Nokia 6220 classic review: Sharp-witted shooter

[dream girl]

Nokia 6220 classic review: Sharp-witted shooter

We can call the Nokia 6220 classic an attempt to regain some 5 megapixel ground. The compact smartphone carries some serious imaging power. Xenon flash, active lens cover, VGA video @ 30 fps and TV-out do sound exciting, don't they? It would've been all too easy but that's not all Nokia 6220 classic is about. One of the most compact bodies in the Symbian realm squeezes in GPS, HSDPA and Feature Pack 2 for a truly ornate UI. The new classic sure has a range of skills, now let's see if it has the guts for the job.

Nokia 6220 classic official photos
Key features

• 2.2" 16M-color display of QVGA resolution
• Symbian 9.3 OS, S60 3.2 UI
• ARM 11 369 MHz CPU and 128 MB of RAM
• 5 megapixel camera with active lens cover and xenon flash
• 3G with HSDPA support
• Quad-band GSM support
• Built-in GPS with A-GPS support
• Compact and lightweight body
• 120 MB user memory
• microSD card slot, up to 8GB cards supported
• FM radio with RDS
• TV-out
• Document viewer
• USB and Bluetooth v2.0
• More visual enhancements to the UI than any other S60 handset we've seen
• Nokia Maps comes with three months free turn-by-turn navigation license

Main disadvantages

• No Wi-Fi
• Xenon flash placed under the lens
• Uncomfortable shutter key
• Cheap-looking keypad, and we mean dirty cheap
• Display could have been bigger

Nokia 6220 classic is a Symbian all-rounder, which takes photography seriously. The xenon flash, the active lens cover and the best implementation of the S60 user interface are possibly its strongest selling points. The inexpensive price tag makes it really hard to compete with (around 260 euro or 380 US dollars at the time of writing).
Virtually no device with similar features is able to beat the 6220 classic offer. There is one weak spot though, so the competition isn't utterly disheartened: the lack of Wi-Fi can break a deal or two even if everything else seems perfect.

Nokia 6220 classic views
If not a rival, Nokia N82 is surely an alternative, though obviously a pricey one. For the extra bucks you get a larger display and of course the precious WLAN we just mentioned. N82 however lacks the FP2, so you're short of the nice menu animations and transition effects in the 6220 classic.

Nokia N82
If you are into UIQ, Sony Ericsson G900 might be the one to look at. It brings WLAN and a 2.4" display but lacks xenon flash. The display of the Sony Ericsson may not be a match for the Nokia 6220 classic but the touchscreen opens the door to the unique camera touch focusing in exchange.

Sony Ericsson G900
Finally, Samsung G810 comes to mind. The 2008 EISA award winner for photography phone has 3x optical zoom and a larger screen. It does however cost quite a lot more and is incomparably bigger. Besides, it's limited to Feature Pack 1.

Samsung G810
So, having strayed, for a while we're back to our lab shortly. The 6220 classic is unboxed, weighed up and examined after the jump.

 

[dream girl]

Unboxing

The retail package of Nokia 6220 classic has a rather unusual shape. It's a very wide but really thin box, unlike most other Nokia packages. It still fits all the essentials. There are no surprise bonuses but the decent price tag wouldn't have covered them anyway.

The Nokia 6220 classic retail box and stuff inside
With Nokia 6220 classic you get TV-out and USB cables, a DC charger and a handsfree. The handsfree is one piece, which means that changing its headphones only is not an option with the 6220 classic.
A 1GB memory card ships with the handset, which at least gives you decent storage right out of the box. Not to mention that most people hardly ever need more memory than that. Finally, the usual prints and manuals go without saying.
Nokia 6220 classic 360-degree spin

Nokia 6220 classic stands at the pleasing 108 x 47 x 15 mm and has a volume of only 66 cc. Now, it surely isn't the slimmest phone around but those are some really good numbers for a smartphone. You can easily squeeze the 6220 classic even in a tight pocket.
The pocket-friendly handset weighs 90 grams and that's another good achievement. In fact, the only S60 smartphone to beat it is Nokia 6120 classic but it's only lighter by a mere gram, which is negligible.


Design and construction

Speaking about design, it's quite hard to overlook the similarities between the Nokia 6220 classic and its navigation-centric sibling - Nokia 6210 Navigator. Frankly, we aren't really fond of those looks and the rather cheap looking front plastic casing but anyone is free to disagree. We've got to note, that we still find the N81, N78, N96 design much more appalling.
On the positive side, the materials used on the back are an excellent example of fingerprint-immune surface. And personally, the back panel is the only part of the body that looks any close to classy (an impression promptly ruined by the cheapo keypad).
At the top of the front we spot the video-call camera, the earpiece and the ambient light sensor. The 2.2" display and the keypad follow, which will be discussed in a short while.

The video-call camera, earpiece and ambient light sensor
From top to bottom, the left side of Nokia 6220 classic hosts the GPS indicator, My own key and the microSD card slot. The GPS light denotes the current status of your GPS receiver - it blinks during search and lights steadily when satellite lock is achieved.
The "My own" key is associated with the Maps application by default, but is otherwise fully customizable to act as a shortcut to any application of your choice. Nice one!

The GPS indicator, My own key and the microSD card slot are on the left
On the right of the 6220 classic we find the volume rocker and the camera key. The latter is a mere plastic knob fitted on the rear cover, which membrane contacts with the actual key below it. It takes quite a push to get it to work and you risk dropping the handset if you're holding it with one hand. While this setup provides a distinct half press/full press point, the durability of the shutter key is much in question.

On the right: volume rocker and dedicated camera key • The camera key isn't much of a treat
The top of the phone is where the loudspeaker is placed, along with the power key. The On/Off key is also used for locking the keypad and switching profiles.

The loudspeaker and the power key are at the top
The bottom of the classic has four apertures. Here we find the microUSB slot, the charger plug, the 2.5mm standard audio jack and the lanyard eyelet.

All the way down: lanyard eyelet, microUSB port, charger plug and 2.5mm standard audio jack
The five megapixel camera lens is on the back panel of Nokia 6220 classic, placed within the same elevated deck we found on the 6210 Navigator. Here we also find the xenon flash and the active lens cover knob, which frankly is an offence even to this overall cheap looking handset. The imaging capabilities of the device have their reserved spot later on in this review.

5 megapixel camera with active lens cover and xenon flash
Opening the battery cover reveals the 900 mAh Li-ion BP-5M battery. It's supposed to give you 250 hours of standby or 3 and a half hours of talk-time. In reality you can count on about two days of moderate use. If you only use it for a few calls and occasional shots a day it can go on for about four but heavy users will have to charge daily.

Nokia 6220 classic is powered by a 900 mAh Li-ion battery
Apart from the extremely cheap looking keypad and the funny lens cover knob, the rest of the materials on the 6220 classic seem to be of nice quality. Now, the 6220 classic is an affordable smartphone/cameraphone but it sure isn't a budget call-and-text handset, contrary to what part of its exterior suggests. The compact phone is a joy to handle but we feel Nokia could have done a lot better designing it.

The phone is a joy to handle

 

[dream girl]

Display

One thing you can count on to restore some faith in Nokia is a good display. The 6220 classic is no exception and with it you can enjoy both great picture quality and sunlight legibility. We are more than pleased with the contrast and brightness of the display and the ambient light sensor is a nice feature to have too.

The display is great as far as image quality is concerned
What we aren't too excited about is the 2.2" diagonal. In smartphone terms it's just a bit short especially when you are using it for GPS guided navigation.
Keypad: as cheap as it gets

Now, this is one of the two greatest disappointments with Nokia 6220 classic (along with the lack of WLAN). The keypad looks mighty cheap both in terms of materials and construction.
The whole keypad is highly susceptible to fingerprints and the keys are so wobbly typing becomes a chore. The Menu and C keys are rather small and not too easy to press and so are the direction keys on the D-pad.

The keypad is a shame
The alphanumeric keys are large enough but tactility is inadequate, so typos aren't completely ruled out.
The blue backlighting is somewhat patchy, notably weaker near the edges. All in all, there is little good to say about the keypad and its looks.

Backlighting could have been improved
Telephony: no worries

With Nokia 6220 classic you'll have no reasons to fear reception issues. The phone offers brilliant speaker quality and sound during calls is remarkably clear. Vibration is decent too, though we've seen better.
Check out the 6220 classic readings in our loudspeaker test. Look up the table on how it stacks against some other handsets we've measured. To find out more about the test itself or a complete list of tested devices, click here.
Speakerphone testVoice, dBPink noise/ Music, dBRinging phone, dBOveral score Nokia N8270.261.265.9Below average Nokia 6220 classic70.765.869.8Average Samsung G80069.766.371.1Good Samsung S733075.168.775.7Very good Sony Ericsson C70275.875.782.7Excellen t
S60 UI gets more elaborate than ever

Nokia 6220 classic runs on the Symbian 9.3 OS with Series60 3rd Edition user interface. Feature Pack 2 comes preinstalled to usher in some nice novelties. In fact, Nokia 6220 classic is the handset with the most visual enhancements among all the FP2 phones we have tested. Transition effects are all over the UI and most of them are quite appealing.

S60 UI
As usual, the active standby screen is the most convenient way of bringing shortcuts to all your favorite applications onto your home screen. You can even assign shortcuts to websites of your choice for quicker access. The two soft keys functions can also be varied according to the user preferences. The standby toolbar can be organized in vertical tabs with the D-pad used for scrolling. Other than that its functionality isn't greatly modified.

The three different stand-by modes: off, horizontal and vertical
The task manager has also received visual enhancements and is now appearing on every pop-up menu. It is actually placed on top of every list, which may seem somewhat irritating. In addition, you can still use the well-known shortcut by pressing and holding the menu key.

The task manager now looks even better
The 369 MHz CPU and the 128MB of RAM are quite important for the performance of the OS. In Symbian terms those are decent numbers, promising a performance free of lags and Memory Full warnings. Navigating the menus is fast with instant response to user commands.
The Nokia 6220 classic built-in memory is 108MB, which is adequate. The included 1GB microSD memory card comes in very handy, providing reasonable storage out of the box. You can go way above that too. Nokia 6220 classic had no problem handling an 8GB microSD memory card, and even when the card filled-up, it didn't noticeably slow down the phone.
As with any Symbian phone, Nokia 6220 classic has a built-in voice recognition system. It's doing a good job, being fully speaker-independent and recognizing a high percentage of the user commands. There is also an automated message reader which will read out all your new messages upon a press and hold of the left selection key on the standby screen.

 

[dream girl]

Customization options

The Nokia 6220 classic main menu offers four different view modes. Two of them are the traditional 3 x 4 grid and 6-item list. In addition, you can set icon animation.

Grid and list menu view modes
The other two available modes are the 3D V-shape and Horseshoe views. Though visually appealing, they are not really the most user-friendly we've seen. Font sizes are also configurable depending on your preferences.

The two other options: V-shape and Horseshoe
In addition, there's a choice of five preinstalled themes on Nokia 6220 classic. The rest is left to the imagination of the user, as there are plenty of others around the internet.

The other four available themes
Phonebook knows no limits

The Symbian powered Nokia 6220 classic has an excellent phonebook with virtually unlimited capabilities. The whole internal memory can theoretically be used for saving contacts but we can't imagine a scenario where that will be necessary. Contacts can be freely ordered by first or last name and can naturally be searched by gradual typing.

The phonebook is simply great
Editing a contact offers a great variety of preset fields and you can replicate each of them as many times as you like. You can also create new fields if you happen to be able to think of one. Quite naturally, personal ringtones and videos are also available for assigning. If you prefer you may group your contacts and give each group a specific ringtone.

A huge number of fields is available when editing a contact
The Call log application, although not exactly a part of the phonebook, is also a Symbian asset. It stores up to 20 call records in each of the tabs for outgoing, received and missed calls. These are all accessed by pressing the Call key on the homescreen.

Call log application
If you enter the Log application from the main menu, you'll see a detailed list of all your network communications for the past 30 days. These include messages, calls and data transfers. The period can be shortened to save some space but you are quite unlikely to do that, as even with a huge number of calls the log only takes a few miserly kilobytes of memory space.
Symbian messaging

We're dealing with a Nokia smartphone and there's no doubt the software backing is all there. You can't frown at the messaging proficiency of the 6220 classic and, sadly, that makes the lame keypad even more detestable.
The Nokia 6220 classic supports all common message types - SMS, MMS and email. The SMS and MMS share an editor. It is the well known intuitive application from previous Symbian S60 smartphones. It has a counter of characters left to the limit of 160. There is also an indicator in brackets showing the number of separate parts the message will be divided into for sending.

The SMS and MMS share an editor
Message delivery reports can be activated, which pop up on the standby screen and are subsequently saved in a dedicated folder in the messaging sub-menu. When you are exiting the message editor without having sent the message, the editor prompts saving it to the Drafts folder or discarding it.
All it takes to convert a common SMS into an MMS is insert some multimedia content. A nice feature allows resizing pictures automatically for sending via MMS.
Nokia 6220 classic also features the dedicated audio message editor. It allows you to either record the message on the spot or use a previously recorded sound clip.

The audio message editor
The email client is also very similar to what previous Symbian powered phones have offered. The handset sports the ultra easy email setup. If you are using any public email service (it has to be among the over 1000 supported providers), all you have to do is enter your username and password to start enjoying email-on-the-go. The phone downloads all the needed settings to get you going in no time.

The email client can please even the most demanding user
The client can download headers only or entire messages, and can be set to automatically check mail at a given interval. There is also support for attachments, signatures and basically you can hardly think of something important that the classic is missing.

 

[dream girl]

Music player is fine

The music player is another capable Nokia 6220 classic application. It has a huge number of supported audio formats, including MP3, AAC, eAAC+ and WMA. The files are added to the music library by simply choosing the refresh music library option. Upon completing a USB transfer, the phone automatically prompts scanning for new music tracks and, if allowed to do so, adds the new ones to the music library.
Sorting your tracks by artist, album, genre and composer is automatic and searching by gradual typing is also available. This is quite convenient for browsing huge music collections.

The music player offers sorting by various criteria
The player comes with five equalizer presets, which is a decent count in our point of view. If it still seems insufficient, you can edit them or create new ones in a matter of seconds. There are also four visualizations available: album art and three different animations.

The available equaliser presets, visualization modes and audio settings
Quite naturally, the player can also be minimized to play in background. In this case a tab appears on the stand-by screen indicating the currently running track.
Nokia 6220 classic also comes complete with A2DP support. This means that you will be able to listen to your music on a Bluetooth stereo headset. We had no problem pairing the 6220 classic with a third-party headset.
Audio quality is a nice surprise

The audio quality of Nokia 6220 classic is rather good, with one of the best frequency responses we have seen. The distorion is also pretty well kept under control. The noise level, dinamic range and stereo crosstalk readings aren't great but they are not too disturbing either. Here go the results so you can see for yourselves what for a musician the 6220 classic is.
TestFrequency responseNoise levelDynamic rangeTHDIMD + NoiseStereo crosstalk Nokia 6220 classic+0.68, -0.83-75.475.10.00810.051-74.0 Nokia E66+0.74, -0.84-72.372.50.0210.102-72.9 Nokia N82+1.10, -1.53-81.680.80.0046 0.137-69.3 Samsung U900 Soul+0.29, -1.25-84.684.60.0170.052-82.9 Samsung G810+0.37, -1.19-86.786.00.017 0.050-83.2 Sony Ericsson K770+0.21, -1.04-85.788.80.0140.030-84.8

Nokia 6220 classic frequency response graphs
You can find more info about our audio quality test here.
Video player is ok

Nokia 6220 classic uses a Real player. Videos can be played in both portrait and landscape mode and can be enjoyed fullscreen. When in full screen, the softkey functions are hidden so that they don't mess up the screen and only pop up when a key is pressed.
The quality of the display makes video on the 6220 classic a nice experience but its size takes some back.
FM radio with both RDS and Visual Radio

The FM radio on Nokia 6220 classic has a nice simple interface and can automatically scan and save the available stations in your area. It also supports visual radio and RDS.

Nokia 6220 classic comes complete with Visual radio
Image gallery is nothing fancy

It's a FP2 gallery but it's short of the fancy stuff of Nseries devices on Feature Pack 2. It has neither the swanky 3D view mode, nor the customizable slideshow.
Opting between portrait and landscape mode has also been dropped, so now all the pictures appear in landscape. They can be zoomed up to 8x (if you happen to need that kind of magnification). Overall, picture browsing and zooming is really fast with almost no hanging even on larger photos.

Nokia image gallery • Zooming in on a picture

 

[dream girl]

Camera in focus

Nokia 6220 classic is equipped with a 5 megapixel camera with a maximum image resolution of 2592o~1944 pixels. It also flaunts auto-focus, active lens cover, Xenon flash and dedicated AF assist light. The only hardware flaw is the location of the flash - it is below the camera lens, resulting in weird dark outlines in most of the portraits.
The camera UI uses the sidebar layout we have come to know since Nokia N95. Only this time it is improved, allowing you to choose which settings get displayed on the toolbar. Some of the available options include manual white balance and ISO sensitivity, as well as exposure compensation, sharpness and contrast settings. Various effects are also at hand, labeled color tones.


The camera UI is really nice
Gridline can be applied to the viewfinder to assist you in framing you photos, using the photographic rule-of-thirds. Using it to align your subjects and place points of interest on or near the lines and their intersecting points makes your photos more professional and aesthetic.
Another hip camera feature is the geotagging capability, which by the way works with videos too.
The picture quality the Nokia 6220 classic pulls off is quite good. The colors are really precise most of the time. There is also more than enough detail and even foliage seems to come out well with this camera. Sharpness levels are also very good with no traces of excessive sharpening. The noise is generally in control, but what left us wondering were the really messy skies - it looks like a combination of noise and JPG artifacts.
We've got a bunch of sample photos made with the camera of Nokia 6220 classic. Enjoy!

Nokia 6220 classic camera sample photos

The flash is doing a rather decent job even with subjects 2 meters away
DVD-like video recording

As for video recording, the 6220 classic manages the sweet VGA resolution at 30 fps. Video quality is quite pleasing and you will be sure to enjoy filming with the 6220 classic.
Videos are captured in MPEG-4 format and have automatic or manual white balance. The other available features are night mode and color effects. The only thing you have to be careful about is not to run out of memory because videos of this quality eat up your storage space much faster than you might guess - a minute of footage is worth 20MB of memory.
Here is a sample video (4.6 MB) for you to check out.
Connectivity - No WLAN is a no-go

Connectivity is among the defining skills of smartphones. With Nokia 6220 classic you can rely on every kind of network connectivity - from GPRS, through EDGE to 3G with HSDPA support - the phone has it all.
A memory card slot is also available so you might opt for a card reader as a data transfer medium. The 6220 classic also has USB and Bluetooth, both v2.0.
Sadly though, it's not all bed of roses. Wi-Fi is out and we miss it badly. We know we are talking about a relatively low-priced handset but we can't help it. Wi-Fi would be more important than, say, GPS to a large portion of potential users. And one can always use a Bluetooth-based GPS module. So essentially, WLAN seems much more important as an embedded feature.
Web browser scores a point

Browsing the internet with Nokia 6220 classic is a nice experience. Page rendering is almost perfect and even very elaborate web pages fit perfectly on the screen. The virtual mouse cursor earns the browser another point. It is easy to control and generally works great, although not as good as with Samsung INNOV8.
A mini-map can be activated to help finding your way around large sites where lots of scrolling is required. The zoom level is also easily adjustable. The browser has full support for flash and java, so you may rest assured there is no content on the internet that you cannot access.

The web browser has landscape and fullscreen modes
Our only concern is once again the relatively small display, which won't allow you to comfortably use the smallest font and get a larger part of the page on screen.
Organizer is typically good

The time-management skills of Nokia smartphones are usually top-notch. The case with the 6220 classic isn't any different as the handset has quite an elaborate PIM package.
We start exploring the bunch of applications with the calendar. It has three different types of view - monthly, weekly and daily, and four types of events available for setting up - Meeting, Memo, Anniversary and To-do. Every event has its own unique fields, and some of them allow an alarm to be activated at a preset time to act as a reminder.

Setting up an event in the calendar
The mobile office is also very well geared, with preinstalled applications able to open Word and Excel, PowerPoint and PDF files seamlessly. Unluckily, editing documents is not supported by the included version of Quickoffice. If you would like editing enabled you will have to purchase the complete application at the Nokia Download center for a rather hefty fee. The final ingredient here is the included ZIP manager, which allows extracting archived files straight from your phone.

PDF, Word, Excel and Powerpoint files are easily handled by Nokia 6220 classic
Some of the other inbuilt organizing and time-management applications are a great unit converter, calculator and voice recorder, as well as the Notes application. No need to elaborate here as those are all really well known.

The unit converter, the calculator and the voice recorder
The alarm application allows a huge number of alarms to be set, each with its own name, trigger day and repeat pattern.

You can set up as many alarms as you want with the 6220 classic

 

[dream girl]

GPS navigation is a nice surprise

Nokia 6220 classic has a GPS receiver of pleasing performance, as far as sensitivity is considered. It only took it about a minute to lock upon cold start. You can also activate the built-in A-GPS feature to reduce this time even further. Have in mind though that data transfer charges apply in this case.
The built-in GPS receiver works with the Nokia Maps application, which is one of the software applications to offer the most detailed maps. Furthermore, it is free and relatively easy to use as far as the most basic functionality is concerned. A welcomed bonus is the three-month worth of free turn-by-turn navigation.

Nokia Maps 2.0 offers four different view modes: 2D, 3D, Satellite and Hybrid
The Nokia Maps application itself is giving little reason to complain. It has very decent looks and easily customizable route planning routine. Toll roads and motorways can be avoided and so can tunnels and ferries. Route selection can be set to either fastest or shortest. The app is also usable for pedestrian navigation or you can switch the GPS receiver off and use the phone as an electronic map.

The route planning algorithm can be easily customized
In case you don't want to use Nokia Maps you can go for a third-party application as there are quite a lot of those available.
The overall impression of the Nokia 6220 classic GPS functionality is positive, earning another point for the device. It will hardly leave a user disappointed and if it wasn't for the screen it could easily compare to dedicated GPS navigation units.
Games

Nokia 6220 classic features a single game - Marble. We, for one do not find it too entertaining but that might be just us. Of course you can always download more games as there are dozens of them over the internet.

Only one game comes preinstalled on Nokia 6220 classic Final words

To summarize, Nokia 6220 classic is better than its price tag and delivers without fail. For your buck you get an impressive range of imaging niceties, Symbian power and a snappy UI, plus all the added benefits of Feature Pack 2. Nokia 6220 classic is nothing short of a true Symbian workhorse. If only it didn't look a sick horse. And hey, we're not nagging for a flashy crowd-pleaser design. We just mean to say that the 6220 classic exterior is doing its performance no justice, all the more the dismal keypad.
Anyway, beside the looks, which is a subjective call, the absence of Wi-Fi is pretty much the only cause of frustration. On the other hand, there is hardly a handset to offer this kind of performance and features in this price range. If Wi-Fi isn't too high on your list and you're keen to find beauty in the most unlikely of things, you'll be enjoying a sensible purchase and strong performance.

 

[Redvirus]

great posts!!!!

 

[nrbhayo]

hmmm muk gea.