nokia 6610 loudspeaker activation dodgy

My Nokia 6610 has a great loudspeaker.

However, the problem is that I can only seem to activate it once a call
has started. When calling someone, if I want to use the loudspeaker, I
have to dial their number, and keep watching the screen for what can be
a long time, for the loudspeaker option to come up. What a waste of time.

Is there any other way of activating the loudspeaker except for that ?

Is there any way of setting the loudspeaker as the default, instead of
the normal handheld method ?

I seem to have accidently gotten it into a default loudspeaker mode a
year back, and it stayed like that for several days, but then reverted
back to the current dodgy method.

Perhaps there's a hidden option somewhere ?

Thanks for any help.

Chris