...How far we've come: Nokia 6600 to N95
Published by Steve Litchfield at 19:04 GMT, January 20th 2008
Steve Litchfield looks back only 3 years and ponders how far technology has advanced in the (S60) smartphone world.
To those at the cutting edge, living on the day-to-day announcements in the smartphone world, progress can sometimes seem frustratingly slow. But in reality, we've come a long, long way in just three short years.
To illustrate this, consider the Nokia 6600 and the Nokia N95, both top spec mass-market phones in their day, one with wide availability starting at the end of 2003 and the other at the end of 2006. The interface and underlying operating system are ostensibly very similar, their position in the marketplace and their target demographic roughly the same. But they're as different as chalk and cheese when it comes down to capabilities and specifications.
Back in 2003, simply having a camera was enough to mark the 6600 out as a smartphone. Today, cameras are utterly ubiquitous. Running the 'Series 60' (as it was then) interface also marked the 6600 out, with functional PIM applications, email and the ability to add in native applications. Today, S60 continues to mark itself out as for smartphones with the openness to third party applications, but the core S60 apps themselves have become more numerous and more powerful (not all changes are visible, little things like support for notes ('descriptions') on Calendar entries were very much welcomed by me, for example), with additions like (S60 3rd Edition) Web, Search, Maps, Music player and Download! opening up new possibilities for newer devices. Feature phones (such as those running Nokia's Series 40 platform) have also got much more powerful and have closed the gap in some ways to 'smartphones', but S60 continues to lead its sister platform and continues to be Nokia's flagship system.
So, with all this in mind, let's compare the Nokia 6600 and N95, side by side, and let's see what a difference three years made:
| | Nokia 6600
| Nokia N95
|
Data speeds
| (Class 6) GPRS, up to 36kbps
| 3.5G, up to (an astonishing) 14.4Mbps, five hundred times faster, plus Wi-Fi, of course
|
Display
| 176 by 208 pixels, 65k colours, 2.1" diagonal
| 240 by 320 pixels, 16 million colours, 2.6" diagonal
|
Camera
| VGA, 0.3 megapixels, no flash or focus
| 5.0 megapixels, flash and auto-focus, over 15 times the resolution, with vastly better image quality
|
Video camera
| MMS-quality, 176 by 144 pixel frames at 15fps
| VGA (640 by 480) pixel frames at up to 30fps, around 20 times the perceived quality
|
Music/audio
| Mono output, single ear piece, playback of music through Gallery | Stereo output via standard 3.5mm headphones, high quality, dedicated Music player with (sometimes) cover art, plus Music store client, Podcasting, etc.
|
Featured applications
| Services WAP browser
| Full Web browser, Nokia Maps, Mobile Search, Share online, Quickoffice (viewers only by default though), Barcode scanner, Zip manager, Video editor |
Speed
| Quick for basic tasks only, also with very limited RAM, around 9MB free after booting
| Fast, more general purpose computing power, with demand paging (v20 firmware onwards), around 28MB of RAM free after booting
|
GPS
| Don't be silly. Bluetooth to external unit if you were lucky.
| Built-in low power GPS, fast lock-on (v12 firmware onwards)
|
Expansion
| MMC, typically 512MB max for most people
| microSD,typically 8GB max for most people
|
Given the comparisons above, it would be somewhat facetious to mention that the 6600 had a longer battery life (per charge) than the N95 - the laws of physics and all that. But I still find it inspiring to see the pace of progress. What will the next three years bring? The N95 8GB already does everything I need it to. What will Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, etc. think up? Comments welcome!
Steve Litchfield, 21 Jan 2008
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Categories: Comment, Hardware
Platforms: General, S60 3rd Edition
Feature Discussion
zippiracer
i am sure nokia has gone too far with this .73 is most available device in Nseries line-up, it has almost all latest developments by Nokia, and a very good camera
Nick17
Maybe I have not visited the forum that much lately and I am asking an old question, but has a date been set for the announcement of a N95-successor?
I have read about the N96 (the N82-version of the N95) and I read about the new funny-named E-series (has IKEA been buying Nokia shares?), but I think that the N95 was already announced in week 3 of 2007 (as was the N80 in week 3 of 2006(?)).
Was Steve Jobs right? Is Apple years ahead of Nokia development? or is Nokia cashing in on selling the bestsellers a little bit longer?
Looks like the N95 is gonna be the first phone that I will have more than a year (the 8GB is fine, but it is not really a new phone)..
To be honoust it is also the first phone which does not leave much to be desired (after the firmware-updated).
For comment-"relevancy" I here add that I still like playing some games on the 6600 (with my daughter now uses). For some reasons the 6600 is still a phone no one needs to be ashamed of (after three years)!
puterman
The "slow" and "fast" ratings in the speed category seem a bit arbitrary compared with the others. Is that perceived speed, or are you comparing clock frequencies?
DevilsRejection
Correction: 240x320, not 24 hehe
And the N95 will never have 14.4 MBps HSDPA, 3.6 MBps is the max.
zxon
The 6600 wasn't slow. I upgraded to the N70 from the 6600 before getting my N95 (cos I wanted 3G) and, to be honest, the N70 was so painfully slow it was annoying.
TANKERx
Here's a rant ;-)
This is an interesting piece and raises an age old question that has bothered and challenged me (as someone who has habitually bought more tech than he should) quite often.
If the 6600 does everything a person wants it to do, that person should stick with it. Fine, except, much as I like to say I believe that, I don't always stick with it. It's almost as though once a new device is released, the shine has gone off my current one. And I think this plays into my materialistic side.
I currently have an N73 and an E61 which I interchange according to requirement and mood and as far as Smartphones are concerned, I've cooled off somewhat in my zeal to have the latest Symbian phone, but I'm very much aware of how the shine of a new device makes my current one feel like it's slow, feel like it's incapable, feel like its limited and feel like it's somehow pants.
I felt it when Steve Jobs showed the MacBook Air. I have a first generation MacBok and when I saw the 'Air, mine suddenly looked like a big white slab. But what's changed? Nothing. My MacBook still works and it hasn't slowed down because a new one is out. And Steve Jobs isn't the only one who has a Reality Distortion Field. In my opinion, every time I see an advert or a presentation for a device that is so ubercool that I need to have it, I'm in a reality distortion field.
When I saw the E90, boy did I want one! I still do, but when I first saw it, my E61 seemed somehow crap. Like my MacBook, nothing has slowed down, nothing has stopped working and the screen hasn't become smaller just because there's a new phone out, but to read my thoughts for a while on seeing the E90, you'd think it had!
I know people who still use their 6600 and some (hold onto your seats) who still use the 7650! If it works for them, then could it be argued that progress hasn't really addressed their needs (after all, do I need an E90?)?
Another issue that challenges me is whether or not I actually needed the features of a device when I bought it 'for those features'.
I do believe that there is a place where techno-desire must be addressed in regard to humanity at a fundemantal level. But where that is, I don't know. All I know is that I want lovely shiny toys to play with!
Unregistered
a proper "cutting edge Nokia" evolution article would include the 7650 as well which was groundbreaking at its time...
slitchfield
No, the 7650 was unique and a bit of a prototpe in many ways. No expansion slot, only 4MB of flash memory. It could hardly do *anything*.
The 3650 fixed the deficiencies but had that horrible keypad. So I chose to use the 6600, which in its day ellicited the same techno-lust that the N95 did a year ago!
Unregistered
Hehe, a friend of mine caries around the 6600... that thing is HUGE and the screen looks horrible
I've been walking around with a N95-1 for some time now (two months or so) and what I would like to have in a N95 succesor is (flash lite! :D, but I expect we'll see a FW update with that. Nokia just doesn't want to push out those to often to keep things orderly I guess.)
-A better battery life, not N95 8GB ish but like twice the amount which it has now. I carry around a spare battery and on some days I almost get through two of those (not quite, but I get close, doing stuff like browsing, GPS, music listening, etc.)
- A larger, higher resolution screen (like the 8GB screen but with double the resolution or something like that) I now allready browse a lot in 50% zoom (and talking about that;)
- Some minor software tweaks; ability to set 50% zoom as default in web. Ability to let music player sort your song not based on ID3 but filenames, ability to asign media button for something else (many thanks allready for removing the menu on a slide). Call ending ability on sliding back (like the N82).
-A thinner N95!
What I really like (and shouldn't be changed) next to the fact that it's a swiss army knife;
-The music slider, actually I don't even use those buttons but I really like how the phone switches to landscape mode. I've been using RotateMe for a while but I simply do not like it. This is better, it offers more control; for example when your phone lies flat on a table, how does it now whether to go to landscape or portrait mode?
-That it does NOT have a touchscreen. One of the reasons I wanted a phone with a clasic interface is that I can use it with one hand, that it is made to be opperated that way.
-The camera shutter, actually not because it covers the lens but because it sends you directly to camera mode which is very handy.
-The fact that it does not run WM... I've worked with WM phones and always found them horrible to opperate. With S60 you immediately notice that it was designed from the ground op as a phone OS, not as a mini Windows desktop. (WM is getting in this respect however, as a matter of fact S60, don't underestimate WM in the future!)
fernando20
Hah, I this article, I had a 6600 before getting a N95
Unregistered
I had both a 6600 and a N95 and they are both a really great phone. But If I were to use the 6600 now I'm sure I would miss many features from the N95!
Liquid_Li0n
You better compared the 6600 with the N95 8GB, thats even a bigger difference but offcourse 3.5years or more in between
I had the 6600, it was my first experience with S60, and with a device that had the most wonderful function around. If the application wasn't on the phone by default, just install a third party app on it!
So that phone could everything, I suprised everyone with TomTom & SmartMovie installed on my phone. It was a great time. Now it is something that became normal to see movies or roadmaps on your phone.
Unregistered
It would have been nice if that comparison was between the N95 and a S60v1 phone. I started out with nGage. I'd seen someone playing Tombraider on one and I was blown completely out of the water by the 4000 colour screen. I just had to have one! That was 4 years and many S60 phones ago.
Unregistered
The main difference being the battery life , i see nokia has long way to go in that path b4 looking at other options like resolution , data transfer rate etc.
Unregistered
Quality phone, best yet
Unplugged
I had to use the 6600 before ( and while waiting for a replacement for a broken ) N95.
Both are great phones for thier time but technology as always will move on. Other than the slooooowness of the 6600 ( which wasent an issue when it first came out as much ) it was a great phone.
Unregistered
Got my 6600 in May 2004, and still have not upgraded.
Only two reasons I consider an upgrade to the E51:
- GPRS is just too slow today, like it was too slow in 2004. It is not usable to browse.
- All my jeans have a 6600 mark visible in the outside of the left pocket, even when its not in there.
:)
Unregistered
I also think the N95 is the first phone in this millenium that I actually will use over a year, though since I'm getting free phones rather often, I'm already using my second N95 (both classics though).
My Wife uses my old N95, as well as after losing her N73, her secondary is my old 6600, which indeed is still rather excellent device.
Unregistered
I've had my 6600 since 2003. It's got a 1GB mmc card in the back, runs Tomtom v5.1 and Route66 2006. I've installed a MP3 app on and another that lets me use an mp3 as a ring tone.
I work in a smelly factory with dust, molten lead, acid and molten zinc, my 6600 sits in my overalls pocket and it's never let me down, and it's had a few knocks and bangs.
Just upgraded and gone to 3G but can't part with my old friend it's sat on my desk served me well !!!
Bytales
What i would like to see is a similar comparison 3 years from now, provided we live that much, of course, with the n95 in the place of the 6600. I'd like to take a good laugh them at N95 capabilities, i wonder, what kind of a specs will that phone have ?
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