Nokia 6680

It is time to say goodbye to the 6600 series of Nokia. I enviously drooled over people’s 6600’s. I have fond memories of the 6620 on which I built my first Flash Lite apps. The 6630 seemed a popular choice around the office, but the love affair ended with the 6680. It was a gift, so I have bitten my tongue more than once about it because I didn’t want to seem ungrateful. As it goes off to the pasture to maybe be brought back out for presentations, I do want to share my issues and thoughts about the device.

For most people that have the 6680 or the 6681 (US version), it has been the best of the series. For me though it was exceptionally buggy. While I like to stay current on my phones, I still probably wouldn’t have bought my new phone had the 6680 been less of a nuisance. :( But for the bugs, the phone design was fantastic. For the record, my bugs were:

Nokia 6680 bugs

  • The memory card corrupted two weeks after getting phone. Lost lots of picts, ringtones and pre-installed apps.
  • The Phone either random restarts or shuts down without warning (even with a locked keypad in my pocket).
  • The battery level was not polled properly. It would show drain appropriately, but when I charged the phone I would have to restart it in order for it to reflect the actually remaining charge.
  • The network time setting would periodically just change my time. Until I figured out what was going on I overslept once, and missed an appointment another time because I was completely off on timing. I live in the GMT-8 time zone. The phone would get the local time in GMT-8 and for some reason would display the correct time. Later it would re-poll and get the time again but think it was expressed in GMT 0 so it would subtract 8 hours off the correct time.

By far the most annoying was the battery issue. You charge your phone a lot and to have to restart after each charge is highly frustrating. I’d often look at the battery meter and not believe it so I would end up restarting just to be on the safe side.

The clock issue was pretty important to me since I use my phone as my alarm and HAVE to be able to rely on it. I don’t know if the problem was the cell, the carrier or the phone, but considering I had issues in British Columbia, Alberta and California, the phone is the common element.

The issues didn’t all happen at once either. The memory card issue happened about 4 days after I got it, the restarts are just random, the battery issue started about a month and a half after getting the phone and the time issues started just shortly after Daylight Savings Time changeover.

All of this adds up to a pretty unreliable experience and I have been getting increasingly fed up with the phone. While in Asia I played with one of Bill Perry’s phones and decided that it was the one for me. The Nokia N90 was just too interesting looking and I really do prefer a clam-shell design, so I was hooked. I was planning to look around online for the phone when I got home, but right there in the Hong Kong Airport, there is was sitting prominently as the feature display in an electronics store. Of course this meant I had an extra carry-on, but that’s ok ;)

I’m about done with my initial review of the Nokia N90 (after using it for one week) and will post it shortly. It is already very very long and likely to get longer before the end! Hopefully some of you will find it useful. :)