When I think back to Mobile World Congress 2009, I definitely remember the first unveiling of the Sony Ericsson Satio concept, the bomb that was the Samsung Omnia HD, as well as Nokia’s E75, E55, N86 8MP and Ovi Store announcements. The Nokia 6720 Classic? Not so much, honestly. Nevertheless, I recently had the 6720 Classic dropped in my hand for a one-week trial and I came out feeling nothing but confused.
The 6720 Classic is a quad-band candybar phone with HSDPA support, GPS, a 3.5mm headset plug with TV-Out support (no TV-Out cable included), 5MP camera with Dual-LED flash and Bluetooth. There is no WiFi on board, which makes this device rather pointless in countries with no real HSDPA networks, and it also doesn’t charge via MicroUSB. The 6720 has a simplistic design, is slim, has a curved body that helps it fit nicely in the hand. It houses volume keys and a camera button as well as a microSDHC slot and a microUSB connector.
As for the software on board, it’s plain old S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2. Nokia Messaging, with its latest version, is on board and works beautifully, there’s also Ovi Maps, Share Online, N-Gage, a Windows Live Messenger client and the regular Nokia & Symbian software.
Honestly, I couldn’t find anything wrong with the 6720 Classic. It’s a perfect little phone, there’s not a single issue with the software or the hardware, and it definitely does what it says on the can. The problem? It’s dull, incredibly dull. I kept searching in and out for the smallest thing to excite me and everything I could find was the yucky yellow color for the led light around the D-pad as shown in the image below.
I know that this feeling of boredom with the 6720 Classic stems from the fact that I’m an S60 veteran and I’ve tried almost every S60 3rd Edition phone released in the past 3 years, so there was no real surprise in the 6720 for me. Still, I can’t help wonder about the gap that a device like this fills. It’s an update to the 6220 Classic, yet instead of improving the camera, it comes with a Dual-LED flash instead of a Xenon flash, and it lacks the blue star GPS lock light that the 6220 Classic had. The one improvement I could find was with the 3.5mm headset plug instead of a 2.5mm one. That’s it.
Here is a short video with me fiddling around with the 6720 Classic. There’s a hardware overview at the beginning, a full walkthrough of the menus, and a Panorama mode demo.
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Would I recommend the 6720 Classic if someone asked me for a good affordable smartphone with a decent camera? Probably yes, if I ever remember that it exists. It does what it sets out to do, it won’t attract prying eyes, and it’s filled with features. Yet, it’s unbelievably forgettable.
