Nokia X6 - Review

“The Nokia X6 has an excellent camera and decent audio capabilities. Sadly the phone’s slow and clunky interface makes other features hard to enjoy”

Nokia Ovi store

Nokia's X6 looks good but performs badly

The Nokia X6 occupies an odd spot in the mobile phone hierarchy. It offers most mainstream smartphone features, including web connectivity and a touchscreen, yet I discovered that the X6 is anything but “smart”.

The X6’s 3.2in touchscreen gently vibrates wherever it’s pressed to highlight which on-screen option you’ve selected. This feature’s especially handy when typing messages on the virtual keyboard.

However, the X6’s text message screen is so cramped that any benefit the handy key vibration was outweighed by the meagre three lines of text displayed above. Anyone who sends lengthy texts will soon get annoyed.

Navigating my way around the X6’s folders and applications wasn’t too difficult after a while. Although some features, such as the calendar, take a frustratingly long time to open.

Shortcuts to social networking websites and other favourites, inclusing You Tube, come pre-installed on the X6. Even so, browsing in portrait or landscape orientations is a chore because button navigation - instead of iPhone style finger navigation – is the norm.

I reviewed the 32GB X6 - a 16GB version is also available - which comes with free and unlimited music downloads for 12 months from Nokia’s own Comes With Music (CMW) store – and iTunes rival.

Nokia Maps

Writing text messages was painful

This is one of the X6’s strongest selling points and I couldn’t fault CWM’s variety of old and new albums. The X6’s “integrated 3D sound effect stereo speakers” are also decent enough to use as a desktop speaker.

Another X6 positive is its impressive 5Mp camera that - partly becomes it’s paired with a flash - produces well-balanced and crisp photographs in various light conditions.

The camera took a particularly good image of an everyday London road and I was impressed how sharp the moving cars were.

If you’re hoping to capture faster moving action, such as sports events, then the X6 also works well as a camcorder.

Nokia Maps – the firm’s take on Google Maps – comes pre-installed on the X6 and it took me hours to get to grips with the service’s layout and operational niggles.

Being able to search for locations when without a network connection and in “3D View” is a definite plus too.

Drivers can use the X6 as a satnav, but I often had to rely on Nokia Maps’ voice navigation because the phone’s display was just too small to use while driving.

Nokia X6 16GB or 32GB

X6 photography: anything but rubbish

Finally we come to Ovi – Nokia’s answer to the iPhone’s App Store, the saving grace that makes the X6 most like a smartphone.

Ovi let me download various applications directly from the X6 and while some carry a fee, such as games, the BBC’s iPlayer is free.

The store doesn’t have the variety of apps that the App Store does, unfortunately.

Nokia’s X6 32GB is available in white/blue and white/red designs. The phone doesn’t support external memory cards.