call my 6680 Eric.

From Charlie to Cho

The Nokia 6630 is widely known as Charlie which was its codename during development; it's a great name, memorable, cheeky and with risqué conotations.

I'd been wondering what the Nokia 6680's codename was, no-one I knew at Nokia had been letting on, and even the Finns I knew with close Nokia ties didn't know, now thanks to wikipedia I know; it's Cho, a weird name, it doesn't seem to mean anything in Finnish and the only interesting thing I can find from Google is Notorious Cho: the movie, surely this can't be the source of the name, can it?

Personally, I think some of Wikipedia's Cho definitions are more likely, a Myst character? The Japanese word for even numbers? Or perhaps an old Japanese measurement? Who knows? Cho's quite an enigma.

Pimp my phone!

It all started when I went to look for a Brando Screen Protector for my 6680.

Not only did they have screen protectors, they also had these cute iPod-like silicon cases, these colourful replacement covers and much much more.

This could turn into a blinging bad taste experience all too quickly...

How much for that 6680?

Matt's discovery of the Nokia 6682 for 25 USD is pretty keen, ok you're tied into a contract, and it makes the direct price from Nokia US of 600 USD look steep. But, I'm glad I paid nothing like that much for my 6680s!

All the major UK networks seem to be finally carrying the 6680, the best deals however appear to be on 3 and Orange. You'd be foolish to go for the 3 deal though, remember that their data access is only to their limited walled garden of content, so your internet capable smart phone would be severly hamstrung on 3. Analogies to sportscars stuck in carparks are pretty apt.

So I chose Orange, where the basic price for the Nokia 6680 is just under £80 on a £25 per month contract. Not bad at all, but it gets better, read on:

Orange stores were doing two a 3G phones for the price of one offer (on two seperate contracts of course), since the wife and I were looking to upgrade this was good. So two 6680's for a mere £80

Also in Orange stores they have a "member get member" scheme where you get a £50 credit on your first bill if you know another Orange customer, and they get a £25 credit too; so two 6680s for £30.

Even better, Orange give you money when you hand back an old GSM mobile, so out of the drawer of crufty hardware at home came a brick-sized Motorola and a Siemens C35, 30 quid back per phone meant I had two shiny 6680s in my hand for a grand outlay of minus £30! Orange paying me to take the phones away seems too good to be true, but it's how it worked out!

Now I just need to find a couple of people willing to switch to Orange every month and I'll never have to pay another phone bill!

Nokia 6680

I've taken the plunge and bought a Nokia 6680 (well two actually, but that's another story). Given that this seems to be the phone of the moment I'm going to be posting a few items about my discoveries with it over the next few weeks. All of these will be in this new topic: mobile/Nokia6680

Before anyone gets too excited, I've had the phone a month now, and it's good, it's fast, but hey it's only a phone!