Preview: Nokia 6220 Classic
Usually when Nokia tags the word “Classic” on the end of a model number, it’s an immediate sign that you’re looking at a candy bar phone that’s not exactly destined for greatness. (see 2600 Classic, 6500 Classic, 3110 Classic for more)
But this time it’s different. “Classic” phones don’t come with cutting-edge features like 5 megapixel cameras (with Carl Zeiss optics, no less) and assisted GPS. What’s going on here?
At 325 Euros, the quad-band Nokia 6220 Classic is the cheapest 5 megapixel shooter that you can get with Carl Zeiss optics and, ahem, a xenon flash. There’s even TV-out functionality. We have here what seems to be a Nokia N82 clone-baby, except it falls a little short in the looks department.
Nokia also threw in assisted GPS which, in the case of this phone and the rest of the phones announced at the Mobile World Congress, means geotagging, or adding the location data to your picture headers. Related thought: how come no phone ( I can’t even think of a single digital camera that does this either) has managed to add a captioning feature that adds to the EXIF headers? Geotagging might be the “in thing” right now, but a caption is far more useful. (and certainly not those voice tags things either)
Of course, Nokia expects you to upload all the pictures you take to the its newfangled Share on Ovi service, and added HSDPA (WCDMA 900/2100) to make up for the missing WLAN. And don’t forget Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP/EDR.
Other features of note: the 6220 will run Symbian, has a (bleh) 900 mAh battery, 2.2 inch QVGA screen, and 120 megs of internal memory.
There’s also a new speech codec, Adapative Multi-Rate:
“Wideband speech coding technology, giving a more natural sound to human voice in phone calls. It helps when having a conversation in a noisy environment such as in traffic or public place.”
Expect the unexpected Nokia 6220 Classic sometime in the third quarter of 2008. I guess it won’t be as cutting-edge by then.
