To be honest it is a good smart phone but there are many things lacking when it goes up against today's normal mobiles

I like this mobile phone.

The Nokia 6680 has dual video-capable cameras, 3g, video calling, it has a Symbian operating system (v8), and it also has a hot-swappable RS-MMC slot.

I have now had the Nokia 6680 mobile phone for 11 months, and I am coming up to an upgrade, so I thought I would add my comments on almost a year of using it.

When I first received the handset I was very impressed with it. The screen quality is stunning, which means all your pictures and videos look great. It's also got two cameras which makes video calling easy. It's not too big or chunky (compared to the 6600 I had before), and the shutter to protect the rear camera lens is a great idea (if a little poorly put together).

Software wise, this phone is obviously designed for the on-the-go businessman. There are no games, but a range of programs to read Microsoft Office documents and PDF files, which is nice. Being a Symbian phone, you can load all sorts on here though. But if you're upgrading from an old school Series 60 phone (7650, 3650 or 6600 for example) you may find a few applications aren't backwards compatible.

What I was less impressed with is the Orange branding this phone comes with. Get it out of the box and you're confronted with an ORANGE startup, an ORANGE theme with ORANGE wallpaper, and an ORANGE screensaver. Press the menu and, yes, that's ORANGE too. So, a couple of minutes were required to put the screen saver back to the Nokia clock, and the theme back to the discreet blue, which really shows off the quality screen.

What is a little less easy to get rid of though is the Orange homescreen. This fires up after the phone has booted, so you get a grey screen with "LOADING..." on it while the phone loads the unnecessary software.

This isn't too difficult to get rid of. There is an application called HSKILLER which forces it to run in the background, or you can press and hold the menu key and select Telephone to get rid temporarily. However, neither of these stop what the homescreen actually does.

The homescreen stops all the usual Nokia accessibility, and it is very frustrating. It completely overrides the Active Standby function (which, I'm told, is a principle attraction to the phone) and stops you having shortcuts off the two navi keys and central joypad. Even more annoying is the way it stops the received message windows from popping up, even when you wipe the damned homescreen out of visibility.

So, that was my first issue with the phone.

What I also discovered was that this software is slowing down an already none-too-quick phone and making it more unreliable. I have a friend with a 6680 on Three and his is markedly faster and more reliable. Mine is prone to crashing, cutting off phone calls, and even resetting randomly. Also, if you leave the Gallery open you can't take pictures, so make sure you close it down properly each time.

Fitting a larger memory card worsens this problem, so expect really slow gallery loading times if you do. You have been warned!

However, in spite of its faults, it's fine most of the time. It's just frustrating using a phone which is capable (in theory) of so much, but seems to be held back by a mixture of inadequate memory and Orange branding.

It's also worn very well. The sliding lens cover is slightly scratched, but it's hardly noticeable. The chrome around the front camera has also sustained some battle scars, but nothing serious. The screen itself seems to be very tough however, and has not picked up any scratches this year. The case, despite meeting with concrete a couple of times, is also fairly resistant to chips and scratches. I'm impressed!

Overall, it is a good phone but a little slow, and not quite up to the build quality of the N70. If you get offered it for a knock down price, it's well worth having.

Overall, I think the Nokia 6680 is not a good mobile phone because there are several other phones on the market that match the price of this phone and are much better value for money.

Firstly the good bits.............

The Nokia 6680 large screen size means watching videos & viewing pictures is easier, the front & back camera are perfect for the 3G feature(unlike the 6630), I can finally take pictures in the dark with a flash & it's the first Nokia since my 3200 where I don't have to charge it every day.

Now the bad bits..............................

I got my 6680 on pay as you go & it's very overpriced for what it is but then I can't complain as it was my boyfriend that paid for it ! It was ok for the first 3weeks but then I started to get occasional screen freeze & the back camera cover opens in my bag sometimes which means I end up with 20 pics of the inside of my bag.

The memory is average, design is slightly poor as the buttons can be fiddly, it's very easy to accidently delete numbers in the phone book & it has no built in radio(I mean, come on Nokia- even the old 3200 had a radio !)

For all the faults I've found with the 6680, I would still recommend this phone as it does work well for what it is, although I must say I gave it up along with the boyfriend that bought it for me !

Had the Nokia 6680 for just a few days so far and it's connected to the 3 network.

Apart from having some difficulty setting up the email facility, (not yet resolved,) I find the phone to be similar to the rest of the Nokia family in that it's fairly straightforward to use and operate.

I can't say that I'm overly impressed with the screen as I can't see any improvement over other screens with fewer colours available....so much for a quarter of a million colours or pixels or whatever it's supposed to be!

This is not the phone of choice in my case as I prefer flip phones but, as the only one on the market at the moment which I like the look and feel of is the Moto V3, which nobody seems to have a good deal on, I found myself attracted to 3's offers and 500 x-net mins per month + 100 texts seems like a good deal to me.

Taking account of redemption cash, £195.00 for a 12 month contract with a 3G phone is not to be sniffed at!

In terms of the phone itself, it's too early yet to comment on battery life but, if you're big into texting, then it's not the best vehicle for that purpose although you do adapt to any phone after time.

I may come back with a further bulletin after a few weeks experience of living with the phone but I'd just like to say that, thus far, my experience of 3 customer services is very good. Call centre is in Bombay but I have managed to get through quickly each time I have rung them and their staff seem to be of a high standard, (unlike the Apple people in Ireland!.... Yes, I'm a Mac user and I love my Mac, well, both of them!)

I'm optimistic that this phone will prove reliable over time but when Motorola eventually kit out the V3 with some state of the art technology, I'll be in the queue for one of those!

I will try to add a progress report in a few weeks time.