#TechThrowbackThursday Nokia 6630 – One of Last Decade’s Best

Following one of the hottest digital trends today, we are proud to bring you a slight enhancement to the trend for Geeks out there. This will be the first of many; this is not going to be weekly, though, of a series of #throwbacks covering technologies of yesteryear.

Most, if not all of us, love being nostalgic especially during our 90s days, and #ThrowbackThursday or #TBT on Instagram and other social networking site is a trend on which you post pictures from years ago.  The essence of a throwback is nostalgia so pictures from twelve hours ago do not count. According to digitaltrends.com, the art of throwback thursday is selecting an appropriately nostalgia-inducing picture – from a different era of your life. And last Tuesday doesn’t count, even if since then you’ve gotten a new tattoo and bought a pet lizard named Rascal (sic).

So what does this have to do with this article? Well, from the title itself, this will be a throwback look back review on one of last decade’s premier phones – the Nokia 6630! Thanks to my past self, I was able to preserve the box and manuals of this phone in great condition and the phone itself is still working like a charm, so without further ado, here it is, the first #TechThrowbackThursday — NOKIA 6630!

Makings of a King from a Decade

Before anything else, this #throwback is a review with respect to its performance on its prime and to today’s phone and how the phone functions now!

A decade ago, part of the package of a cellphone, manufacturers tend to give everything possible within the first purchase, unlike today where necessary accessories are, mostly, not included. Unfortunately for me, I was not able to preserve the accessories, but it did include a USB connector, tons of manuals, earphones, and the charger.

Looking at Nokia 6630 today, it is undeniably a very bulky device its thickness is twice that of the Sony Xperia Z! The back houses the amazing 1.3-megapixel camera, the front has the screen and the ancient keypad. The screen has a miniscule 176×208 display! It’s amazing how much we have progressed from a technological standpoint!

Entertainment Factor

Now we look at how it performs as a multimedia device, with the rise of Android, it seems like everywhere and anywhere you go somebody is using their phone to either watch videos or listen to music, both of those can be done by the Nokia 6630 but it is painstakingly limited. The 256MB maximum recommended capacity will barely be able to store one 20 minute AVI video and today’s music collection definitely is way beyond 256MB. Its video codec is limited and even if it does play the video you put, playing it on a tiny screen might strain your eyes. Complaints aside, the audio quality of this phone is top notch, sadly the earphone jack is a Nokia proprietary jack so it’s hard to find a spare, especially today, the good news is, you can hook it up to a Nokia BH503 Bluetooth headset, sadly, you cannot connect it to a Sony SBH50.

A major feature that Nokia 6630 has, barring a few geeks out there, is the live streaming, if you have the links you can stream GMA7 for free!

If you play games a lot, you could be content over the wide range of apps available on this operating system. I would suggest Gameloft games as they offer the best Gameplay with the best graphics. I have been playing Nightmare Creatures, Prince of Persia, and Splinter Cell over and over for almost a decade now.

Camera

Today, smartphones are boasting very high camera resolutions, back then VGA was the mainstay and Nokia 6630’s 1.3MP was the pioneer to the road of higher resolution. Almost a decade after its conception, I have to say I am still impressed with its image quality. Without flash, this phone is a definite no-no in low light, but in outdoors and great lighting conditions, it still packs quite a punch and even trumps those found on some entry-level phones in the market today. See the pictures to appreciate! Sadly, this phone does not have a front-facing camera so selfies cannot be.

Messaging, Contacts, Web Browsing, Battery Life, Etc.

Messaging feels different today than before, though the only thing that changed was the format, today we have the conversation mode. As for contacts, it also feels the same, as you can import your contacts from Symbian to Android and vice versa.

As far as advancements go there are a few major aspects that have drastically improved over the decade namely; clockspeed, mobile browsing, internal memory, and RAM. Web Browsing with a Symbian phone is a cumbersome task, often frustrating as it was slow, laggy and virtually unusable. Internal memory of the Nokia 6630 is a measly 10MB, with 30MB RAM, and 220MHz Clockspeed. Check out the the specs of Samsung Galaxy Note 3.

The battery life is probably the one that took a step back, when Android rose to superstardom, people soon realized that they prefer performance and feature over battery life, and that may have started the exponential decay in people’s interest in the operating system. Nokia 6630 has an amazing battery life, it lasted about 3 days on the average and it still does now. How I wish phones today could last as long as before!

Related: Nokia Lumia 1020 Philippines Press Event! Hands-on Preview!

Conclusion

A decade ago, no one would ever think Symbian would die instantaneously, it had tons of features, apps and there are a lot of form factors available, not just the standard thin brick we have today. This phone was purchased more than eight years ago but it still performs as fast as it was before, I only had two problems with the phone which was fixed immediately, first was its original battery died, I replaced it with an original one back in 2008, the second would be its LCD’s backlight suddenly died back in 2010 and I got it replaced.  Today, it works like a charm with no signs of slowing down, I understood as to why it had defects like that, years of use will definitely kill a phone, but Nokia made a sturdy one, this is why I was hesitant at first to switch to another brand as Nokia has stood the test of time. Sadly, we have to move on, features and usability does outclass battery life. Another reason for Symbian’s death maybe, unlike Android, we were not as free to tinker with phone as much as we want, most, if not all, like to tinker and improve the phone’s performance, with Symbian, its relatively hard to do such that despite having custom firmwares available.

With all that said, Nokia 6630 back then was undeniably one of the best, but in today’s standard, it fits only as a decent back-up phone (uh, okay). One you could whip out in Public without having to worry of it getting snatched.