Nokia 3650: The Snapper's Tale (Nokia 3650)

Member Name: Stoo

Product:	Nokia 3650
Date:	18/11/03 (448 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: VGA pics (640 x 480 pixels), Bluetooth connectivity to dowload your pics straight to your PC, You always have a camera in your pocket when you want it

Disadvantages: Big and rather clunky, No control over compression settings for images, Everyone says the picture quality is good 'for a phone' but it doesn't compare with a dedicated camera

I like cameras. This is my tale of why I bought a Nokia 3650 and the surprising result.

Camera phones. Phones with a cheap digital camera that take pics the size of postage stamps. Handy for teenagers to take pictures of their drunken mates at nightclubs with their tongues sticking out. But not much use else. That used to be roughly what I thought of camera phones from what I'd seen of the ads on TV. Is that what you think too? If so, you could be in for a shock.

By now all those switched-on twenty-somethings who have grown extra thumbs for txting will have given up on this review and surfed off on much more interesting waves, so we can get our carpet slippers out and have a good moan about the state of the nation:

As a customer, I think the phone industry in the UK is making a complete hash of marketing camera phones. Having journeyed to hell and back before arriving at my 3650 - pronounced 3-6-50 in case, like me, you didn't know - I think I know why: It's because they don't want you to use them!

Ok. Let me qualify that: In my opinion the phone company's don't advertise the best features of these phones, and I hazard a guess it's because they've calculated that if picture phones were used to their full potential right now their networks would suffer meltdown.

I like cameras. I can process and print black & white photographs myself - though these days I seldom have the time or can face the mess - and I'm obsessive enough to enjoy using a purely manual, old-style SLR camera. However, I also have a point-and-click, pocket camera because my wife and kids don't share my enjoyment of fiddling with exposures and framing shots.

I would never dream of buying a picture phone for the sake of the postage-stamp-sized display on the handset, but it came as a revelation to me that some - not all - camera phones will take VGA sized images. VGA means 640 x 480
pixels. Which for most
PCs means an image bigger than 1/2 the size of your PC screen. And - if you're on the right network - you can send your pictures at this size directly from your phone to any email address in the world the moment you take them.

It's these features that turn a funny gimmick into an amazing tool. I admit it, my interest is in cameras not phones, so I hadn't previously studied phone capabilities with any great care. But as a parent, with a PC, I'm a prime customer for this product. I have never ever seen these capabilities advertised. Not only that, but I found that the staff at phone resellers, and even the phone networks, don't have a clue about these capabilities either, as you'll see further on in my ramblings.

Once you know that the 3650 can take proper-sized pictures, and you can get them onto your PC, it takes on a whole new dimension. Go on an impromtu trip to the zoo, kick a football around a field, or nip out for a flick and a pizza, and the 3650 is an ideal partner for capturing these kind of off-the-cuff, happy moments. It has three big benefits over a dedicated camera:

1. You tend to have it in your pocket when you need it. It's your phone. You carry it around with you. How much of the time do you carry your camera around with you?
2. It's informal. People who are uncomfortable being photographed will maintain relaxed eye contact with you whilst you hold the phone in front of them. Fumble around for a camera and lots of people freeze and look awful in photos. (Then they blame you for taking bad pics of them!)
3. You can send the pics across the phone network to other phones, and much more importantly, to email addresses, as soon as you take them, or you can store them on the phone's memory card and download them to your PC later.

OK. Before I get too carried away, I must be brutally honest: If you want good quality photos, buy a good quality camera that j
ust takes pictures
and nothing else. But if like me you have kids and you constantly find you never have a camera when they're on their best form, keep your current camera, but also buy a 3650 and carry it around with you always.

The camera on the 3650 is probably quite reasonable, but the pictures often have the slightly fuzzy look of a digital image that's been compressed too much. You can't control the level of compression used on the images, and I suspect they're highly compressed so they don't take up too much of the poor phone company's bandwidth if they're sent across the network. This is a shame, because quite often you download your pics straight to your PC without sending them, so it would be nice to have control over the compression settings.

Having said that, everyone, without exception, who has seen my pictures on my PC has been surprised at how good they look...considering that they come from a phone.

New phones seem to come and go very quickly, so I'm not going to recommend you buy a 3650 without exploring the alternatives. However, if you want to use a camera phone as I've described above, make sure your choice - like the 3650 - includes the following capabilities:

1. VGA (ie 640 x 480 pixels) images
2. Bluetooth connectivity for downloading straight from your phone to your PC without sending over the phone network. (I had a terrible experience trying to set up an infra-red unit from a company that produced poorly translated instructions, didn't have a phone number and wouldn't respond to email requests for support. By contrast, my Bluetooth experience is flawless.)
3. The limit in size for MMS messages on the network you choose is AT LEAST 60k, preferably higher. (Vodafone is 30k, T-Mobile is 100k) See below for more details of this.

When shopping for you phone - 3650 or otherwise - bear in mind my sorry tale:

I went to all the major high street
resellers. I
only spoke to one person who understood what VGA images were or why I'd want a phone with a VGA camera. All but one of them tried to sell me inappropriate camera phones that wouldn't
do what I asked for. I arrived at my 3650 after a harrowing ordeal of doggedly returning phones, holding forever on network support lines and cancelling contracts.

First I was sold a Sony Ericcson T610. It's a beautiful piece of design and makes the 3650 look like a clunky brick. But it doesn't take VGA images. It went back. Then I was sold 3650 with a Vodafone contract. The phone takes VGA images, but - believe it or not - Vodafone won't let you send images that big! It went back. The contract had to be torn up. I spent a day phoning all the big network companies, none of their staff knew what their MMS limit was or why it was important. I came close to being sold a 3G phone/contract only to discover that picture messages on their network are treated like video and can only be sent within very limited regions. Finally I settled on a 3650 with T-Mobile. Of all the people I spoke to, the T-Mobile sales guy was the only person who knew his stuff, and wasn't afraid to phone someone else to check things rather than bullshit me. But you're unlikely to meet him. So take my 3-point list above, and make absolutely sure of them before you sign on the dotted line. Once they've got your signature you may find it very difficult to cancel if you've been misled.

I won't go into the masses of other features on this phone. Other people on this site have done a better job of that than I could. My knowledge and interest is in the camera. This review is really about my experience of buying the 3650 and the surprising benefits I've found from it.

The last little gem I have is this: If like me you haven't delved into digital photography before, check out online albums. My family snaps - from my 3650 - have taken o
n a new
lease of life by being made available to all my friends and relatives in albums on a website rather than stuffed in envelopes in a dusty drawer. The site I use is ofoto.co.uk.

Happy snapping! (Don't let them bullshit you!)

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