great new Nokia workhorse world phone

The 6610 is a brand new chassis shared with the 72xx line, which I imagine will largely replace the now-venerable 81/82/83/8890 line. It's largely the same feature set
as the 8890, with the addition of a few updated features such as GPRS.

If you want a Nokia world phone with color and poly tones, and don't need a built-in camera, the 6610 will do the trick nicely.

DESIGN

+ Nokia's UI/OS beats all the others that I've tried hands-down. It's very intuitive, easy to use, and consistent across all Nokia phones. At this point, I won't buy anything but Nokia.

+ Display: Old school black and white works fine, but it is nice to have color. This is a passive matrix display, so it's not as bright as some of the new phones with active matrix displays, but it's still a pretty nice upgrade from B&W. You can load JPG images onto the phone from your PC and use them as wallpaper.

- Unfortunately, I don't think you can link a photo to a phonebook entry for visual caller ID.

+ Size: A tiny bit larger than the 82/3/8890, but still small enough to fit in a pocket easily.

+ Internal antenna means no protruding parts.

+ Design: At first I wasn't sure about the Star Wars motif, but now I like it.

+ Buttons: The buttons are HUGE compared to many of Nokia's smaller phones, making it very easy to dial, etc. Much better feel and easier to use than the 8290.

+ Backlight: a bit brighter than 8290 - bright enough to use as an emergency flashlight.

? Durability. The overall build quality and resulting durability of past Nokias that I've had had not been nearly as good as it should be. I've had at least three Nokia's on the 8x90 chassis; the screen went south on two of them, the speaker failed on one, and the microphone failed on my 8390. I'm hoping that the new chassis on which the 6610 is built is more durable.

- New accessory device connector :-( I think Nokia has made a strategic error here. The new connector is supposed to make it possible to connect external devices such as...
...digital cameras. But with camera-phones readily available, who in the world would buy a camera accessory for their 6610? What we're left with is a headset connector that's four times the size of a simple 2.5mm headset jack.

FEATURES

+ GSM world phone: This is a tri-band 900/1800/1900 GSM phone which will work on GSM networks all over the world. You can either pay your US service provider for international roaming or buy a local SIM with a local number when you arrive in country. I often do that, and then
forward my calls from my US number to my temporary overseas number. That allows people to reach me on my US number as usual, but my local calls in Europe or wherever are much cheaper than using U-based international roaming.

+ 16-level Polyphonic MIDI ring tones. Nice sounds, and of course you can download a millon tones from various sites on the internet (see note re GPRS below). You can also cook up your own ringtones, but unless you're a musician with MIDI experience, your results probably won't be very listenable.

+ Sound volume: I have had problems with inadequate ringer/speaker volume on other phones (e.g. Samsung). The 6610 rings as loud as you'd ever want, and calls can be heard even in loud surroundings if you turn the volume up and position the phone correctly against your ear.

+ SIM card. All GSM phones use a SIM card to store your carrier, phone number, preferences and address book data. The 6610 can store 250 numbers on the SIM and another 250 on the phone itself. You can take the SIM out and stick it into another GSM phone, and you'll have your phone number, and your entire address book intact.

+ Infrared. You can sync contacts to your PC and swap "business cards" from phone to phone via the IR port. Very handy!

+ SMS/email. You can receive and send both SMS and email messages from the 6610. The difference is that SMS goes directly via the GSM network to/from other GSM phones, while of course email is, well, email. You really can send email to any internet email address -- just put the address at the start of your message, and then send to the number "121". Note that incoming emails are broken up into 120-character messages and in some cases cut off after that point, and so you aren't going to want to receive lengthy emails on the phone.

+ Calendar/Organizer. I ditched my Palm long ago, and use the Calendar on my Nokia instead. The IR port lets me sync the phone to MS Outlook. Nokia has a very clean and intuitive interface, and it's easy to add/edit appointments on the phone keypad. Very useful. Note that some phones (Samsung) claim to offer a Calendar function, but only provide an open text field for each day, not actual appointments -- useless! One small gripe is that
Nokia has made the appointment options more complicated; now there's a both a "Subject" and a "Location" and a start and end time. While this provides more complete mapping
to MS Outlook, it's overkill when entering appointments on the phone directly.

+ Speakerphone: Once you connect a call, you can hit "speaker" and set the phone on the desk. The speaker is loud enough to use as a speakerphone. Nice small feature.

+ FM Radio: very cool feature -- came in handy during the NYC blackout! Annoying that you can only use the radio with a headset connected though -- why couldn't they make the radio work through the speaker as well?

+ Data call capability. Since the IR port lets you connect to a PC, you can use the phone to make modem/data calls. Some people actually know how to do this; I haven't ever bothered, especially with WiFi on the rise.

+ T9 Predictive text input. I'm sometimes amazed at how well the system works; it can somehow predict the spelling of my [rather unusual] first and last names.

+ GPRS -- useful, I suppose, if you use it. I don't. One bummer is that you must have GPRS service available (and paid for) to download new ringtones. Since I spend a lot of
time in an area with no GPRS coverage, this isn't much use to me.

+ Vibrating Alert. Some phones still don't have this!

+ Profiles. The profiles feature makes it easy to set up different ringtones for different situations, e.g. outside, standard, meeting, headset, silent, etc.

+ Self-adjusting alarm clock. Set the alarm, turn the phone off, and it will wake up at the desired time, and then nicely ask whether you want it to turn itself on for calls... The clock on the phone adjusts itself via the GSM network.

+ Games. I'm not much for games, but Bounce is kinda cool to play if you have a long subway ride.

+ Calculator. Very useful somtimes. There's also a stopwatch and countdown timer -- also very useful, for example while giving speeches.

+ You can store email addresses in the phone book. You can even create a "template" for an outbound SMS that contains the email address of your favorite person...

- Voice dialing. For some reason, they left this out even though it has been around on other Nokia phones for a while. I never really used it anyhow.

- Voice Recorder. I thought it was cool that my 8390 had a voice recorder, but I never used that either, so no loss.

- Stereo headset: The headset provided with the phone is a stereo (two earbuds) model. While this might seem cool if you plan on using the radio feature a lot, for general use
as a headset/handsfree, the stereo headset is a pain in the a-s. The extra earbud exacerbates the typical headset tangle issue, and, what's worse, the microphone hangs so far down that you absolutely have to hold it up to your mouth to speak. They should have provided a normal single earbud handsfree in the box, and made the stereo headset an option, instead of the other way around.

- No Bluetooth: IR works fine for PC connectivity, but it would be nice to have the option of using a Bluetooth headset.

- No Camera: I looked at camera phones, but they were much bigger and heavier than I wanted.

+ Reception/sound quality is excellent.

+ Battery life is excellent. No complaints here, and it takes a charge very quickly.

+ Nokia 6610 phone page: http://www.nokia.com/nokia/0,8764,734,00.html

~ I paid about $250 for a brand new unlocked 6610 at a Russian electronics store in Manhattan.