Nokia 6600 game capabilities

Cell phones have for some years now harnessed the ability to play games often simple both in features and graphical flamboyance. Running a Symbian OS and a relatively fast CPU has led to a new wave of gaming capabilities that aim to please. A lot of the reason why mobile games have rocketed in numbers over the past two years is the result of colour screens. Nokia’s 6600 208x176 screen resolution provides a somewhat large area to cast graphics and in some part explains why gaming is a joy. It is both pleasant and nostalgic to replay once again for example the original DOOM as common on PC’s not so long ago. Symbian games are by contrast more graphical and of better quality than Java and it is only these (for now at least) that show off at best the phones capabilities. Most impressive are 3D games where real three-dimensional graphics move and by this we mean smoothly that can be addict. An only element where some criticism can be rendered is that lack of texture filtering, this means that walking closely to a wall or other 3D character in a game meant seeing blocky pixels. Smartphones are soon to receive MMX capable processors that offer yet increased performance and problems such as these will become a non-issue. Overall it is quite impressive how much a small phone can offer in gaming, it was only a few years ago that PC’s delivered this level of graphical power.

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  The processing efficiency of the Nokia 6600

As a technologically advanced handset the Nokia 6600 harnesses more processing power than your average phone and it does so with good reason. Running a fully capable multi-threaded Operating System requires a dose of power and delivering it is a 104MHz StrongARM ARM-9 RISC processor. Available internal memory is 6MB which is 2MB more than from prior Nokia Symbian models, it can be used for installing applications, receiving data (including SMS), or if necessary storing ringtones, images etc. An interesting thing to note is that this memory when reported by third party programs hovers around the 9-10MB mark. When asked of this Nokia replied telling us that there is a 3MB heap size which is combined into the full memory reading as indicated by other applications. As a quick reminder the heap is a section of memory pre-reserved for software. In case the phone memory is insufficient an MMC may be installed, by default Nokia supplies a 32MB card however it’s entirely possible to increase the memory pool to 512MB. A slight inconvenience still in place is the method a MMC is inserted, in contrast to phones such as the SonyEricsson P800/P900 the Nokia 6600 needs to be turned off and have its battery removed before swapping cards.

Being a highly electronically complex appliance as stated previously there is a substantial amount of information that could be vented regarding its various aspects. An area that attracted a considerable share of our attention is the performance in 3D. Using JBenchmark we concluded 3D performance to be around 38% faster while fill rate 277% faster than in the Nokia 7650/3650 phones. On the other hand text and animation performance was 42% and 31% slower respectively than from the 7650/3650. The reason we praise the 3D speed increase claim in comparison to these older phones is simple, they all use the same processor and run the Symbian OS despite it being version 6.1. Given especially that the 104MHz Strong ARM-9 RISC CPU is common across the various models we were curious to conclude how the added speed boost is obtained. After some deliberation on the subject the only explanation logically viable as an answer from a user’s perspective is the improved coding within the OS. To seek some confirmation we queried Nokia but were disappointed to learn that their company policy disallows disclosing of any specific information regarding the hardware.

Overall we welcome the few technological changes that affect the speed and otherwise efficiency of the handset. In total Nokia has implemented a count of three changes that separate it from its predecessors (7650 & 3650), as a reminder they are: increasing phone memory, updating the OS to Symbian version 7.0s, and boosting 2D/3D performance. These combined have enabled an evolution in the processing efficiency and might arguably be an explanation as to why a feature such as themes has been introduced.