Nokia 6650 Phone (Sleeper Hit?)

I recently received a Nokia 6650 as part of Nokia 6650 Chronicles, a cool little project documenting the daily lives of twenty bloggers, yours truly included.
The 6650 is what I’d call an enigma. It looks like your typical S40 AT&T budget phone, but in reality it’s a Symbian OS-powered, quad-band/3G connected smartphone with an integrated GPS.
As usual, a big thank you to WOMWorld for inviting me to the project and sending over the 6650. Thanks guys!
At first glance, the Nokia 6650 is a very unassuming flip phone. Personally I think the look is just a tad bit on the bland side and I don’t see it winning any style contests. But there’s a nice, weighty heft to the phone thanks to metallic covers on the front and back. It doesn’t feel cheap. It’s slightly smaller and thicker than the E66.
As I mentioned earlier, the 6650 runs Symbian 9.3, which initially was a surprise to me (I honestly expected another S40 phone), and menu navigation is pretty consistent with other S60 phones. The default theme has a nice background featuring a map of the USA, but it’s a bit too colorful for my taste.
The best part of the 6550, however, is the outer display. The phone allows you to run certain applications (camera, timer, stopwatch, and calendar, among others) on the front screen, controllable via three touch-sensitive buttons and volume keys which double as scroll up/down buttons. There’s a certain level of polish in the outer display’s menus that you don’t normally see in a Nokia flip, and it’s very easy to get used to.
Speaking of displays, the main one is a 2.2″ 240×320 pixel screen. Coming from a long line of Eseries and Nseries devices, it’s definitely on the small side.
Another nuance that I noticed after a quick run-through: the 6650 uses the damned 2.5mm stereo jack, so it loses a couple points there.
Finally, at $69.99 with a two-year agreement, the 6650 qualifies as a recession-ready budget phone. From what I’ve been able to glean after using the phone for a couple days, it’s far better than any other budget phone currently selling for that price.