Nokia X6 16GB

 

A value for money, full-fledged smartphone

 

 

 

Attractive design, good display quality and touchscreen response, excellent audio quality and powerful loudspeakers, 16GB memory, Ovi Music offers unlimited music download for one year, Ovi Maps 3.0 with turn by turn voice navigation, excellent bundle

Build quality not up to the mark, poor display visibility under sunlight, interface is not very user friendly, no auto-correct for text input, no native support for DivX/XviD video playback (only through third party apps) 

Nokia's X6 smartphone has been around for a while but it's only now that Nokia decided to launch it here in India. While launching, however, they decided to take a smart decision of launching the 16GB version of X6 here. Apart from the drop in internal memory capacity from 32GB to 16Gb, the X6 we get here in India also lacks the WH-500 headphones. But more importantly it is also significantly cheaper. The standard X6 wouldn't have cost anything below Rs. 24,000 but the 16GB model manages to cost well below the Rs. 20,000 mark, bringing it within the reach of a lot more people out there.

For those who don't know, the X6 is Nokia's first (and so far the only) phone with a capacitive touchscreen display. As we will read later, this does change a lot in the way we interact with the phone and the overall user experience. It also has a 5 megapixel camera with autofocus and Carl Zeiss optics, 3G/HSDPA, Wi-Fi, A-GPS with Ovi Maps with free turn by turn voice navigation and Ovi Music service that lets you download any track from their store for free for one whole year! There is also plenty of memory, 16GB in this case, built-in and the phone also has 3.5mm headphone jack and TV-Out functionality. Read on for the full review.

Bundle

• Nokia X6
• Nokia Battery (BL-5J)
• Nokia High Efficiency Charger (AC-8)
• Nokia Connectivity Cable (CA-101D)
• Nokia Stereo Headset (WH-701)
• Car Holder
• Car Charger
• User Guide
• Mini DVD

Design & Construction


The X6 is one of Nokia's better-looking phones. In fact we quite liked the design of the X6. It looks like a modern, smartened up version of the 5800 XpressMusic. We received the black colored model for testing but it is also available in two white colored models, with pink and yellow colored highlights respectively. We also like the narrow design of the phone, which means it feels great in your hand and your thumb does not have to stretch too much to access the edges of the screen.

The front comprises of glossy plastic and glass surfaces. On the top is the earpiece with the proximity sensor and the display light sensor. Also found on the right is the camera lens for video calling. Below is the 3.2" capacitive touchscreen display with a glass panel. Below the display are the call, menu and end keys. These are physical keys though and not touch sensitive like the ones we saw on the 5530 XpressMusic.

On the right side of the phone is the volume control keys on the top, sliding screen lock switch and the camera shutter button. On the right is the SIM card slot and the stereo speakers. The SIM card is not hot swappable. If you insert it while the phone is running the phone will not recommend it without restarting and you cannot remove the SIM card without removing the battery first, which has to be be slid out from inside. 

Display

The Nokia X6 has a 3.2", 640 x 360 pixel resolution LCD. It uses a capacitive touchscreen display technology, a first for a Nokia phone. First let us talk about the touch response, which, in short, is excellent. Although Nokia's resistive touchscreens were also quite good, nothing beats a good ol' capacitive touchscreen when it comes to the touch response and tactility, and overall user friendliness. Of course Nokia had to forgo the handwriting recognition feature, which is better managed on a resistive display with a stylus. For the average user a capacitive touchscreen is always a better choice.

Now coming to the picture quality of the display, the X6 fares well here as well. The display is very sharp and everything, including text, looks crisp on it. This is mostly because of the high resolution and the relatively small display size, which gives it a fairly high pixel density. This high can be a problem at times, when the text at default zoom can be a bit too small to read comfortably. Also, the display color tone seems to be set slightly towards the colder side. The display washes out considerably under the sun as well, making things hard to see outdoors during the day.


Software and UI

The Nokia X6 runs on Symbian S60 5th Edition. Although Nokia smartphones aren't the only ones to sport this operating system, the implementation of it is seen best on Nokia phones. We found Nokia's icon and general look and feel to be superior to what we saw on Samsung and Sony Ericsson phones. Plus the welcome addition of kinetic scrolling makes a big difference to the usability of the OS, something that both Samsung and Sony Ericsson failed to implement.

But perhaps the biggest difference is made by the capacitive touchscreen display. It made a big difference when we reviewed the Samsung Omnia HD, and now, coupled with Nokia's UI enhancements, it makes the X6 positively the most user friendly Symbian S60 5th Edition device you can buy. Having said that the UI is still far from being comparable to the likes of iOS or Android in terms of usability, but still it isn't a pain to use as it was on the Sony Ericsson S60 5th Edition phones.

As far as built-in applications go, once again you see a great variety of them compared to Symbain phones from other brands. First of all you get the Ovi Store, where you can buy apps, games, themes, wallpapers and music videos on your phone. It is no App Store and even Android Market has more apps, but it is still enough to get you going. And remember, you can always get apps for Symbian phones from other sources and you don't have to rely on the Ovi Store to get them.

Next is the Ovi Music service. Here you can buy music for your phone. Luckily for X6 owners, Nokia is giving away one year worth of free downloads. So you can download all the songs that you want on your phone for one whole year at no cost! Do note that these songs will only play on your phone or on the Ovi Player or Windows Media Player after you download the license for it, as the tracks are DRM protected. Nokia has also provided the Podcasting app for downloading podcasts and Shazam, which is a music recognition service. An app called Playlist DJ lets you generate playlists depending on the mood you set in the app. It analyzes your music and then creates playlists depending upon the parameters you set in the app.

You also get Ovi Maps, which is Nokia's navigation service. It also features free turn by turn voice navigation. Nokia skimped on the office applications for the X6, considering it is a music phone. We did miss a PSF reader and Zip file extractor though. There is a dictionary provided though, but it is ridiculous and doesn't have many of the words that you'd expect it to have. There are also three games provided. Asphalt 4: Elite Racing, which is pathetic as far as graphics and gameplay are concerned. The original Asphalt on the original N-Gage and N-Gage QD was actually miles better than this. There is also DJ Mix Tour, which is like Tap tap revenge for the iOS, but with poorer graphics and less fun. And then there is SPORE, which is about okay.

Multitasking is fully supported in Symbian phones as usual and is actually done very well. Having said that it is not as effortless as in the new iOS4 and sometimes there is a lag and at times certain apps don't react very well, and take ages to open or close, making it rather frustrating. The phone also has a shortcut button above the display on the upper right corner, which can be used to access the music player, gallery, web browser, etc.

Generally the phone feels snappy and there is plenty of RAM (128MB) to run multiple applications simultaneously. Open a very large page on the web browser though and the phone just closes apps that are in the background without warning to allocate resources to the browser.

Overall, we think Symbain S60 still needs some work to make it truly user friendly. That is why we are glad that Nokia is now moving to Symbain S^3, which hopefully should solve all these problems.

Connectivity
The Nokia X6 is a quad-band GSM handset. It also supports 3G and HSDPA, along with Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, Bluetooth v2.0 and A-GPS. The call quality on the phone was good and the person on the other side could be heard clearly. The network reception too was good and the loudspeaker was powerful enough to be heard clearly. The Wi-Fi reception strength was decent for a phone and it could pick up signals that the iPhone 3G couldn't but it wasn't as strong as the Nokia E52. The GPS was fast too and even in a moving vehicle didn't take too long to get a lock on to the satellites.

The built-in browser on the X6 might have been impressive a couple of years ago but today is completely out classed by the browsers in iOS and Android devices. Even Opera Mobile is way better in comparison. The only good thing about the built-in browser is the speed, but apart from that it loses big time when it comes to the interface design, which is painfully cluttered and you have to press multiple buttons to do simple tasks. You don't even get a proper search bar or multi window browsing. You do get Flash support, but even that is clunky and only rarely does it make itself useful. Other times it just slows down the browsing experience and many of the sites are just not meant to be used on a touchscreen device and require mouse over to navigate some of the sections, and hence can't be browsed properly. This is why Apple has forgone Flash support on their iOS devices. I would recommend using Opera Mobile instead, as it works much better.

Nokia X6 comes with Ovi Maps 3.0, which is Nokia's own navigation service. It's a complete package with turn by turn voice navigation available for free of cost. If you are into voice navigation then this is a fine service to use and Nokia even bundles a card holder and charger in the package, but I personally preferred using Google Maps as the maps were more detailed in their case than Nokia's and even the search system is better, something you'd expect from Google.


Multimedia


The Nokia X6 is a music phone and quite a good one at that. For starters it supports quite a lot of formats, including AAC and WMA. The phone has a 3.5mm headphone jack and stereo loudspeakers. It has in 16GB of storage built-in and if you are wondering how you are going to fill that, it comes with one year subscription to Nokia's music service where you can download as many songs as you want. And finally, it comes with a pair of high quality headset bundled in the package, which also have playback and volume controls built into them.

The audio quality on the phone is really good and it can also go pretty loud. The supplied headset is of pretty good quality and has a good bass response and decent clarity. The loudspeakers on the phone are very powerful and clear, with very little distortion even at maximum volume. This phone is indeed very good for music playback and shows just how far Nokia's music phones have come over the years. My two-year-old Nokia 5700 XpressMusic does not stand a chance in front of the X6.

Now coming to the camera, the Nokia X6 comes with a 5 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics, autofocus and dual LED flash. Unfortunately, there is no lens cover and the lens is left open to be damaged. The phone has a dedicated shutter button on the side, which was fairly comfortable to use. The camera software is the same one that we have been seeing so far on all of Nokia's S60 5th Edition phones. Apart from features like face detection, smile detection, etc. it has all the basics covered, including geo-tagging support.

 

 

Battery Life
The Nokia X6 comes with a 1320 mAh Li-Ion battery. During our testing process, the phone gave us one-and-half day of battery life on a full charge. The usage included a couple of calls, messages, about two hours of web browsing on Wi-Fi, light multi tasking, about half an hour of GPS usage and about three hours of EDGE usage.


Verdict

The Nokia X6 is sold officially for Rs. 16,499 (although you can get it for about thousand rupees less). At that price you get a music phone with a 3.2", 640 x 360 pixel capacitive touchscreen display, 5 megaixel camera with autofocus and flash, 16GB built-in memory, Wi-Fi, GPS, one year subscription to Nokia music service along with free unlimited turn by turn voice navigation. It's hard to come across all those specs in one phone, especially in this price range. To be honest we weren't expecting the price to be this low but now that it is it makes the X6 very good value.

The looks and audio performance are some of the strong points of the phone. The fact that it is a full-fledged smartphone makes it even better. We did expect better build quality though and the display is difficult to read under sunlight. Symbian OS too has a long way to go before it can truly be user friendly and we are glad that the X6 will be one of the last phones to run this operating system.

If you can live with the build, low display visibility in sunlight and the quirks of Symbian, we think this is the best phone that you can buy in this price range right now. The combination of excellent features, good performance and superb pricing makes it great value for money.



Test unit sourced from Nokia India