Nokia C6 smartphone

Product Nokia C6
Website http://europe.nokia.com/find-products/devices/nokia-c6
System Specifications 3.2-inch 640x360 resistive touchscreen, Symbian OS 9.4, up to 11 hours talk time, 113.4 x 53 x 16.8mm, 150g.
Price £249 SIM-free including VAT

TOUTED AS a social networking device, the C6 is Nokia's latest smartphone to feature both a touchscreen display and a slide-out physical qwerty keyboard.

The 3.2-inch display is of the resistive variety and during our tests we found it somewhat inconsistent. Sometimes it worked perfectly with just a gentle touch, but on occasion it was far less responsive and only an over-exaggerated finger press would register.

The display quality is reasonable, though. It has 640x360 resolution and rich, vibrant colours. That said, it can't match the dazzling Retina display of the Iphone 4 or the Super AMOLED screen of the Samsung Galaxy S.

The C6 runs the older and rather dull Symbian OS 9.4. Its successor, the Nokia C6-01, will be released later this year with the revamped Symbian^3 OS. Sadly, Symbian 9.4 has not aged well since the arrival of the Android and IOS 4 operating systems, and has fast become the Achilles heel of Nokia's smartphone range. Shortcuts for messages, contacts and the main menu are welcome, but generally the home screen displays too much information with widgets that are too small to view comfortably.

The Facebook preview bar is a prime example of a widget that is far too small to be useful. Once we had signed into our account, we could only see three status updates at any one time from the tiny app on the home screen. And with these scrolling across the screen, we could only read one before the screen changed to show the profile page.

The main menu looks rather bare, but the applications folder conceals a multitude of useful apps including Quickoffice, Zip manager, Adobe PDF reader and a message reader that enables the device to read out messages in a somewhat eerie voice. Other useful tools included Active Notes, a trial for the Traveler flight time app and a podcasting app allowing users to download and subscribe to podcasts, as well as play, manage and share audio and video from the device.

Out of the remaining preinstalled apps, AP Mobile, Bloomberg, CNN Video and Location are all useful additions, as is the ability to synchronise Exchange, Gmail and Yahoo accounts. The Nokia Ovi Maps app is also a great feature, providing accurate voice guided navigation. Although still behind Apple's App Store, the Nokia Ovi store is gaining momentum with 2.3 million downloads per day and plenty of apps on offer.

The physical qwerty keypad slides out from under the screen and is one of the best features of the C6. Despite the square keys being small and compact, they're impressively responsive to gentle presses. With four rows, the keypad is elongated and users with smaller hands might find that their thumbs are stretched to reach the letters in the middle of the keypad.

Those wishing to use the touchscreen to type are likely to be disappointed as there is no on-screen keyboard available. In our tests, the only choices available to input text were an alphanumeric keypad or the handwriting mode, both of which slowed us down considerably. With the physical keyboard present it is unlikely that that the touchscreen is going to be used for any significant amount of text or numerical input.

Web pages generally took five to 10 seconds to load over 3G in our tests using a Vodafone SIM, making the device slightly slower than other high-end smartphones. The majority of most webpages were viewable on the screen, though, with text readable without having to zoom in; a basic but useful feature that many smartphones with small displays lack.

Scrolling down a page required more pressure than on Apple or HTC handsets, which resulted in clicking links inadvertently while trying to scroll on more than one occasion. Streaming video from the preloaded CNN Video app was extremely quick, and although the videos appeared a little grainy they were still impressive.

The C6 comes with a just 200MB of internal storage, which is paltry compared to most other smartphones. Thankfully it is expandable to up to 16GB with a microSD card, and Nokia includes a 2GB card in the box.

A 5-megapixel camera with autofocus, integrated LED flash and 4x digital zoom is located on the rear and capable of capturing videos at up to 30fps. Nokia has also included a front-facing QCIF camera for video calls, which will be useful for business users on the move. When we tried out the camera in our tests it worked reasonably well with pictures not overly pixellated, even though we were using 3G.

With dimensions of 113.4 x 53 x 16.8mm, it's not the smallest or thinnest device on the market, and a weight of 150g means it's not the lightest either. However, we can't fault its build quality. Battery life is also decent, and in our tests the C6 lasted a full two days with regular Internet use.

In Short
At £249 SIM-free, the C6 does seem a little pricey and punters might want to look at the HTC Wildfire. The Wildfire lacks some features of the C6, but it provides a more intuitive user experience and is available for £229 SIM-free. The C6 is not without merit and might satisfy diehard Nokia fans, but it just feels a bit dull. We advise waiting for the Nokia C6-01 or investing in an alternative device altogether. µ

The Good
Solid build, easy-to-use keypad, multitude of apps.

The Bad
Bulky, inconsistent touchscreen and Internet.

The Ugly
Dated and somewhat clunky Symbian OS.

Bartender's Score
6/10