My Shiny New Nokia 6620!
Okay, well, it's not actually mine. I wish it was. My company just bought one and I was able to play this evening. I've been waiting for this phone since January, so I was quite excited. Here's some initial thoughts:
First the form factor, size and physical appearance: Nice. Basically the same as the 6600, though a little blockier. The front has a neat micro-ridged surface and the keys are okay except the 2 key, which is recessed and a little awkward. The joystick is squared at the top and really tough to press at the moment, I'm not sure if it'll get better, but it actually hurts a little to use right now. The screen is nice and bright. Basically, it's just like you'd expect from the pictures, a subtly different, if blockier, version of the 6600.
The OS? Well I was suprised to see that it's *exactly* the same as the Nokia 7610! (With one caveat because of the carrier - see below). If you read my 7610 review, you basically know everything about this phone OS as well. I hadn't realized that Series 60 v2 Feature Pack 1 was going to be on the 6620. I'm really excited about this latest version of the OS because of its small improvements in the UI and support for up to 10 minutes of video. Basically, this phone is the "business" version of the 7610: lower rez camera, less-wacky keypad. Pretty nice.
An interesting thing about this phone is that AT&T has made a variety of subtle modifications to the UI. The first is in the screen shot above: the right menu button has a logo, rather than just text. Also, before the normal screen saver pops up, the whole screen displays the AT&T Wireless logo and they put another icon for the minibrowser with the mMode logo as well. Finally, they crippled the phone by taking out the chat, presence or positioning apps, which is a real shame (especially since I just found a WV server for them). There's a little slip of paper that comes with the phone that says "pay no attention to the parts of the manual that talk about these features". Dopes.
I *almost* thought that they were blocking Java apps as none of the apps I had on my MMC (which I transferred over from my 7610 for testing) worked when I clicked on them. No errors, just nothing happened. After a small panic, I finally tried re-installing the .jars and they worked fine. I'm not sure why exactly this is a problem, but just in case you see the same thing, you'll know.
Okay, so what about EDGE?!?! Well, I *think* it's faster than GPRS, it's hard to tell. Web pages seem to take just about the same amount of time to come up in the integrated browser, and though the little videos on rTV (Real's Mobile Portal) actually work, it's not super-fast. A 1:40 second video will start to play about 20-30 seconds after you clicked on the link. This isn't the *amazing* 4-5 seconds that the A845 takes to play the same types of video, but it works. A five minute NPR audio piece ("hourly update") takes the same amount of time to start up and had to buffer around the half-way mark and dropped out a few times. Hmmmm.
I can't say I'm blown away by EDGE like I thought I was going to be. I wonder if it's turned on? All I see for the network indicator is the same G with a square around it as for normal GPRS. The best way to test it would've been by using Opera, but my license is for the 7610, not the 6620, so it doesn't start. I'll get it working and I'll update this if I find out that by using Opera or some other app I get some massive leap in speed that I wasn't seeing before, but it doesn't seem like it right now.
All-in-all a really nice phone - I love the newest OS refinements, physical design and color. If you've got a 3650, definitely go upgrade now, and if you've got a 6600 and are a power-user like myself, you should too. But if you've got a 7610, the incremental network speed (if there is any) just doesn't trump the higher rez camera, IMHO, unless like I said, I'm missing something.
Fun, fun fun. Nothing like playing with a new phone... Amazing that it was almost exactly two years ago I fondled the 7650 for the first time. Feels like yesterday. :-)
-Russ
Update: EDGE has been enabled, and it rocks!