This is somewhat of a rehash from a previous thread, but I thought I'd turn my ramblings and thoughts into my first review here on HOFO The original thread can be found here.

A little background:
The phone was bought on eBay from best-tronics-ny. Ordered the phone on Sunday night, they shipped Monday afternoon, had the phone by Wednesday. Awesome service! I will be comparing some of the aspects of this phone to the Nokia E65 and 6131.

Firmware Information:
V 03.03
09-03-07
RM-176
Nokia 6290 (02.01)
Phone was Made in Germany.

First Impressions:

Build
The phone feels nice in the hand, not as solid or as "heavy" as the E65, but definitely good build quality. The material used for the entire back is a rubber material, very similar to the Nokia 6131. The front of the phone is all plastic, which is a shame. I wish the entire phone followed the 6131.






Keypad
The keypad has an excellent feel. The keys are very generous and have a soft touch to them. It's very easy to type and keys are very responsive. The material almost feels like the back rubber part of the phone which I like. There was some initial creaking of the keypad, but I have not noticed it anymore since using the phone the past day. I've noticed that the back lighting on the 6290 gives a whiter (sp?) glow compared to the e65. The e65 almost looks green in comparison. I much prefer the 6290's back lighting.





Screen
The screen is nice and bright and automatically adjusts for lighting conditions. The screen is on par with the E65 in terms of brightness and color.




UI
This sucker is fast! The UI is very responsive and everything opens almost instantly. Faster than the E65 and I would say it's almost as fast as any S40 device! The placement of some of the menu items is inconsistent with other S60 devices. Just takes some time to get used to.

Network
Even though the network is EDGE, still feels very fast. I am guessing the updated processor lets the data transfer faster and the pages load faster. The phone pulled all my Cingular settings for MediaNet and MMS off the sim card and leaves me one less thing to do! I am currently in Indianapolis which has 3G capability.

Speed tests from DSL Reports:
100k - 181 kbit/sec 1.106s latency
600k - 232 kbit/sec 1.327s latency

I'm really impressed by the EDGE speed for this device, even if it's not 3G. I've used a Samsung Sync before, but never watched videos or needed to stream anything else.

Call Quality
Call quality is excellent. No popping or distortion whatsoever. I had some of those issues with the 6131, but do not have any with this phone. I had volume on medium for incoming calls and it was easy to hear everything. I didn't have to "search" for the listening sweet spot.

Camera
Truth be told, the camera is not that great. Although it was night time when I tried to take the indoor pictures, the camera should be better. Maybe outdoor pics will be better. There is no autofocus on the camera, but the flash is automatic.

Music Player
The music player is actually decent. I transfered some songs using SyncTunes to the memory card and album art was transferred over also. I am able to close the phone and use the outside keys to control the music. I don't have a 2.5 to 3.5mm adapter so I can't use other earbuds to test the quality of music, but I'm certain it will sound good. You are able to use any song and directly assign to a contact or use as the default ringtone. The music player can not play any protected iTunes music. All the music I have has been listening to was imported from CDs. The 6290 is capable of playing both mp3 and aac files.


Some more random thoughts:
The protective flaps for the headset and ac adapter are kind of annoying. if you leave them open and try to flip open the phone, you can potentially scratch the front of the phone when trying to close them. In fact, you can't close them once you flip open the phone.

One other thing I noticed was the absence of the active standby plug ins for the 6290. That kind of sucks. I liked that feature on the e65. you still get a mail notice, but it's just not inline with the other items below the active standby icons.

I found that the outside keys are easy to accidentally activate, even when I had the phone in my hip case. That was easily solved by using Free Autolock, found here: http://fuse.stc.cx/autolock/ Works as expected and now I don't have to worry about blasting 311 in my pocket during meetings...

Web browser will automatically bookmarks sites. This sites are then available as a contextual menu while web browsing. Very cool!

So...E65 or 6290?
My initial response is yes to keeping the 6290, at least for now. I'll use the 6290 over this weekend and report back, but so far, the 6290 has been amazing in terms of speed and voice quality, even if it's a bit "ugly". That's okay though, it's whats inside that counts, right?

So that's all for now. Let me know if you have any other questions and I can try to answer them.

yukky, its looks ugly as poo compared to the e65 [=

Maybe I should have taken the e65 out back and roughed it up first before taking comparison pictures.

I think it's a good move for Nokia. Its appearance is much less intimidating to S60 newcomers and it might just be a hit. It looks like a standard S40 and perhaps it will be inviting to those looking for "just a phone" with a little bit more. I love the keypad as it's similar to the N93 but other than that it's pretty boring imo. For NA users, anything other than the N75 in that form factor is foolish unless your set on the slim feel of an N76.

You definitely nailed it there. The phone does feel like an S40 device in terms of speed, but having the power of S60 and being able to install apps is a plus. Personally, I like this approach by Nokia, even if the design is a bit boring. It's still a great phone that I think will surprise people.

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure it's a great phone but my bias is really towards flips in general so take my opinion with a grain of salt!

Thank you for the excellent review Llama! Will definately consider this phone in the near future.

More thoughts....

The Cover Screen and buttons: Now that I've been getting notifications (email, missed calls, etc), I really like how I am able to use just the front buttons to check these without having to open the phone.

1) It's quicker to get to the notifications that I need and 2) it will save battery because I won't have to use the main screen.

I am even able to read the first parts of emails on the front screen. Put another mark in the plus column!

And speaking of battery, I will have to update the review to include battery life. I have adjusted the network mode to just look for GSM and not UMTS/GSM. I think this will definitely help the battery life.

Does anyone know where I can find an iSync plugin for this phone? I would think a new one would need to be created because of the updated Symbian OS.

That's a good point. I was kinda dissapointed when I heard that the active standby plugin functionality was absent, but I forgot that most notification will probably be checked at a glance in closed state. Thanks for the review.

Keep checking this site...

http://www.nokia.com/A4299040

Even the N76 is on there, so it shouldn't be too long before the 6290 follows.

I saw that site the other day and used it on my E65. It's great that Nokia is officially supporting iSync now. Then we don't have to wait for updates from Apple.

What if some NA users don't want to wait [forever] until they can get an unbranded N75 and don't care about 3G capability (T-Mobile)?

In that case, the 6290 with FP1 is certainly the better phone.

Thank you for posting your review. I enjoyed reading it. Happy Mobiling!

Update on the autolock for the keypad. It seems I missed that autolock is actually built into the settings:

settings/phone settings/general/security/phone and sim card/keypad autolock period

I guess I didn't need to install Free Autolock.

Thanks blesio for your help!