Nokia 3650 - Brick of Brilliance! (Nokia 3650)

Member Name: helpa4eva

Product:	Nokia 3650
Date:	06/07/05 (339 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Awesome phone, useful, good picture quality

Disadvantages: Bit Big and Clumsy.

This is a helpa4eva review on the Nokia 3650.
I hope you enjoy the review (its a long one!)

INTRO:
I was bought the Nokia 3650 as a present (as i waterlogged my other one!) and was told it was quite a good phone. Whereas some people think "phones are just for calling people" which i see their point, i want it with all the stuff (polyphonic tones, camera, colour etc.)

It all depends on what sort of phone you want. There are so many different phones out on the market today that it is a difficult question but if you want a phone with features-a-plenty, a rather nice design that i find so much easier to type messages on, a guarantee that it wont suddenly shut down on you and your not one of those people that thinks their phone has to be the size of their thumb otherwise its a brick, then guess what phone im going to reccomend to you? Thats right! a Nokia 3650!

The Phone has quite a long-lasting and reliable battery: - Battery Cell is a BL-5C 850 mAh, Li-Ion up to 2 to 4 hours Talk time, up to 150 to 200 hours long Standby Time and the Battery charge time is 1h 35min, so thats a long time.

But on the downside a lot of that time can be spent opening applications, such as the camera which can take around 4-5 seconds to open. Now that doesnt sound like much but you think about it in your head and its quite a while!

And also, another one of the features on the 3650 that sealed the deal of my pride with this phone, is the fact that it has polyphonic ring tones.

Now the introductions finished, lets start to get on with information about the phone itself.

DESIGN:

As i said earlier, some people only want tiny phone, because its all about the looks of the phone. In my opinion the 3650 has an really nice, unique design which will definitely impress your friends. The LCD on the phone is of quite a large size and clarity (4096 colors and 176 x 208 pixels).

Just below the screen there are two buttons which you can programme them what to do in the configuration menu, which will make your favorite applications/features open. The buttons on the keypad include a five way scroll key and, the phones trademark, the circular keypad. Now some might NOT like the circular keypad because of being used to the "normal" keypad (4 below the 1, 8 below the 5 etc.) but i have quite large hands, and i find it so much easier to type text messages and numbers etc. plus, this phone isnt just any other normal phone with normal keys.

You can also either set a background image of your choice which you’ve taken via the camera or leave it blank, I kind of like a wallpaper of my choice on the phone of my choice. OR if you really are getting technical, if you have a Bluetooth USB adapter and the Nokia 3650 PC Suite (Downloadable from Nokia.com) you can use images from the internet as your background!

FEATURES (MY FAVOURITE!):

The Nokia 3650 has a very impressive 6 way call conference feature, it is Tri-band, allowign for talk anywhere, Hold option, Mute option, DTMF and a very good LOUDSPEAKER option, which allows you to talk to people from a distance, and the clarity when the loudspeaker is on is amazing.

FEATURES I: CONTACTS

Well if you have a phone like this youre gonna have to know where you can put all the numbers of your friends! its really easy, just enter the number and click the designated options button and save, after that you have the choice to put your contact in various categories ranging from Phone (Home or business), Mobile (Home or business), Fax (Home or business), or Pager, all the contacts of an individual can be added to his profile erasing the need to save an individuals multiple contacts over and over. For an example: Adams mobile phone number, house phone number, office number, fax, pager all can be saved under Adam and a special ring tone can be assigned to all of those numbers, so you know when its him calling

Also in the contacts of the Nokia 3650 there is a feature called user groups management. multiple individuals and friends can be saved to a specific group and you can name the group according to what the group represents e.g you can have all your friends numbers in your friends user group, and again, you can assign a ring tone to the group so only when your friends ring up can i get to hear the Simpsons theme!, this is really helpful as all your annoying contacts can be ignored or avoided completelet.

Another special feature in the contacts section is that every contact can be assigned a thumbnail image that will be displayed when that contact calls, so when my friend rings up i get to see a photo of them so i can remember what they look like! Besides the small thumbnail you can save an individual’s high resolution picture in his profile, that you can check at any time, and a lot of phones do not have that. The internal memory itself is 3MB not to mention the memory card that comes with the phone that packs an extra load of space, so it is incredibly easy to save many many pictures.

And yet again ANOTHER contact management feature is the profiles section, in which all profiles can be modified to your chosing, only the profile named “General’s” name cannot be changed. For each profile you can modify a variety of options. You can chose your ringing tone, the ringing volume and wether or not you want the vibration feature on, incoming message tones and volume and/or vibration option. warning tones for when you have low battery etc.

Good. now where done here, your probably bored, but lets proceed to the camera features!

FEATURES II: CAMERA (Stills & Video)

Here is a feature which is not scarce amongst the newer phones, but nevertheless a feature to be proud of. The camera on the Nokia 3650 can be used to take short video clips, or still images.

STILLS

The camera can either be activated by the MENU, or by setting the camera as the program opened when you press one of the programmable buttons below the screen.(preferred choice for most people). You can directly save any taken still image into the phone memory or the memory card for use and access in the future, the image quality is superior to quite a few other phones, and takes the cake compared to many other phones, that while they have cameras, are nowhere near as good quality. While taking your image you have three options to alter the style of the photo taken:

1. Portrait - This mode is used to take photos that are portrait shaped (duh!) and is handy for pictures of peoples faces to include in your contacts.

2. Standard - This mode is.... STANDARD! it produces a normal square image of a fantastic quality.

Night - This is another piece of superiority compared to other phones. It lights up the picture quite a lot compared to the light in the room. If it is foggy or dark whilst you are taking the image, the picture is just as normal as any other photo, and very good qualirt. You can also set the quality of the photo taken, which will effect the overall size of the photo.

VIDEO

With this feature which is even scarcer amongst todays phones, you can take 10-11 second video clips if you are moving the phone, or the people in front of the camera are moving, but if things are relativeley still you can film them up to an average of 21 seconds. The video is of a reasonable quality, but not brilliant, as the use of video in phones is still in the pioneering stages.

FEATURE III: MESSAGING AND EMAILS

Messages are incredibly easy to send and type and is in a Microsoft style format. It is undescribably easy to send pictures, ringtones, e-mails, anything, and if you want to finish it later, or if you want to send it more than once and dont want to type it out over and over again, you can save the message as a draft (just like on ciao!).

You can programme your e-mail adress and others e-mail adresses into your phone reasonably easily in a matter of 4-6 minutes. Sending messages to e-mails is another new feature that is only just starting to be included in many phones.

FEATURES IV: CONNECTIVITY

Now for the bit that is not at all rare on new phones, or even year old phones, so it is not surprising that this great phone has access to the internet and connectivity to download files in many different ways.

1. Bluetooth: As listed before, Bluetooth can be used to shift ringtones, games, images, pretty much anything onto your phone via a driver appropriate to the phone, and a bluetooth USB adapter. It can be used to shift things from your phone to your computer also, and even your PDA. But i dont have a PDA so i dont know too much about that area of things.

2. Infrared - Most people know what this word means, and so it is reasonably easy to guess what this feature does and how it works. An infa red beam is used to connect to your PDA or computer to transfer your chosen files, and works quite similiarly to Bluetooth, in the way that it is cordless, but where infrared is simpler to used, Bluetooth has a longer range and is generally more reliable.

NOTE: Due to the round-bottomed nature of the Nokia 3650, there is no room for a bluetooth dongle connector or any other data cable for that matter, so you must hunt for a wirless bluetooth USB, that you programme with your phone, and plug into your PDA or Computer.

FEATURES V: HELP

A very important feature to even a person who has owned a phone like this for a while, if you get stuck, you can refer to this in-phone guide to help you. This feature is not in many phones, and is especially helpful to people who have not used the phone before.

FEATURES V1: WORLD WIDE WEB

The 3650 has a reasonable WAP enabled section that lets you browse the internet to download wallpapers for your phone, ringtones, games etc. anything that you want. Although the connectivity is quite good, it is somewhat slow. The internet cost is quite cheap, and so do not feel pressured to hurry up before you run out of money when you are using this feature.

FEATURES VII: GAMES

My favourite feature, as when i get bored i can just whip out my phone and have a little play. Inittialy, the 3650 comes with 2 games, Snake EX and Mix Pix, but games such as Bounce, Ping Pong, or even film-based games like the Italian Job can be downloaded from the computer and installed onto your phone viao infrared or Bluetooth, or can be downloaded directly onto your phone using the WAP browser. Below is a description of the two games you are given on your phone before you install any more.

Snake EX
The game snake started way back on some sort of game console, but was brought into the nokia world in the simple yet reliable Nokia 3210. Since then it has evolved into a snake shaped, colour, polyphonic-noise-making beauty! Game-lovers eat your heart out!

MIX PIX
This is a really funky game based on those really annoying little plastic sheets with squares that you move around, and each square has an image on, and the aim of the game is to get the picture right instead of it being all muddled up. Besides the pictures that are given to use with mixpix, you can choose pictures you have taken, and it will muddle them up for you!

FEATURES VIII: TOOLS

In the tools folder you can pretty much set up most of your phone, and it has a few extra interesting bits.

Settings - Make subtle changes to the layour of your phone, such as clock type (analog or digital) colour scheme (red green or blue menus) background picture if you want one, etc, etc.

Call Divert - Setting up a diversion that will take callers to your answerphone.

Speed Dial - Assign keys to numbers to reach certain people quicker. Up to 8 numbers can be assigned as a speed dial number.

Voice Mail - Check if anyone has left you an answerphone message.

To Do Notes - In here you put your.. ermm.. TO DO NOTES! you key in the notes just like a message, and it will save it into a folder, with the date attached for you!

FEATURES IX: EXTRAS

This folder contains most of the bits and bells that make it o-so-great, and makes it the cream of the crop, separating it from being just "any other phone"

Notes - Description above.

Calculator - Im not even going to bother here. Its for playing with numbers. 'nuff sed.

Converter - Another unique feature, although you have to go through the haslle of setting it up in the first place. The converter can be used to convert pretty much anything, currency, weights, mentric to imperial measurements, degrees centigrade to fahrenheight, etc. etc.

Recorder: - A pretty cool feature, can record up to 1 minute of quality sound, played back to you using Media Player. The sound clips can actually be used as ringtones. NOTE: dont bother trying to play a song on your hi-fi whilst recording it on your phone to save money on ringtones, because you get loads of feedback and it doesnt work.

Composer - Quite an unexpected feature for a phone that has polyphinc ringtones, but still, is fun to use, and instead of the traditional Press the keys and random letters come up, the screen is in the form of sheet music, and you just move the notes up and down as appropriate.

Clock: - Set an alarm.

About: - The version of your phone, drivers and makers can be found here.

WHEW THAT WAS THE LONGEST REVIEW IVE EVER WRITTEN

THANKS FOR TAKING THE TIME TO READ THIS REVIEW BY HELPA4EVA ON: NOKIA 3650.

Summary: Just a really good phone, i like the keypad shape aswell.

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