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| NEC e606 |
| General |
| Network | Umts / Gsm 900 / Gsm 1800 |
| Announced | 2003, 1q |
| Status | Available |
| Size |
| Dimensions | 109 X 53 X 32 Mm, 140cc |
| Weight | 145 G |
| Display |
| Type | Tft, 65k Colors |
| Size | 132 X 160 Pixels, 8 Lines |
| | - Navy Key
- Wallpapers |
| Ringtones |
| Type | Polyphonic (16 Channels) |
| Amount | 13 Preset + 17 Custom |
| Customization | Download, |
| Vibration | Yes |
| Memory |
| Phonebook | 500 X 8 Entries, Photo Call |
| Call Records | 20 Dialed, 20 Received, 20 Missed Calls |
| Card Slot | No |
| | - 32 Mb Dynamic Phone Memory For Contacts, Applications And Compatible Files
- 20 Sec Voice Memo
- 12 Sec Video Recorder |
| Data |
| Gprs | No |
| Hscsd | No |
| Edge | No |
| 3g | Yes, 384 Kbps |
| Wlan | No |
| Bluetooth | Yes, V1.1 |
| Infrared Port | No |
| Usb | Yes |
| Features |
| Messaging | Sms, Ems, Mms |
| Browser | Wap |
| Clock | Yes |
| Alarm | Yes |
| Games | Yes, |
| Colors | |
| Camera | Cif, 352 X 288 Pixels, Video |
| | - Java
- Media Player (audio And Video)
- T9
- Calculator
- Voice Dial/memo
- Video Calling And Download
- Scheduler
- Formats: Mpeg4-video, Mpeg4 Aac, Wma, Amr, Jpg, Gif, Bmp, Midi |
| Battery |
| | Standard Battery, Li-ion 1200 Ma |
| Stand-by | Up To 200 H |
| Talk Time | Up To 3 H 20 Min |
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NEC - e606NEC e606
For those of us outside Japan, 3G technology seems like a mirage – always on the horizon but never becoming a reality. There has been so much hype about the new technologies and "fake" 3G systems that consumers don’t really know what to believe. I’m happy to say that the 3 network, owned by Hutchison Whampoa, has finally delivered a UMTS network with speeds faster than many broadband services. 3G has finally arrived for users in many countries around the world, and is promising to deliver a truly next-generation experience, with video calls, video downloads, advanced messaging and ultra-high data transfer rates. The NEC e606 has been released exclusively for the 3 network, and is designed to take advantage of the high data speeds available through UMTS. It is one of the most advanced phones on the market with 2 cameras, a 65K color screen, Java support, video-call capability and the ability to play audio files from its 32mb memory. Surprisingly even Bluetooth is included. The e606 is marketed as the "flagship" phone phone for 3 and certainly seems to have the goods.
Physical Aspects and Display
The first thing I noticed about the e606 is its size and weight. The e606 is larger than other clam-shell phones such as the GD88 or GX-10, so if you thought these phones were big then the e606 is another step up. I still found it easy to slip into a jeans pocket, so for me the size was not a major issue. One thing to note is that the e606 has no external antenna, which makes it easier to carry around and a little less bulky when holding it.
At 150g, the e606 is no lightweight, but it I did not perceive it to be as heavy as other phones that weigh this much. This might be because my personal phone (a Sony Ericsson P800) weighs around 160g. If you are used to having the smallest phone on the block then the e606 is not for you.
Externally, the e606 is very plain. The top is covered in silver with a shiny "3" logo on top and the rest of the phone is in a very dark blue/black color. On the top you can also find the external camera, a LED and the polyphonic and general sound speaker.
Opening the e606, the first thing you’ll notice is the display. NEC has really worked hard to ensure this is one of the most vibrant displays on the market and more readable than those of most other manufacturers. I could see the subtle variations in skin tone on a portrait picture – something which a lot of phones have problems with. The screen is still not as good as those on Samsung phones - it is a little too dark - but better than most. Just above the screen is the second camera which is used during video talk or as a normal camera. The keypad is generally pretty good, and is not too soft or too hard – just right. Apart from the normal keypad, the e606 has a 5-way D-pad, a "menu" button, a triangular button which links you to the 3 portal and 2 contextual keys at the top.
Finally, on the left side of the phone is a port for charging the phone and using the data transfer cable, as well as a port on the right for using a handsfree.
User Interface
The Desktop
Non European phone manufacturers have always had trouble selling their phones to Western markets because of the differences in menu navigation. Something which may look intuitive to them may seem completely baffling to us. It's because of these differences that I was not a big fan of the e606's user interface.
Lets start off with the good things. To access the menu from the "desktop" you need to use the "Menu" button. In between the tabs that display what the contextual buttons do, you can see a black square with four red arrows pointing away from it. This is displayed at all times and lets you know which buttons on the 5-way D-pad you can use. For example, when browing a webpage, you would be able to select Up and Down(scrolling the page) and also select the Left button (for going "back" a page). It took me a couple of days to get used to this system, and eventually I got pretty quick at navigating it. It's still not as easy as navigating a Nokia phone, but not too tricky.
Ok, now for some weird stuff. The menu is also very inconsistent. In nearly every phone which I’ve used, the middle button in a 5-way D-Pad (or a joystick) is always used to select something. With the e606 it can change between the middle button and a contextual button. This seems to have been done randomly. Not only is this very annoying, but it slows down navigation of the menu’s considerably.
Being a first generation 3G device, the e606 is quite buggy. During my testing I found a few bugs which occurred with really basic functions. When playing back a song using the audio player, you cant stop it straight away, even though a "stop" button is available. Instead, you need to forward the song and while you are doing that, press stop.
Another example - the e606 includes a voice recorder function – which, as you would imagine, lets you record your voice and save it on the phone’s internal memory. The problem is that you can’t access these recording unless you:
Create a MMS
Go to the menu to add a sound to this MMS
Use this sound menu to playback your saved recordings.
It took me 45 minutes of searching the menu’s to find this out.
As you can see, these errors should have been picked up in basic quality control. It’s not as if I was trying to load a Flash webpage on the phone. There were many more errors during my test, but I won't detail them all.
Making and Receiving Calls
The feature most of you will be interested in is the famous 3G video call. As with most of the features on the e606 we have seen so far, NEC only got it half right. To initiate a 3G video call you just need to type the person's number and the contextual buttons will allow you to select if you want to make a voice or video call. The video quality itself is quite good and works pretty well even though it is a little pixelated. During a 3G call, both people need to be reasonably still to be able to transmit a clean image of themselves. Any more than a little bit of movement turns the picture into a pixel frenzy. Also, the audio lags slightly behind the video – but I didn’t find this to be too much of a problem. When it comes to making 3G video calls, you need to know what to expect. If you expect 3G video calls to be crystal clear quality with Dolby Surround sound then you will be highly disappointed. If, on the other hand, if you expect them to be a quick and fun way to see your friends, family and business colleagues then you will appreciate that this technology does what it promises. Video calls have 3 quality modes. Sending a picture of a higher quality will result in a trade-off with smoothness. I found the low quality setting to work best because the screen can only display a certain number of pixels and since less data needs to be transmitted this would result in the video being reasonably smooth. There are quite a few options you can use during a video call. You can change which camera you are using (internal or external), use a mirror image of your picture, see your picture in a small corner screen and even turn off video sending.
The main issue I had with video calls is that you need to connect a handsfree to use it. The handsfree can be a pain to use when you are trying to talk on the phone and the mic on it doesn’t properly align with your mouth, which affects audio quality. NEC should have noticed this and implemented a handsfree loudspeaker function in the e606 (especially considering that the integrated polyphonic speaker is very loud).
I don’t know about other people, but I expected 3G voice calls to sound a lot clearer than 2G. Unfortunately this isn’t the case. In my testing I found 2G and 3G calls to sound pretty much the same, primarly because they both use the same audio encoding algorithm (Adaptive Multi-Rate). 3G voice calls would still get the hissing and scratchy reception we are all used to.
The e606 did have decent reception when compared to other 2G phones such as the 7250 and T68. It was able to pick up low signals quite effectively and wouldn't drop out as often as many other phones. The volume was a little too low for my liking – even at max it would not be possible to hear it in a noisy area.
The polyphonics in the e606 are top notch. MIDI files sound great (not much different from what my computer is capable of) and the external speaker is very loud – you can even hear it in a crowd.
Messaging
Messaging was pretty good on the e606. The large keys made it easy to enter text and with T9 it was all intuitive. NEC has also allowed new words to be added to the T9 dictionary, which is quite helpful for those of us that text very often. You can send SMS and MMS messages from the phone, as well as access email through the 3 portal. Currently the MMS only works with other users on the 3 network because the Australian mobile telecom industry (still!) hasn’t worked out interoperability agreements.
3 have set up an email for their phones (*customer*@three.com.au) so you can get emails sent direct to your phone. This is accessed though a menu on the 3 services portal. It’s also possible to send short 12 second video messages using the messaging system.
Games and Applications
Reading over the specs you may have noticed that the e606 has Java application support. I was hoping to load some of my favourite Java games on the handset but found out that there is no easy way of putting your own games on the phone. Some users have found a "hack" which allows you to download Java games through a webpage, but this is hardly acceptable. This will be very disappointing to those of us that like to play games on their mobile phone.
One really cool application is the audio player. You can load WMA or AAC files on the 32MB internal memory and play them back on the stereo handsfree provided or you can play it back through the phone’s polyphonic speaker. The quality is surprisingly good through the speaker, and although it isn’t very loud, still works quite nicely. A video player is also included, and works similarly to the audio player. Both are relatively easy to use.
Camera Features
As previously stated, the e606 has 2 cameras, one is internal and the other is external. Both can take pictures in 3 sizes – 352x288 (max size), 120x120 (contact size), and 120x29 (message size). The e606 has a zoom feature which works pretty well. While the maximum size is comparable to other high-end phones, such as the 7250 or T610, the image quality isn’t. Picture quality is not very good, even when you take into account that this is from a mobile phone. The colours look faded out and most pictures come out fuzzy. The design of the external camera makes it a problem to use because of dust being attracted onto its recessed lens. I had to clean it out every few days because of the amount of dust it would attract. Eventually I stopped using it and just used the internal camera. It would have been nice if NEC had made a sliding cover fot the external display, protecting it from dust and scratches.
Taking videos is a better experience and I managed to take and play them back with ease. The phone could capture about 3-5 frames per second and lets you capture 12 second blocks of video. This is longer than you would think, and let's you capture most moments just fine. While the quality of the video's isn't very good when viewing on a computer, they are fine for normal use on the phone. You can see a short video I made towards the end of the review.
Battery Life
Battery life is the Achilles heel of the e606. With a 700mAH battery, the e606 has a stand-by time of 24 hours. This is without touching the phone. Watching/making a video or downloading anything off the 3 Network will chew through the batteries. I managed to get about 1.5 hours talk time using 3G and a little over 2 hours using 2G services.
3 thought of this and provided 2 extra batteries (one is an extended battery) with the phone as well as a second mains charger. The problem with having 2 mains chargers is that since the batteries need to be charged in the phone, 3 expects you to charge the first battery, change it over and then charge the second battery. What were they thinking? What is needed is a desktop charger so that you can charge your secondary battery in it while the phone (with the first battery) is still charging. The extended battery has almost 3 times the capacity (at 2000mAH) but is also three times as large. This makes it bulge out of the back of the phone. Not a nice sight. It's still useful for taking the e606 on a short trip, but I can't imagine myself using it everyday.
Organisation and PIM Features
The e606 has the usual bunch of applications including calender, todo list, calculator, currency converter and voice notes application. Note that the voice note function is different than the voice recorder function I’ve outlined earlier. Its also possible to send/receive your contacts and schedule database to/from the phone using the supplied USB data cable.
The contacts system on the e606 is very comprehensive. You can have a name, 4 phones numbers, 3 email addresses for each contact. Next to each number you can have different icons such as "Mobile Number", "Home Fax", "Pager", and "Close Friend". Nearly every type of contact is available and a similar option is available for email addresses. Picture ID and custom ringtones are also available, making the e606 better than pretty much anything else on the market. Note that these functions are available for the phone’s internal memory. The USIM card cannot store this much information.
Connectivity and Software
NEC has provided a USB data cable to allow you to easily connect the e606. Using this cable you can transfer contacts, schedule information, ringtones, videos, audio, pictures and voice. One thing to note is that the e606 only plays back certain file formats. For example, it can’t play Windows Media (.wmv) files. The manual says that the only video files the e606 will accept is MP4, but I found that 3GP (3GPP) files will also work. For audio it will accept AAC and WMA files. This is not a good or bad thing, just an observation. It’s understandable that only certain file types are allowed due to DRM reasons.
The software is a pain to use though. When installing it, 4 "devices" are installed on your computer. Each of these devices uses a different COM port. The software needs you to tell it which COM port to use, but the manual doesn’t mention which Device’s COM port you need to look up. This, combined with the fact that the software is clunky and unreliable, means that if you don’t know what to do, you’ll be spending the best part of an hour configuring it.
Oh well. At least we have Bluetooth so we don’t need to use the cable. Unfortunately not. The Bluetooth is useless. The only thing Bluetooth works with is using the phone as a modem. You can’t pair headsets with it, and you can’t use it to transfer files to the phone. Thus 95% of the functionality has been removed. I don’t know why they bothered.
The ironic part is that 3 are offering a Jabra Freespeak Bluetooth headset as an accessory to the e606 - but you have to connect a Bluetooth adaptor to the e606 to use it. Am I the only one that finds this stupid?
Finally, you can use the 3G network to browse websites (currently only available on 3 in certain parts of the world). With a maximum speed of 384kbps, I found it was much faster than GPRS in most things. Although 384kbps is only a theoretical limit, I routinely got speeds of around 150-200kpbs. The phone’s in-built browser is pretty decent, and could load quite complex pages. Web browsing was a pleasure because of the nice screen.
3 Network
It’s often said that people don’t buy technology, they buy services. Therefore the actual 3 network is one of the most important "parts" of the phone. Hutchison has built the 3 network to full 3G specifications meaning very high data transfer rates are possible. To take advantage of this, they have introduced video downloads as their primary content type. The video differs in quality but with some of them I was truly amazed that it was being shown on a mobile phone. To access the 3 services portal, users press a "triangle" key on the right hand side of the phone. From here you can access the different content sections such as News, Sport, Weather, Comedy, Finance, Today, What’s On, Games and More. I’ll provide a brief description of each of these below.
In the news section, six news articles are added every day, with some being video (provided by Channel 7) and others being text (provided by AAP). Video news is about 1 minute long and only covers that single news story. The quality was good enough to recognise the newsreader and even read some of the background text. The sports news section is similar, with 1 minute long stories and some text articles. Most of the coverage seems to be devoted to Rugby.
Linked to the News and Sport sections is the "Today" section. This is basically a mix of the major stories from these sections. Personally I found it to be a bit of a waste.
Weather lets you access the weather report in major Australian cities and is available for up to 4 days in advance. Surprisingly it was actually pretty good and saved me from getting soaked a few times. Maybe 3 have a rain predicting machine available to them.
My favourite section would have to be the comedy section. A selection of short 1-2 minute clips are available for download and they cover everything from short sketches to stand-up comedy. The content was generally local Australian or American.You do not want to be watching these video’s on the train. Every time I laughed, people gave me weird looks.
The finance section allows you to access the Australian Stock Exchange market report and the Wall St market report. This was a little disappointing because real-time stock prices and reports from a larger range of exchanges would have been a killer app.
The "What’s On" section has city guides for Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth. City guides mainly comprise of a few reviews of cafes and pubs, event information, live bands playing and movie trailers. The movie trailers are very cool. They can take some time to download but its well worth the wait. For testing, I downloaded the trailers for 2 movies – Igby Goes Down and 2 Fast 2 Furious. Although they are at low res, the action was surprisingly smooth and audio was also properly synchronised. Overall I was very happy with the quality of the video playback on the e606.
3’s selection of games is very disappointing. Currently, there are only 7 games available, and most of these are quite useless. They did have one game that I liked – Alien Swarm. This lack of games is further worsened by the fact that you can’t get games on to the phone easily.
In the "More" section you can find a few extra services such as ringtones and picture downloads, horoscopes, and location based map guides. There is a very limited number of ringtones and pictures available, and most were not very appealing. The horoscopes are updated daily and are pretty good if you are into that sort of thing. The Find + Guide is a very cool feature, and takes advantage of the location checking available on 3G technology. You can get the network to find out your position and place it on a map which displays the street name, parks, and post offices. This service was not always reliable. In general, my location was shown correctly (within about 30 meters) and would show up on a map. The problem was that, when I selected to move the map the phone would try to connect and then time-out. This happened to me in many different places including Sydney CBD.
So as you can see, the 3 Network does have good content in some areas, and needs to be improved in others. If they can add more games, ringtones, and wallpapers, it would be very good.
As with any new network, there are some black spots and areas where coverage could be better. I live about 5 Km from the CBD and in my travels I didn’t really notice any black spots. Thus the inner-city area of Sydney is covered quite well. Moving further away from the CBD the coverage is a little spottier. When the phone can’t detect a 3G signal it automatically roams on the Vodafone network. Your number stays the same, but if you were in the middle of a call, the call won’t get transferred over. We’ll have to wait for the Nokia 6650 for that capability. When roaming, you can’t access the 3 Services or even GPRS/MMS. Still, it’s good that 3 have a backup network for their users to roam on. One thing to note is that the 3 network is only available in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, and Adelaide. This means that anywhere else you will only be able to access the Vodafone network.
Conclusion
I really wanted to like this phone. Being the first 3G phone I have ever used, I expected it to be revolutionary. You could call me a victim of the hype. There were a few deal-breakers with the e606. The first would have to be battery life. Had the slim battery been a little more powerful it would have nudged battery life over the 1 day mark. Not much, I know, but still workable. The second would be the unfinished nature of the phone. Finally I was disappointed with the lack of decent connectivity. This is a 3G phone on a very fast network – it needs good connectivity.
It’s not all bad though. I was happy with the 3 network and most of the content on it. For me, the reception was good and out of about 20 video calls, only 1 dropped out. Not too bad for a new network. Hopefully, with the release of 3G phones from some of the more well-known brands, 3G will finally come of age. Right now, I cant recommend the e606 to anyone. I’ve heard good things about the Motorola handsets on 3, but if this is the flagship model... |
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