Rafe Blandford had to chance to test the new 6290 recently. Here's his detailed preview, with lots of photos. Summary: a very capable and attractive clamshell smartphone at a surprisingly low price.
Read on in the full article.
Rafe previews the new Nokia 6290 smartphone
€300 at launch? Bargain. That's half the price you'd have paid for something like this a year ago.
It makes you wonder if the day is getting nearer when all mid-range phones will be smartphones.
Interesting to replace the pen key with the # key. I wonder if they should actually add a picture of the pen logo to the key so that people (especially those migrating from earlier S60s) know what key to press in order to do editing functions.
The outside screen and controls seem very useful indeed, it makes it a far more practical replacement for conventional music players.
Did you check if the recorder can record more than 1 minute?
Also what about the camera and gallery app? In S60v3 the gallery is all redesigned and works in landscape mode only. In FP1 they added some graphics effects with the 3d like menu and such that we see on the N95. Is that present in the 6920 too? How is the gallery and camera app looking here?
The recorder is the same as before - I assume the 1 minute limit is still there. The Gallery app is the standard non Nseries S60 Gallery app (i.e. like the Eseries, Nokia 5500 etc). The camera app is similar.
I'd assume the 3D menu wouldn't be present because I'd also assume that a budget S60 wouldn't bother with the 3D accelerator chip. I could be wrong though, you don't need a chip to do 3D although it helps.
it seems like a really good phone at a competiive price and good size as well but where did not Nokia not brand it as a N-Series device. The specs are also very solid for a midrange smartphone:s60v3 fp1,stereo speakers,50mb internal memory(same as the N93!),16 million colour internal screen.
One question is what size video recording can the 2mp camera do?
It is not "Nseries", because it wasn't done by Nokia's "Multimedia" organization, but the "Mobile Phones" organization (which nowadays is the group that uses only numbers in model names).
Also, the "Enterprise Solutions" devices are nowadays "Eseries" (E50, E60, etc.).
One thing to note... the official 6290 page at nokia.com doesn't mention its an S60 smartphone. It's like the 5500, they've hidden this fact for some reason.
The review may say that this phone is simple but i'm impressed rather overwhelmed by the punch it packs for a low price. Its destined to be a hit in a market like India. Here people wait for the price to come down so they could enjoy a smartphone. This one would be closer in their reach even at the launch. Only question i have is how much is the processor size and Ram? The 330mhz processor that nokia uses in n93 and upcoming n95 has the 3d chip inbuilt. If this phone has the same processor then i'm sure getting one. Good job Nokia.
No N93-like OMAP2420 in a "low-cost" smartphone like the 6290. Maybe after a couple of years 3D hw accelleration will be more "mainstream".