Get shot, tagged and blogged - in one go

As we get older one of the first things we begin to realize is that the world is getting smaller. I remember as a child I used to be amazed at how far away the Philippines was from the other parts of the world. Or for that matter how far away we lived from my Lola. Mind you, she only lived in the Manila area and we lived in Mandaluyong.

But, at the time — it was back in the ’70s — it seemed that it took forever to get to Lola’s house. As I got older, and traveled more, distances became shorter and places did not seem as far as they used to be.

Fast forward to the 21st century.

Now, all you need are a few well-functioning fingers and the gadgets to keep you in touch with the world out there.

Cellphones, cellphones. The gadgets we can’t live without and the gadgets we sometimes wished we didn’t own (specially when we have a deadline). But live with these cellphones we must or face being out of touch with reality.

I love cellphones, not because I like staying in touch with people, but rather because they really teach me so much about life. Like the fact that we should always be open to change and that we should always give each new device a chance to show us what it’s got.

Just recently Nokia introduced the Nokia 6220 Classic, a full-featured device that combines a five-megapixel camera with A-GPS functionality to give new meaning to the phrase “to share.”

To share. Sounds like a wedding commitment. And, maybe it is. Imagine great photos can be snapped and images tagged, edited and shared, online or cellphone to cellphone or even watched on TV in after just a few minutes. How smaller can the world get, we wonder.

I know that a five-megapixel camera on a cellphone is no longer new news. Yet, with the Nokia 6220 Classic it is the five-megapixel camera with Xenon flash and Carl Zeiss optics, just like some of the better cameras available on the market today, that makes this cellphone worth it. With its high-speed HSDPA connection, updating blogs or uploading photos and videos to favorite sharing sites like Share on Ovi or Flickr can be done right from the Nokia 6220 Classic. A-GPS functionality allows photos to be “geotagged” — making them easier to search and share. Images can also be viewed on a television screen with the integrated TV-out feature, sent from phone to phone via wireless Bluetooth connection, or viewed in full color on the phone’s large 2.2-inch display.

As a full-featured converged device, the Nokia 6220 classic also includes Internet browser, e-mail, music player, and FM radio with RDS and up to 8GB of memory.

There is nothing flashy or heavy (weight-wise) about the Nokia 6220 Classic. I like that this cellphone is so understated. You know, the best things in life are those that don’t scream for attention, rather it is those that catch your fancy after you give it a once over.

At only 90 grams, the 6220 Classic is one of Nokia’s smallest S60 phones. And that is the only thing small about it, because the 6220 Classic comes really close to being what the N95 is. I want to try the geek approach with this review as I try to walk you through this beauty.

There’s a micro USB jack on the bottom, plus a charging socket and a 2.5-mm enhanced audio jack. The left side has microSD card slot and a navigation shortcut key — chic, to say the least. And from the back the 6220 is just great. There’s a Carl Zeiss-lens protected five-megapixel camera with Xenon flash. I just love it when I can snap shots of my doggies. And with this cellphone it was really fun — no matter the time of day or night.   

The Nokia 6220 Classic is powered by the Symbian OS v9.3 with Feature Pack 2. It is the latest edition of the very popular Symbian OS.    

I guess, what all this techie jargon means is that Web browsing is a pleasure. The built-in OSS browser based on Webkit is excellent. Imagine being able to get a good view of a page on the phone just like you would on a desktop or laptop. Great. The 6220 Classic fares quite decently when it comes to multimedia playback performance. It has good audio quality and supports many audio formats like MP3, AAC, eAAC+, WMA natively. The Music Player is simple and easy to use. The 6220 Classic also supports A2DP, which enables you to hear streaming music wirelessly on your stereo Bluetooth headset.

The Nokia 6220 Classic features a range of connectivity options like USB 2.0, Bluetooth with A2DP, GPRS, HSCSD, EDGE Class 32, 3G HSDPA. But we miss the Wi-Fi connectivity. Surely, in this day and age, Wi-Fi is a must. Along with the Nokia 6220 Classic, you get a 2GB MicroSD card, a charger, a Micro USB cable and a TV Out cable. It comes with standard Nokia 2.5-mm earphones. You also get the regular manuals and a PC Suite CD.

The Nokia 6220 Classic is a great cellphone at an affordable price. The performance improvements are great and FP2 is a superb addition. In addition to its imaging capabilities, the Nokia 6220 Classic enables Adaptive Multi Rate-Wideband speech coding technology, giving a more natural sound to human voice in phone calls. It helps when having a conversation in a noisy environment such as in traffic or public place.

The world is indeed growing smaller. We stay in touch more now than we did in the past. More and more cellphones are doing what used to be the sole domain of the computer. Gone are the days when we used the cellphone to say hello and goodbye to friends. With the connections that the new cellphones make, saying hello to the world and showing it too, with all the photos we snap, are easy. Perhaps, too easy.

Time to e-mail this piece. Thank goodness I got a Nokia 6220 Classic.