Nokia 3650

OK, first off, I have to say that the concept behind this phone has some promise. The 3650 has some advanced Personal Information Manager functions, and the large color screen is a nice departure from the usual compactness of mobile phone displays, while staying clear of the awkwardness of square, bulky Palm devices. The built-in camera is a neat little feature, especially for those events in one’s life that beg for photographic posterity. Overall, however, I think this phone is about 98% novelty and only 2% functionality. In this Epinion, I’ll try my best to touch on the subjects that seem to matter most to mobile phone buyers – that is, functionality (as a phone and as a PIM); signal strength; battery life; and value.

I bought this phone from AT&T Wireless in the Washington/Baltimore service region. The retail price was $299.99, but because of some vendor agreement AT&T has with the corporation I work for, I got the phone for $149.99. AT&T just introduced its GSM services in the Washington area late last year; coverage is not as reliable as the brand’s own digital (TDMA) service, but in the two months that I’ve been a subscriber, I’ve found relatively few dead spots. In that respect, this 3650 was great – signal strength was good and sound quality was crisp (though not to the level of Samsung’s GSM S105). Having mentioned these two aspects of the handset, my praise of the Nokia 3650 is pretty much exhausted.

The first thing I noticed on this phone was that Nokia’s new interface (based on the Symbian operating system) was not as user-friendly as in older models. The 9290 Communicator, also Symbian-based, was far easier to navigate than this 3650. Perhaps it’s only a matter of getting used to the new menu system, but as far as I’m concerned, I’d much sooner go back to Nokia’s straightforward text-based menus than the Symbian icon-based one. My foremost complaint is that the settings menu, which was once broken down into three easy levels (phone settings, call settings and security settings), has now been further categorized into the ‘Tools’ folder. To be perfectly honest, most of the settings on my 3650 remain at their factory-set defaults, not because I like those settings but because my patience with the new interface has grown thin! Once one becomes familiar with the navigation, however, the functions of the phone are quite attractive. Like Motorola’s newer interfaces (on the v.60i, for example), the 3650 now allows the user to customize the ‘soft keys’ on the display; so, if you use the Camera and Messaging features most often, you can set the soft keys to have one-touch access to those menus.

The PIM functions are pretty standard in terms of appointments; that is, the calendar and alarm remain relatively unchanged from previous Nokia models. A nice new feature is that ‘Contacts’ function, which allows the user to input several different phone numbers (home, office, mobile) for the same contact, as well as pertinent information like e-mail addresses, fax numbers and birthdays. This eliminates the need to carry around both a cellular phone and a Palm or Pocket PC. The Real Viewer (as well as other software included on the Nokia PCSync CD) allows the user to organize and view images, video clips and downloadable media; games and productivity programs (like the Nokia Converter) round out the included software suite.

The 3650 is not particularly impressive when it comes to battery life, which is not surprising seeing as the 4,096-color screen is three times larger than comparable TFT-display phones. The phone also bleeds battery life when the camera function is in use. A word to the wise: if you plan on using the 3650 for all the purposes for which Nokia designed it – cellular phone, PIM, digital camera and toy – keep a spare battery around just in case. And that’s no small thing: the new ultra-slim LiIon batteries run about $60.00.

Overall, even for the $150.00 that I paid for it, the Nokia 3650 is not really worth the small investment. The functionality and expandability of the handset simply does not match the Palms and Pocket PCs that are available, and the camera feature (in terms of picture quality) doesn’t compare to even the lowest-end digital cameras on the market. The novelty of the phone wears off pretty quickly, and when it does, you’re left with a relative behemoth of a mobile phone, and not very much to take pictures of anyway.


Recommended: No

Amount Paid (US$): 150.00