Sunday, March 2, 2008

Sprint PPC-6600


The Sprint PPC-6600 is basically the same as its older sibling, the PPC-6601 Pocket PC/phone. The one difference is the addition of a camera. Despite this, we're rating the PPC-6600 a notch below its predecessor—not because it's less powerful but because the competition has gotten stiffer.

Both the Verizon XV-6600 and Cingular's Siemens SX66 are identical to the PPC-6600, but these two devices offer support for high-speed networks. In the XV-6600's case, the network is Verizon's EV-DO; in the SX66's, it's Wi-Fi. T-Mobile also has a Wi-Fi Pocket PC phone, the HP iPAQ h6315. That makes Sprint the odd carrier out.

The only change to the PPC-6600 is the addition of a VGA camera, which also takes QVGA videos. Unfortunately, the camera is of poor quality. In our test shots, we saw serious color noise and dithering problems that made solid lines and areas of color look stippled. Videos, which can be shot in MP4 or 3GPP format, were average for a camera phone: In other words, they were jittery and compressed.

The camera interface, on the other hand, is excellent. You can start shooting by hitting a side button or tapping an option on the device's home screen, and icons on the main camera page let you switch easily between photo mode, video mode, and a mode with the right setting for caller ID pictures.

The PPC-6600 is still the most powerful handheld Sprint offers. But with three competing major carriers using high-speed networking to up the ante, that's not enough to make Sprint an industry leader.

Because the only changed feature from the PPC-6601 is the camera, we did not redo benchmark tests for this device. The results shown below are the numbers we got for the PPC-6601.

SPEC DATA :

  • Operating System: Windows Mobile 2003
  • Type: Pocket PC
  • Screen Size: 3.5 inches
  • Flash Memory Type: Secure Digital
  • Bluetooth: Yes

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