Nokia X6

The Nokia X6 is both a smartphone and a music mobile. It's a mid-range model that's designed to replace the 5800 XpressMusic and is clearly aimed at younger users looking for an all-in-one phone, MP3 player and portable Internet terminal. It's also the Finnish manufacturer's first mobile to feature a capacitive touch-screen. However, the X6 runs on Symbian S60 V5, an operating system that's clunky and slow and not really designed with the touch-screen experience in mind. Will that be the X6's downfall?


Let's start by taking a quick look at the X6's design and handling. It won't take long, as this handset holds no real surprises: it's typical Nokia stuff. The X6 is subtle and discreet and won't win any prizes for the originality of its design. The casing is made almost entirely from decent-quality matte plastic and the product is well-finished on the whole. The overall design is classic, but doesn't look cheap or tacky.


The X6 is pleasant to hold and handle. It's possibly a touch too thick, but you'll soon forget about that as the phone isn't particularly wide. For day-to-day use, it'll fit as easily in your hand as it will in your pocket. The SIM card slot is on the side of the phone, and to remove it (which, admittedly, you won't have to do often), you have to take off the battery cover. The phone recharges quickly via a proprietary Nokia connection, and it's a shame Nokia didn't choose to switch to the standard charging connection already found in many new mobiles.


The front of the phone is taken up almost entirely by the 3.2-inch touch-screen (640 x 360 pixels). There are only three physical buttons for answering calls, hanging up or accessing the main menu. But let's get back to the screen. Although it doesn't offer multi-touch control, the screen has one huge advantage over the resistive touch-screens previously seen in Nokia mobiles: you don't need a stylus to use it. A promising start! The screen also offers accurate controls and is sensitive and responsive enough to make the touch-screen experience effective. Although the brightness is OK, the contrast is only just bearable, and in direct sunlight the screen is almost impossible to read.

Symbian interface: urgent action needed!

The screen may be fast and accurate enough to make controlling the phone a breeze, but unfortunately, the responsiveness of a mobile phone also depends on the OS, requiring a nimble and perfectly integrated system. And that's exactly what's missing the in the X6. Symbian makes the phone painfully slow at times and the 'mere' 433 MHz processor is certainly no stranger to lag either. The menus can be slow to scroll, for example, and launching applications can seem to take an age. Ultimately then, the sluggish OS overshadows all the good qualities of the new touch-screen.

The Symbian OS is showing its age. Some would even go as far as say it's simply outdated, as we've often pointed out when testing other Nokia handsets. It's starting to seriously lag behind the competition (Android, iPhone and even BlackBerry) and it's not really designed for touch-control.
The menus and sub-menus are complicated to trawl through, and what on earth was Nokia thinking making you double-click to launch certain functions? Anyway, those of you who are already familiar with Symbian will find your way around easily enough, but for anyone else, there are certainly interfaces out there that are easier to get your head round. However, one nice touch is that the home screen is totally customisable.

The X6 is marketed as a multimedia phone that's great for photos and music, and the Finnish manufacturer has a good track record in both such fields.

For photos, although the interface isn't the best (no surprises there then!), the X6 has a fairly good range of options for a camera phone. The resulting photos are perfectly good, with accurate colours and hardly any noise at all. It is, however, best used in decent light, as the little LED flash won't get you far in the dark.

Although the X6 is generally good for surfing the web, there's still room for improvement in the browser. If surfing is your thing, you'd be better off with the HTC Legend or the iPhone 3G S.

The music interface is pleasant to use and is easily as good as the music player found in Android operating systems. The headphones supplied are rubbish and the built-in speaker plays a dry kind of sound. However, things will get much better very quickly if you invest in a decent pair of headphones.

 

One thing to note, though, is that the audio output isn't very loud. I personally would have liked to turn the volume up a bit more, as I found the sound too quiet. Note that with some types of headphones, the sound could end up being much too weak to hear it properly.

If you're looking for a multifunctional handset that you can leave on for several days without having to recharge it, the X6 is definitely worth considering. Very few smartphones can last more than a day or a day and a half without needing to be recharged, but the X6 can hold out for at least a couple of days.

Finally, the X6 offers direct access Nokia's Ovi Store application shop. Facebook addicts will have to go straight to the Ovi Store as soon as they get the X6 out of the box, as the Facebook app isn't integrated as part of Nokia's factory settings. Overall though, Nokia's Ovi Store is a bit like the Symbian interface in its utter lack of user-friendliness.