NEC e616

The NEC e616As many of you may know, I reviewed the NEC e606 back in July and came to the conclusion that it was a bit of a lemon. Well, NEC has had some time to get back to the drawing board and come up with a better phone. The e616 and e606 are quite similar in specifications; both feature dual quarter VGA cameras, 65K color screens, video calls, SMS, and MMS. NEC has managed to pack quite a lot extra into the e616, including GPS, 40-chord polyphonics, camera assist light, and GPRS support. Although GPRS is present in most phones on the market today, it is important for 3G phones to have support for it when they roam off of 3G networks. This ensures that users still have mobile internet, email, and MMS services on the go.

One of the most useful features in the new e616 is the ability to expand its memory with its Memory Stick Duo slot. While it may not be the best flash memory type available, due to its high price and unavailability, it will certainly come in handy to store video clips, audio files, and pictures. Two of my biggest gripes with the e606 were Bluetooth and Java application support. While I'm unsure whether proper Bluetooth and Java has been implemented in the e616, we can hope that NEC has learned from their past mistakes. If so, we may be looking at the next killer 3G phone.

Detailed specifications can be found below.

• WCDMA (UMTS) and Dual Band GSM (900/1800Mhz)
• Dimensions: 103mm x 53mm x 26mm
• Weight: 131g
• 3G and GPRS data services
• 65K color TFT screen (176 x 240 resolution)
• External monochrome screen (120 x 30 resolution)
• Video calling, video streaming, and video recording
• Dual-cameras (352 x 288 resolution) with assist light
• 19MB internal memory
• GPS
• Audio (AAC and WMA) and Video (MP4 and WMV) playback support
• Bluetooth
• Java application support
• 40 chord polyphonics
• Sony Memory Stick Duo support (up to 128MB)

High-res pictures are available on the following pages.

 

Featured products from the MobileBurn store