First Take: NEC e606
Some brief statistics: the NEC e606 is a dual mode 2G/3G phone (GSM/W-CDMA) and has Bluetooth and USB connectivity. Now onto the really interesting stuff.
The NEC e606 is the first 3G mobile handset in Australia. Thus, it's the first to offer video mobile calling, and is exclusive to the first mobile carrier to provide 3G services such as video mobile calling, Hutchison.
The videophone capability is currently unique to the e606. Although other mobiles, such as the Nokia 3650 have video capabilities, the e606 is the only phone that can do live two-way video. Whether you will appreciate this facility depends on your personality type, as the video is not perfect.
The picture on video calls lags a bit behind the speech, often breaks up and can't handle fast movement well. It's very similar to the kind of the satellite phone images that featured heavily on news broadcasts five years ago. That being said, this is the only service on which you can get videophone capabilities at all, and the service is likely to improve as Hutchison upgrades its network.
If the transmission quality bothers you, of course, there's nothing stopping you pre-recording messages and just sending them, although you do lose the two-way interactivity of live video chat. The video call capability has a number of cool features accessible through a submenu, including which of the two cameras to use (one facing towards you, the other away), a 2x zoom, mirror image, mute, and video off (which keeps the call going but takes away the image you are sending). You can also have a little picture of yourself in the bottom left corner, to see the image you are sending to the other person. You do need to have the earphone in during a video call.
During a call the submenu comes up slowly, but you can use number shortcuts to go straight to the menu choice you want. The normal video capabilities are good, with the ability to access a submenu and select three different image qualities, recording direction, mirror image and a self-timer. There is also a 2x digital zoom, which can be switched on and off during the video recording. The phone allows you to record up to 12 seconds of video, which is longer than it sounds, and certainly enough to encompass any message we wanted to send.
This feature also includes video clips downloaded to the phone, which are good quality but best viewed using an earpiece, because the external volume on the phone does not go up very high.
The video cameras can also be used as digital cameras, with the same features (2x digital zoom and three levels of picture quality), and these can then be sent as MMS messages. We found the MMS capabilities easy to use, and quite fun.
The photos also look good on the screen, which is very impressive with 65K colours and a large 132 x 162 pixels (35 x 43 mm). In terms of looks, this is the best part of the phone. While it is very stylish and futuristic, there is no getting around the large form factor, which is about the size of two small mobiles lying on top of each other. It measures 109 x 53 x 32 mm, and weighs in at 145 g. You do get a lot of features with this phone, but they take up space.
The button layout of the e606 is simple, with two menu buttons (one for the phone menu, and one for the 3 menu), two softkeys, a normal keypad and a five-way arrow key. One thing that is unusual is that not all the arrow keys are used all the time, and a little symbol comes on the screen to show you which keys are active at any given point.
One major issue we have with the NEC e606 is the battery life, which is abysmal. NEC says the battery life is dependant on the applications run and the operations of the carrier, and we can understand that video functions and 3G phone calls chew through the power. If you do plan to use these features, don't plan for the battery to last more than about a day, if that. You are given a spare battery with the phone, so you can charge that and take it with you as a backup; we'd advise this strategy at this point.
We'll have more on the NEC e606 once we've finished our comprehensive testing.
NEC e606
Company: NEC
Price: AU$768
Distributor: 3 Australia
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When it comes to service its miserable. In electronics goods its difficult to say "nothing will go wrong" because if something goes wrong then all your money is gone.