N6600, the right choice for businessmen

N6600, the right choice for businessmen

Zatni Arbi, Contributor, Jakarta

Did you spend more than five hours inside Roxy Mas, the biggest cellular phone trading center in Jakarta, when you bought your latest cellular phone? Did you ask your friends for their opinions and get confused by what they told you?

Did you spend even more time reading magazine reviews and browsing the Internet and still could not make up your mind? Trust me if I tell you that choosing a new cellular phone will soon be even more difficult. I know, because I have just seen some stunning new models coming our way.

The infrastructure may not be progressing as fast as we would like it to, especially as the promises of new technology heralded by the industry remain largely unfulfilled, not to mention the fact that new game-changing services -- that will squeeze the potential out of the existing infrastructure -- are still being sought.

Nevertheless, leading cellular phone makers such as Alcatel, LG, Motorola, Nokia, Panasonic, Phillips, Samsung, Siemens and Sony Ericsson continue to bombard us with new, sleek and hard-to- resist models.

Among the cellphone makers today, Nokia -- which currently controls 39 percent of the worldwide cellular phone market -- seems to have become the boldest and the most aggressive in launching their new models. Not surprising, anyone in their position would have to be bold and aggressive, right?

Last week, the Finnish company held its first Destination Nokia event themed "100% Pure Mobility" in the beautiful surroundings of the Gold Coast, Australia.

During the event, the company previewed for its trade partners, and the press from the Asia Pacific region, a series of new cellular phones with bold designs. All of them are expected to be released to the market throughout the first half of next year.

Next week, I will share with you what I saw during the event, which I was lucky enough to be invited to. For now, let us have a look at the recently launched N6600, which is supposed to have hit the stores by this time.

I should say that this model is another great product, especially for those whose cellular phones are essential to them in business.

This camera cellular phone packed a lot of features in a casing that is only a tad smaller than the classic N7650. Although it weighs only 122 grams, I guess if you have small hands you may not like this rather fat and curvy cellular phone.

But personally, I liked it the moment I held it at a product demo recently, it fit my palm the way Puccini's Nessum Dorma fits Pavarotti.

At first glance, we may not see any big surprises in the N6600. Everything is as familiar as Nessum Dorma. It shares the same user interface as the already discontinued but still very popular N7650.

Yet, unlike the 4,096-color screen of the N7650, this new member of the family boasts a 65,536-color TFT screen, which helps improve the camera's display as well as the text. The keypad is also pleasantly spaced out, as you can see in the accompanying picture.

The "Call" and "Hang up" buttons are placed outside the main keypad, adding more elegance to the design. With this look, it is easy to predict that the N6600 will inherit the popularity of the N7650.

Business users may need more than just a point-and-shoot camera cellular phone. With this in mind, Nokia adds the capability to record video, complete with an audio track. Both the Bluetooth and Infrared connectivities are also available, so they can be used as a modem to connect notebooks to the Internet (should this be necessary).

Unlike the data-only Bluetooth in N7650, however, the Bluetooth found in this model also supports audio transmission, so we can use Bluetooth headpieces and get rid of those unruly cords.

And business users need a lot of storage space for their data too. The good thing is that this cellular phone has a built-in 6 MB user memory. There is also a slot for Multimedia Card (MMC), so users can store even more data. In fact, Nokia will throw in a 32 MB MMC with each cellular phone that it sells in Indonesia. That is a lot of storage. To match it, the personal information manager (PIM) has also been enhanced.

What else do most of the business users need today? Of course, they would like to be able to use their cellphone wherever they travel. When I was in the U.S. recently, I found out that I was not able to use my dual-band N6800 cellular phone. If I had the N6600 with me, I would have had no such problem, as this tri-band--E900, 1800 and 1900 MHz GSM--cellphone will work in the U.S., as well.

Back to its imaging capabilities, this cellular phone uses an improved VGA camera, which can capture images with VGA (640 x 480) resolution. Like many other cellular phones, it has zooming capability and a night mode, too. The 2x zoom capability, however, is digital, so it does not really mean much.

There is also a new capability added to the MMS feature. We can use the available templates to put together the video clips, the voice annotation and perhaps some text and then send them as one message to another cellular phone with the same capability.

It's like sending a professionally edited video clip rather than just raw images. Video streaming is also possible using RealVideo and 3GPP standards. It could even serve as a personal, secured wallet for digital cash, so we could use the cellular phone to make online payments, but this application is still useless here in Indonesia.

Those who are inclined to making public statements about themselves can take advantage of the polyphonic True Tone rings that this cellular phone is capable of producing. In terms of color, the unit I saw was light gray, but N6600 is also available in golden yellow and rose.

What would I like to see added to this cellular phone? A one megapixel camera would be a nice addition, as it is already available. I have also seen cellphone cameras equipped with some sort of flash, which can help night-time image or video shooting.

However, in general, with this broad array of features, I think the N6600 is a great cellular phone for people with business needs.

And, next week, we will have a look at the company's upcoming models previewed during the Gold Coast event, which are a departure from the conventional categories.