very mixed experience of 3G (NEC E606)

Member Name: johnbishop

Product:	NEC E606
Date:	29/07/03 (718 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: colour screen, feel

Disadvantages: expense, MMS incompatibily, battery life

The e606 is intrinsically connected with the '3' 3G service in the UK, so this review is about both the service and the phone itself.

Summary: I would not recommend the e606/3 phone and service - both products seem premature in the marketplace.

The phone:
- The phone is full of features but the battery life is very poor. After 4 years my old Nokia 2110 still lasts 2 days on a full battery. I hate to think how the e606 battery life will have degraded after 4 years of use, it can now only muster 2 days on a brand new battery! There also seems to be a problem "charging whilst talking" - phone seems to use battery even when plugged into the charger.

+ The colour screen is excellent, as is the feel of the phone.

- very few ringtones as standard - encouraging you to download new ones, for a fee.

- I tried sending and receiving picture messages with my friends on Orange and Vodafone. After having no luck I called 3 customer services and they told me that it was not possible to do that. It was a very long wait to be connected to 3 customer services (10mins+), but they were very polite.


The 3 service and content:
- 3G coverage is good in Bristol but there is a noticble delay and half of my conversations have revolved around why the line sounds so echoey. A number of times both 3G and 2G coverage vanished for an hour or so, unlike my old 2110.

- I downloaded a video review of 'The Matrix' but for £2 all I got was a 45 second video of an unknown presenter reading from a bland script. Not a single movie shot. Poor content - I wasn't inspired to try other downloads. For the cost of downloading a few film clips, you might as well have gone to the cinema to see the film itself!

+ The best service feature was the mapping and walking route calculation between UK postcodes. 'Yellow pages'-like Business finder seemed to come up with 90% of targets.

- Vid
eotalk 750 package sounds great but for me was geared too much towards free minutes rather than free 3G services.

For £420 per year (£35 per month) the package looks very flash, but is expensive for what you actually usfully get. I am going to take my phone back today since it is within 14 days of buying it and I should have no problem according to 3 customer care.

Summary: