Got my hands on Nokia’s Navigator 6710, a Symbian-based smart phone launched in August 2009. This is a very nice one!

It isn’t just a phone

6710 is actually quite an impressive value proposition: it contains European maps preinstalled in the navigator; it is much better than most in-car navigators, because an Internet access guarantees that you have realtime information available in your hands. You can thus skip buying a “real” navigator. Second thing is that you have a music player in 6710, capable of doing mp3 format – so, why buy an iPod anymore? I found the above facts very interesting indeed.

Back to the purchase plots; it was just before a Stockholm trip, that I was advising lady Maricah in phone related purchases – thus a bit tight schedule. First one to come into my mind was the 5800 Xpressmusic, but fortunately (later on) for us, it had a bulky look in the store compared to the 6710. So, upon checking out the two phones and a couple of alternatives, we decided to go for the 6710.

And man, is it packed with nice features. Carl Zeiss 5 mpix camera is superb! The navigator
software also does a great job. Actually there’s not much that I can say negative about
that, except of course a bit more screen real estate would come in handy. The navigator
does take you where it promised, and did not lose GPS locking on our tests. We didn’t go
to very extremes, though. Ordinary driving around.

Plenty of toole

There’s all sorts of neat software inside the phone. A good quality navigator with voice and improved, smooth scrolling; Internet-based points-of-interest search within the navigator; preinstalled software and web links ranging from Facebook to Youtube; WLAN, 3G support. Did I mention improved Ovi experience, Nokia’s answer for phone-web-desktop connectivity?

Ovi got improved

Yes, Ovi is improved – though I can’t give Ovi more than a school grade of 8 because it’s a little bulky to install and there’s something that clicks, not technology-wise but in the aesthetics of finalization and user interface experience. If you’re new to the concept, let me explain. Ovi is basically a website plus an application living on your PC, that lets you synchronize your phone with the web+PC. It helps you in searching and installing new software to the phone, and sharing your images and videos of choice to the world.

Beware of roaming costs, as usual

Having been without a communicator-like phone for months, it was thrilling to use one. Our trip to Stockholm was a good testbed. Turning off roaming and using only the onboat WLAN network of M/S Silja Serenade was a good solution for infojunkie like me. I managed to squeeze foreign-turf GPRS access to about 1 megabytes, which will be around 3,90 euros. (Btw. really looking forward to EU harmonization of roaming costs – it will be a new era in practical information society, since then we don’t have to be wary of using technology – it’s kind of paradoxic now, that you have to remain afraid of really utilizing your most hifi piece of technology in the pocket, since there’s a Damoclean sword of excessive cost hanging on your head.)

Downsides?

• Symbian’s operating system does not do well if it runs out of memory. Even basic
  functionality like SMS can be problematic. This is a major minus. Be careful with
  installations.
• I can’t tell much more minuses.. based on 1+ months of use

Overall: Great!

6710 is a phone that I can recommend. I’ve used Nokia’s e71 before this, and several other smartphones – and early 2000s Personal digital assistants. The 6710 is an affordable, feature-packed classic, with a good quality camera.

My rating:
* * * * (4 out of 5 stars)