The Nokia 6260
While I was away, my latest phone arrived at Chez PhoneBoy: The Nokia 6260. Having just got a Nokia 9500, you might wonder why I got a 6260. Because, damn it, I wanted to see what the big deal was with flip phones and I could get this one for free.
The Nokia 6260 is not available in the US, thus it had to be imported from other parts of the world. As such, it is a European tri-band (GSM 900/1800/1900), which means no GSM 850. If you’re a T-Mobile subscriber, no big deal since they operate exclusively on GSM 1900. If you’re a Cingular subscriber and don’t live in a good GSM 1900 area, or frequently travel to areas that aren’t great GSM 1900 areas, then this may not be the phone for you. But I pretty much stick to the Seattle area and the San Francisco Bay Area, both of which began live as GSM 1900 areas, and are thus fairly well covered.
The Nokia 6260 is a Series 60 phone, meaning it’s running Symbian OS. In some ways, the interface reminds me of my Nokia 3650. This means it has a decent email client, a slightly better than normal web browser (though nothing like the 9500′s browser), an address book and calendar that can be synced with Outlook, and the ability to run a host of applications. The phone also has a Chat application, a “positioning” application, Push to talk, a PowerPoint viewer, and a Microsoft Word viewer. It’s also got an FM Radio built in and the ever-present camera.
The phone has four basic operating modes, which are controlled by how the screen is folded:
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Closed, meaning the phone is closed. If an incoming call comes in, you can control whether or not opening the phone will “answer” the phone for you.
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Open mode, where the screen opens up to 150 degrees. This is your typical use mode.
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Picture mode, where the screen can be unfolded and then rotated around (180 degrees in one direction, 90 in the other) so you can see what kind of picture you’re talking.
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Browsing mode where the screen does a 180 and folds into the telephone keypad.
It’s definitely not your fathers flip phone.
The two things I got to test this afternoon were the FM radio and the camera. The FM radio works pretty well, though like all Nokia phones, it requires having the headset plugged in. The phone comes with a stereo headset, which is good because I was about to buy a pair of those. The FM radio works as well as it does on the other phones that I’ve got it on except it’s in Series 60 glory instead of the Series 40 gorty.
When I was in the mall this afternoon, I snapped a picture of my daughter:
Nice to know my daughter is still cute no matter which camera you use. 
I showed the Nokia 6260 to my wife, who’s been wanting a flip phone. Her initial reaction was: why is it so damn big? Compared to her Nokia 3650, it’s about that thick, but it’s about an inch and a half shorter than the 3650. The 9500 is a little longer. Maybe a Nokia 6101 will be more her size.
