Nokia 6682 Silver

Call Quality

Calls and speakerphone: We found call quality on this cell phone quite clear and loud. In fact, the only time we raised the volume was in extremely windy situations that made it a little difficult to hear callers. About that volume control: there are no volume keys on the cell phone’s spine. Like many Nokia cell phones, the Nokia 6682 also has a speakerphone (Nokia calls it the Loudspeaker), which when in use callers could tell they were speaking on a speakerphone but could still hear us fine. As with other Nokia cell phones, you’ll need to wait until you’re on a call to activate the Loudspeaker.

Audio Playback: Listening to songs played back on this cell phone is impressive. Sound is crisp and rich through the Nokia 6682’s speakers or through the included stereo headset.

Ease of Use

Menu/Phonebook: Nokia’s 6682 sports the Symbian OS, which is one of three (Microsoft’s Windows Mobile, Palm OS and Symbian) smart phone operating systems. The beauty of the Symbian OS is that it was created specifically for cell phones, so using it can be easy. That’s not to say there won’t be a learning curve if you’ve never used it before, but it feels and acts like a souped-up cell phone. Note: you’re going to need a little patience when accessing features or apps because any smart phone runs a bit slower than a standard cell phone. We should mention that the 6682 can occasionally freeze, but the good news is we never lost our data when this happened – making it more of an inconvenience than a tragedy.

The phonebook can store multiple numbers and addresses. As long as you have a contact stored in the cell phone’s 10MB of memory you’ll be able to use voice commands to initiate a call orally. We found creating and using voice commands to be extremely intuitive and easy to do.

Another bonus is customization; you can download Symbian apps to the cell phone. Finally, since it is a smart phone it can be used to view (sorry, you can’t edit with the included software) PDFs, PowerPoint presentations, as well as Excel and Word docs. Although the cell phone does come with a 64MB memory card, if you plan on having a lot of these types of files on the cell phone we recommend purchasing an extra 512MB memory card for more storage space. The Nokia 6682 also supports most e-mail programs (IMAP4 and POP3) so you can get your e-mail on the cell phone too. Though responding using the numeric-centric keypad can be taxing. It also comes with a decent e-mail program and though you won’t need a computer engineering degree to set it up to work with existing e-mail accounts you may need to call technical support to get it working correctly.

Camera/Video: As is the case with many cell phones available, the Nokia 6682 sports a 1.3-megapixel camera. Unlike many camera phones, this Nokia lacks a dedicated button on the cell phone to launch the feature, instead you slide open the camera’s lens cover on the back of the cell phone to start the app. While we like this feature as it helps protect the lens and gives the Nokia cell phone a bit of a James Bond appeal, we wish it would snap more firmly into place when in use.

Overall, we found the camera took sharp pictures that actually look as good off the cell phone as they do on its screen. Nokia includes photo and video editing software as well, which is a nice bonus. About that video, you can record as much video as you can store. So if you have a 1GB storage card in the cell phone you can record approximately an hour of non-stop video. We found video quality to be acceptable since it didn’t suffer from delays.

Music: As mentioned earlier, MP3 playback quality is impressive through both the cell phone’s speaker and included stereo headset. The cell phone supports both MP3 and unprotected AAC files (Note: You won’t be able to listen to songs you bought from iTunes on this cell phone). Unfortunately, you can’t control the bass or other music-centric features with the included Nokia app. However, since this phone does boast the Symbian OS you can always download a more feature-rich player if you want that functionality. The important thing here is that the cell phone’s audio quality is quite good.

The easiest way to get songs onto the cell phone is to use the included music transfer app found on the Nokia PC Suite disc. If you opt to store music directly to the included MMC card by dragging and dropping files you’ll need to manually update the music library on the Nokia 6682. It’s not hard, just tiresome. Once you have an MP3 file on the cell phone you can easily turn it into a ringtone.

Connectivity/Bluetooth: Using Bluetooth on this cell phone was quite simple. Generally, the Nokia 6682 was able to pair easily with other Bluetooth-enabled devices such as headsets and computers. We also had no problem sending photos, music or contacts from a PC to the cell phone using Bluetooth and vice versa. As noted earlier, the Nokia 6682 can be a bit buggy and the Bluetooth feature occasionally had some issues, such as thinking the Nokia is paired with a headset when in fact it isn’t. We fondly refer to this phenomenon as phantom pairing – it’s not bad, just slightly irritating. Speaking of headsets, call quality using Nokia HS-26W Bluetooth headset was decent.

Design

Design Look and Feel: The Nokia 6682 is one of the more compact Symbian smart phones around. That said; it’s not so small that you can’t easily use any of the cell phone’s wealth of features. It also doesn’t have a ton of keys littering the spine of the cell phone. Instead, you’ll need to rely on the joystick-like rocker key in the center of the Nokia 6682 to access most features. The display is large and bright and viewable in most lighting conditions. However, we wish we could control how long it stayed illuminated before it automatically dimmed to conserve the battery. On the plus side, we did find that this cell phone can definitely take a beating. We constantly dropped it on a variety of surfaces and it still looks pretty good.

Keypad: Although the Nokia 6682 is a smart phone, it does lack a QWERTY keyboard so any kind of messages you create will have to be done via the numeric keypad. The slick keys are slightly raised and have angled edges so misdials aren’t an issue. However, the keys are a bit small so those with larger fingers planning on typing a lot of messages should consider a smart phone with a QWERTY keyboard such as a Treo, Blackberry or the T-Mobile MDA.

Battery Life

Work-centric cell phones such as the Nokia 6682 are expected to do a lot, which is why many models in this category don’t have the best battery life. That said, heavy cell phone users who will be checking e-mail frequently and making a ton of calls during the day will need to charge the phone nightly. But if you plan on using the cell phone a little less frequently to make calls and occasionally check e-mail, you’ll need to charge the Nokia 6682 every couple of days. If you plan on using this Nokia to make two to three 10 minute calls a day and light texting, the cell phone will hold its charge for about four days before needing more juice.