Nokia C6 (5)

Social Networking is one of the big draws on a phone nowadays, with mainstream media advertising promoting “Facebook and Twitter connectivity” in the marketing. Nokia’s Social Networking application is the starting point for these networks (although I wonder how many people will end up using the browser instead) and it’s a nice starting point. Heavy duty users are going to find another solution with more options and flexibility, but for the casual user, Nokia’s Web Runtime-based solution does the job adequately. If I had one complaint, it’s that it relies on you having signed up for an Ovi account.

 

While it makes sense that Nokia do their best to capture names and registrations for the global service, I’m not that happy at the implication that there’s a Nokia database that holds my login to Facebook and Twitter. This must have been a conscious decision at the design stage to route the logins through their servers. At the very least, OAuth should have been implemented.

 

I do like that the Social Networks app is joined up, in software terms, to the Contacts application. This has had a spruce up with a more accessible view of your contacts information, along with a link to “social networks”. Tap here and the contact card information is used to search through Facebook and Twitter and match up your contact with their online activity. Subsequent taps will take you to their individual pages in the Social Network application. It’s a nice step, and possibly the first one to a unified contacts application that links up different sites, pulling in information, and displaying it for the user. There’s no data pipe to bring info back all the way back to the Contacts app, but this is a nice extension to the already impressive Contacts application.

 

Ovi also rears its head with Ovi Maps. Since turning Maps into a totally free service, it’s become one of the most attractive features of Nokia’s handsets. Handing you, in essence, a fully functional sat nav system on every single phone, no matter the price, Ovi Maps has been slowly extended to include services such as sharing your location on Facebook, finding out about the local area with Lonely Planet, booking travel through Expedia, and being an extensible system that has more icons added (to the ‘More’ section) as they become available.

As long as a handset reaches certain basic requirements, then Ovi Maps is going to be there with GPS and the ability to load maps from your computer or over the air on demand, and the C6-01 comfortably meets the minimum. It’s still magical to see a red dot on a map saying “you are here” but Ovi Maps is mature, works very well, and should certainly impact on your purchase decision.

 

The C6, just as with the N8 and C7, comes with USB on the Go, allowing the C6 to be connected to a number of devices, including USB memory sticks, external keyboards, mice, hard drive caddies, and whatever else you can throw at it. All you need to do is find the connecting cable. Unlike the N8, it’s not in the C6 retail box, so you’ll need to go hunting. Is it worth it? I’m not sure. It is ‘neat’ and with a bit of thinking you’d have a rather attractive laptop replacement (TV Out cable – no HDMI port on the C6, a USB mouse and Bluetooth keyboard?), but for day to day use it’s not going to be missed.

Watching movies over USB… worth waiting for.

So how to keep all of this going? Yes it’s onto the battery life question. By shipping a relatively small battery with the C6 (the BL-5CT) which has just 1050mAh, there is a worry that the operating time of the handset is going to be “not that impressive”. Let’s scotch that idea right away. In regular use I don’t feel that the C6 is eating the battery, and it’s got about the same life as the Nokia N8 – in other words, it gets comfortably through a day of work, into the night and onto the first half of the next day before it starts to throw up worrying signs of “why not switch to power save mode”.

I suspect that the smaller AMOLED screen has resulted in a reduced power drain when compared to the N8. It’s worth reiterating that these screens will eat up power (up to 15 times more) when displaying a white screen next to a black screen. If you’re looking to maximise life, keep to the black themes pre-installed on the phone.

My one personal concern about switching away from a white theme was using the C6 at night as a torch – a concern that is now covered by the handy built in torch function for the twin LEDs in the flash unit. Hold down the keylock while on the home screen, and the LEDs switch on. It’s the same operation to switch them off again. A mighty handy function, even if it does mean that the 100 “torch” apps that could have been uploaded to the Ovi Store by hobby developers are no longer needed.

Shining a (torch) light on the complexities of Symbian

While the functionality of the Ovi Store hasn’t changed, the polish to the UI (when compared to the S60 5th Edition versions) for this Symbian^3 version does make the client a fair bit nicer to navigate through. That, coupled with the greater volume of software available (than say, when the Nokia 5800 was launched) means that the user doesn’t have to really think about where to find third party software. It’s just a shame that novelty applications like “fingerprint sensor” still pop up in the first few screens when navigating the store defaults.

Even though third-party applications are a big draw to users, there’s a lot to like about the built in software in the C6. As part of the overhaul to Symbian^3 (now of course just called Symbian), many of the built in applications have been given a facelift or a minor reworking. Look carefully and a lot has changed (for example, recording video in H.264, support for a wider range of video codecs for playback, Bluetooth 3.0 support, etc) but the initial impression is of a slight update to the mid range maestro, the 5800.

Unfortunately, the one application that has had little change is the web browser. While Nokia are at pains to stress this will be updated in the next firmware, there isn’t a note to that effect in the box. To all intents and purposes, the new user is left looking at the web browser (rightly regarded as one of the key applications in a smartphone) and thinking “it’s a bit slow”.

I bring the browser up again because, out of the box, I think this is the biggest flaw in the whole C6. I know that people are going to point to the Symbian UI as the major flaw, but frankly I think they’re wrong. The process of doing things on the C6 is identical to that of the iOS and Android platforms, there is a consistency in the interface layout, and the capacitive screen is not only as responsive as other devices but looks fantastic even in strong sunlight. Where exactly is the flaw in that, apart from “one of thesephones is not exactly like the other?”

 

Given that we’ve seen an updated firmware for the 5800 this week (more than two years after the device was launched) there’s every chance that the C6 is going to be supported for a long, long time. Out of the factory, the C6 packs an impressive amount of hardware and software, with a lot of capability.

And the C6 just looks damn sexy. For a mid-range phone, that’s a very important criteria when it’s fighting for mindshare on a store shelf.

Source : http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/reviews/item/12330_Nokia_C6_part_4-The_real_world.php

Nokia C6 (4)

The Music Station

Like other areas of Symbian^3 (the web browser being the next most visible example), Music player has received an update, but there are only superficial changes to what the user will see. The most notable is Nokia’s visual album browser. Flipping through the album covers on the screen either in landscape mode or in the single album view in portrait move is an absolute revelation when you compare it to the S60 5th Edition handsets.

Quite simply because it’s fast.

Part of that is down to the graphics chip handling the display of the album art (and given that the rendering needed to create the perspective view is a similar trick to skinning 3D graphics in a game, it shouldn’t be a surprise that this is something that’s smooth and reactive). I can only assume that the other main problem with the older handsets, the slow building of the scrolling lists of songs, albums and artist, has been optimised and benefits from the faster computing architecture available. That navigating music is no longer something that I have to make a conscious effort to do is a good thing.

I like that the volume keys now work when music is being played back, even if the keylock is on, that’s a good UI change in my book. I’m also relatively comfortable with Nokia’s tweak to the views on offer and their combining of two standard views into one, namely “album and artist”. Given that the majority of music collections are based around albums, this is a smart view. Yes, it means you lose the alphabetised ordering of your albums, but having them now sorted first by the artist, and then the album, has made navigating my music collection a little easier.

What does cause problems with this view is that you must have the ID3 tag information on your audio files completed, otherwise the sorting just does not work. This is less of an issue nowadays than it was a few years ago, thanks to the proliferation of music stores that will have this stuff sorted out at the point of sale (and of course Nokia would love you to use the Ovi Music Store to load up the 2GB card the C6-01 is supplied with), but it still may be a concern.

And it’s not perfect. Nokia are looking for strict use of ID3, especially for Album Art, so those of you who’ve been adding album art with other music managers (such as iTunes) may find that the images are not embedded in the file, but are meta-data in the folder. These won’t be picked up by the C6 music software, so to your chosen ID3 editing solution you go.

It’s also annoying that Nokia don’t pick up the “Album Artist” field. As you may know, I follow a certain pan-continental singing competition [no, really? – Ed], and each year’s song collection is available as an album. Some 40 songs, with 40 different singers, all under a single album name. On every other portable MP3 player, the artist shows up as “Various Artists” in a search, because that’s what is listed in the audio file under “Album Artist” (“Artist” carries the actual performer’s name). In Nokia’s music browser, the named artist is not the album artist, but the artist whose name is on the first album track. It’s just annoying that this is still a lingering issue.

Another issue, and while it’s a bit more stylistic, it’s also opposite to pretty much every other player out there. The word “The”. Music player on the C6 doesn’t ignore it when alphabetically sorting lists. Which means “The Hollies” are filed under ‘T’ and not the more expected ‘H’.

 
Little things, yes, but it’s these things that can make a phone feel “weird” while being used. Yes, the music player is an improvement over the X6, 5800 and N97’s, but it is still missing the mark in so many small areas. Attention to detail is needed for the next build of Music player. Alongside the second half of the podcasting system.

While there is no software to schedule or download podcasts in the C6, Music player still has an option to list podcasts (it’s searching for “podcast” in the genre and title field – if it spots them, it puts the shows into the podcast list, and not the album/artist lists).

All the things you’d expect in a podcast player are here. It remembers where you where in a show, even if you go and listen to something else or exit the music app – it shows what episodes have been listened to, what you are in the middle of, and what is still new. In other words, as long as you can get podcasts onto the C6, the player will subtly adapt itself to serve up the different options needed to interface with them.

It’s just that Nokia has ripped out the download client from the internet section of the device. Whether that’s a concious decision or simply a feature that wasn’t completed in time for the first consumer firmware remains to be seen. It’s still a bit stupid. [Symbian Podcatcher replaces it pretty effectively though – Ed]

The Point and Shoot Camera

The Nokia C6-01 comes with the Extended Depth of Field camera, which in Steve’s words “makes taking pictures almost foolproof”. Well, almost. Nokia’s software cannot help with composition of the picture, the available lighting, or shakey hand syndrome when you take the picture.

What it will do is make sure that every part of the picture will be in focus. It does this through using an asymmetrical lens, sampling the three different levels of colour (red, green and blue) on small patches of the picture, doing lots of complicated maths, and getting a sharp image as a result. Steve’s taken an in-depth look at the system in this article here – and as it’s also the same unit in the Nokia C7, Steve’s look at the camera is also worth reading for even more background information.

Does it make for a less frustrating photo taking experience for someone not used to taking pictures? I think it does. In my case, it means trying to assess light levels and how the picture is framed. There are options to adjust the light sensitivity and exposure in the pop up icon screen, but I’ll be honest, leaving it on automatic is good enough for me.

Do I do arty shots that need manipulations of focus to get a depth of field effect? Nope. Nor do I need to do really close up and intricate work with this camera. The C6 sits in my pocket for those quick snap moments, mostly of my family or a nice landscape view while I’m travelling. Given those requirements, a camera that can be pulled out, a long press on the shutter key to open the camera app, then another tap to take the picture, and I’m satisfied.

It’s easy to see why point and shoot cameras are being sidelined by the smartphone – the C6 is both a simple camera to use and one that can give ‘above average to excellent’ shots, depending on circumstances.

Lots of detail staying focussed, from the wall next to me, the school, and then the extinct volcano in the background

Video

Alongside the stills camera, the C6 is also a 720p HD recording camcorder, and the EDoF technology really helps here to keep everything in focus. It’s fast to react to changes in scenery from panning the camera and also has no extraneous noise from moving parts sitting over the audio track. Recording in H.264 at 25 frames per second, the C6 is a good solution for when you need to grab video – not everyone can carry around a Flip HD or more expensive video camera. The quality is some of the best on the smartphone market and for something that sits in your pocket alongside its other features (i.e. the classic one box solution), it’s likely to be one of the biggest selling 720p video cameras in the world.

In terms of settings, there’s not that much to go wrong. You can move the white balance away from automatic to reflect the lighting around you (Sunny, Cloudy, Incandescent light or Fluorescent light), add a colour filter, or move the recording to low light or night mode. Again, not much to go wrong, and Nokia have a lot of experience in getting the software right so it all just works without too much fiddling around.

For video playback there’s now a dedicated video icon, which has shortcuts to the last watched, last captured and “other clips” for everything else on the device, including any video files copied over from the desktop. Transcoding (changing one video format to another) can also be done as part of that transfer through Ovi Suite, so a simple drag and drop operation should be enough to load up the C6 with any video.

While the HDMI output that the N8 boasts is not present on the C6, you can still use the by now default TV-out cable (although you will need to source one as it’s not part of the standard box). Which is fine as I don’t have an HD TV, and the results on a regular TV are more than acceptable – streaming content from the BBC’s iPlayer system, via the C6 and onto the TV might feel strange but it works, and it’s a rather cute workaround to get a portable set top box.

 

Summary

The C6-01 has a competent portable media package. Maybe two years ago it would have been nearer the top of the list, but as it stands there are better options for each part of the package on offer (for example, sourcing video is something that iTunes still has a lead over, although the Ovi Music Player is now approaching iTunes levels for transferring music to the new Symbian devices).

But once you start looking at the whole package, including creation as well as consumption of media, the C6 starts to show how good an all-rounder it is. It can do everything to an above average level, and while it might not reach the dizzying heights in a single application (although the camera comes darn close) there has to be some compromise when you go for a smartphone solution.

Source : http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/reviews/item/12318_Nokia_C6_part_3-Creating_and_C.php

Nokia C6 (3)

Looking at the numbers, there’s a strong argument to make that most of the growth in the smartphone sector will be from people buying their first smartphone. To that extent, the problems and quirks when you compare Symbian^3’s interface to that of S60 5th Edition (which was found on the Nokia 5800) are of a concern to only a small part of the user base – admittedly though, this is the part of the user base likely to pick up the C6 in the first instance, write it up online, and set a reputation for the first part of its life. So let’s start with that.

The first thing to note is the speed as you pop round the home screens and application launcher. There is no awkward delay wondering if your touch has been picked up by the system, it just happens – either with the theme animation doing its graphical thing, or just going straight to the new screen if they’ve been switched off. This is one of the advantages of having a graphics chip alongside the CPU – yes it’s good for games, but at the same time it really helps the user interface zip along as everyone would expect it to.

What may cause problems (for new and old) are the icons that are not applications, but folders. There’s no clear image or indication (such as a teeny tiny folder graphic at the base of the icon) of what will launch an application and what will show you some more icons. Old school me, I always spend ten minutes re-organising the icon layout, and creating new folders (that look like folders) so I no longer have this problem, but it could lead to some initial confusion. “Where is the file manager, oh it’s under this icon called “Office” that I thought would open Quickoffice” – that sort of thing.

 

A lot of noise is made that Symbian is harder to use than Android or iOS, but frankly I can’t see it. The paradigms are very similar – the broad strokes of navigation are similar, i.e. a big “home” button under the screen, a few main screens you can add widgets to, and an application launcher showing all the apps available; calling up menu options is relatively obvious, given that the soft key buttons at the bottom of the screen make it clear they are buttons; kinetic scrolling is implemented throughout the handset and the ‘long press’ for pop out options has visual feedback from the start of the press until the menu pops out.

It just all works, and as other platforms work in a similar way, I’ve no worries that people will not be able to use the C6 to its fullest potential, given some common sense and reasoning.

 

Where there are problems is there are still too many taps needed to achieve some things, especially in getting to settings that are usually set up in the first hour or so of aphone’s life. Given the number of people that will not read the manual (or the help screens), getting the internet connectivity and connection options just right is important, and one of the more complicated areas – while the principle of the “Destinations” list of connection options is a great one, it’s a bit awkward to (a) find and then (b) set up.

Part of this is down to Nokia keeping as much of the ‘flavour’ of the S60 5th Edition devices, while rationalising the operation of the UI – ensuring kinetic scrolling and single tap throughout. Short of starting again with the UI (which is the plan during 2011), these holdovers are going to remain in the system. Quirky and not insurmountable, they will catch people out. But every platform, especially on a small screened device, has to compromise somewhere, and on balance compromising on a one time thing is a good call.

Applications are now part of the fabric of smartphones (which is a good thing) and the Ovi Store does make the experience far better than the previous hunting around developer websites and/or relying on a sideload from a desktop computer. Having the Store on the device, with an improved client over S60 5th Edition, makes the process of finding and installing applications a lot easier. Of course, this comes with the caveat that very few users are going to venture further than the Ovi Store to find their apps – but find their apps they will.

The improved Ovi Store client is one of the genuinely new areas on the C6, when compared to the older Nokia smartphones. The information is presented much more clearly, navigation is easier, managing your account, downloads and installation options (which you can change in the application, rather than hunting down a tab in the C6 Settings app) shows that when a redesign is called for, Nokia can pull it off, and pull it off well. This is a good omen for further UI redesign in 2011.

 

Symbian^3 on the C6 (and the other current phones) has a lot of changes under the hood, but one of the biggest ones that will have an impact on end users is how much faster Qt applications run and respond. I’ve previously reviewed the Foursquare app (on the X6) to find that the Qt-coded app just ran far too slow. Run the same code on the C6 – look! – cross-platform benefits of Qt on display! – and Foursquare is now a much happier experience. By providing a better coding environment, the long term benefits for end users will become apparent.

It is to be hoped that the Web browser will be updated as soon as possible to give the same happy feeling. While there’s nothing horribly wrong with the browser in the C6 (and the addition of multi-touch gestures for zooming is welcome), there is a lot of scope for improvement, if only because it has not yet had a major update from that which graced the S60 5th Edition devices. As with most of the software on the C6, it’s the same as the N8 (so I’ll point you towards Rafe’s look at the browser (in part four of our N8 review) and the biggest change is in the speed of the browser in use. Just as the underlying specs have boosted Qt, they have also boosted the browser into the “above average” box for an acceptable web application.

The formatting of desktop pages can sometimes cause problems, and, like any mobile browser, asking the C6 to load a megabyte sized multimedia enhanced page more suited to the desktop is going to be a tough challenge. That the C6 can cope, with some caveats (text flow, having to wait until all the text is loaded) is a testament to how good the web browser is. And those improvements? Well Nokia have said a new browser is on the way in the first major firmware update, everyone is watching like a hawk to see what is delivered, but is there a show stopper in the original browser? No. Does it get the job done? Yes. Is it enough to keep people satisfied? I think so.

 

One of the other big changes is the separation of the SMS inbox and your email inboxes. While they were separate in the “Messaging” app, they were still in the same application. Splitting them up on the app launcher is a good thing, because SMS and Email are diverging in popular culture in terms of how they are used.

SMS (which retains the Messaging name) now has an additional view – conversations – which shows the threads of a conversation. So the texts between Steve and I are listed in one view with cartoon voice boxes from either side of the screen showing the flow of the conversation. It’s a long overdue addition to the suite, and one that is welcome. For traditionalists, you can still see your texts in sequential order in the old fashioned inbox.

Mail will be familiar to those who used the Nokia Messaging client, as the removal of email support from Messaging leaves this as the only mail client. It is push enabled, which means you can have mail delivered to your phone when it arrives at the server, rather than waiting for you to connect. This does have an impact on battery life, and I’ve compromised with having my Gmail synced every 15 minutes rather than always in sync. Depending on how critical your mail is, you can set up the sync times and frequency to suit you.

Adding email accounts is simple, as the major providers are offered when you add a new account, all you need to type in is your email address and password, the rest is taken care of. (By the way, the multiple account possibilities  are only shown in set up if you have a SIM card in the phone to gather regional information – with no SIM card, all you are shown is Microsoft Exchange. A small thing, and it’s likely most people will have a SIM card in the phone from the start, but it caught me out.)

 

HTML emails are now supported, so viewing rich text emails now makes sense. You see what you expect to see when you open an email, rather than a bunch of code and formatting commands. This is an important area, and Nokia had to switch this ability on to be taken seriously. That the mail client now delivers the same functionality as other connected devices, including attachment support, push delivery, multiple accounts and a plug-in architecture for new services (looking at Facebook’s new messaging system, I wonder how long it would take for a plug-in to be put together) brings Nokia up to the same level as others in the smartphone world.

The email client on the mainstream consumer smartphone is no longer an embarrassment, and that’s yet another good thing about the C6. Like many areas of Symbian^3, the changes visibile on the C6 don’t seem huge, but they do deliver an experience that perhaps people thought they were getting on previous phones, but now it’s arriving with less of a compromise.

 

Nokia have already reacted to the lack of a portrait Qwerty keyboard from feedback on the N8, so the fact it is also missing on the C6 should not be a surprise. Neither should it be a surprise when it is bundled in with an updated firmware.

Text input, while an improvement, is still a weak point in the C6. Both the landscape Qwerty keyboard and the portrait T9 ABC keypad cover the whole of the application that they are called from, so as a result you lose any app-specific feedback. It’s the way things have been done since touch arrived on Symbian in S60 5th Edition, but it’s not especially elegant. It’s not enough to say that it works, even though for me I’m more than happy with the changes to the T9 keypad. The haptic feedback is slightly different, giving the feel of a key going down and up again during and after the presses, and I was already comfortable on the X6 using predictive text, so I’ve continued to use that on the C6. Even with a portrait keyboard available, I’d likely stay with T9, but I can see that it’s a gap in the UI that needs filling.

The smaller size of the C6 screen makes the landscape keyboard a bit more fiddly to use than on the N8. Given time, I’m sure I’ll get used to it, but I would love the pop up ‘you are pressing this letter’ icon to be a little bit bigger so I can see it over my big fingers.

The C6 software, while not a geeky delight to use (that prize still belongs to the Zune UI), is certainly up to the standard of the other smartphone platforms (Android and iOS). People will have their favourites, fans will ‘big up’ their chosen one and diminish the other two, but at a functional and practical level I’d say that Symbian^3 is as accessible to new owners as any other platform, doesn’t confuse the issue too much, and isn’t the barrier to entry that some make it out to be. While perception and press may be against it, in use the UI delivers.

The basic software suite does everything that you’d expect in a modern smartphone, but there are gaps that need filling – which has been acknowledged by Nokia with a nod to the next firmware. I suspect that the choice was made to go with stable (but older) versions of some elements to avoid showing up poor software and evoke memories of the N97. By giving themselves another few months to polish apps like the ‘new’ Web Browser, Nokia made the deadline for getting the new handsets out; getting out software that works; and making sure that the improved software is stable when it does arrive (to great fanfare).

That shouldn’t stop you considering the C6 now, because what is there works, works well, and doesn’t crash out because of silly issues – that’s the advantage of mature software. What you need in a workhorse phone is stuff that just works, and there’s no doubt that the C6 has a solid foundation in software. That will doubtless be built on by first party and third party developers, but even if they didn’t, what’s here delivers a good smartphone experience to both old time Symbian users and those new to the platform.

Source : http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/reviews/item/12307_Nokia_C6_part_2-Is_this_the_so.php

Nokia C6 (2)

Nokia C6 review: A playful character

Introduction

Yesterday’s high-end is the new midrange we like to say. The Nokia C6 has almost exactly the same features as the Nokia N97 mini but hangs a big Sale sign. Time to shop for high-end features off high street.

The C-series are trying to distill the Nokia knowledge and experience into a lineup of simple and affordable phones. There’s a bit of everything there: from cheap entry-level handsets to smartphones that border on the Eseries and Nseries.

   
Nokia C6 official photos

And Nokia is in no mood to relax it seems. The C-series went from one to six in almost no time, and a C7 may as well be on the way. Now, technically there is no number four –but that’s one number Nokia isn’t really fond of. Anyway, if there ever was to be a C4 we just know it would’ve been dynamite.

Being a C-series phone, you can expect the C6 to be a decent all-rounder. And it is. There’re no mind-blowing features but there’s nothing major missing either. And what isn’t there (e.g. document editing) can be easily fixed with the right app.

Key features

• 3.2″ 16M-color resistive touchscreen of 640 x 360 pixel resolution
• Symbian OS 9.4 with S60 5th edition UI
• Slide-out four-row full QWERTY keyboard
• ARM 11 434MHz CPU
• Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE
• Tri-band 3G with 3.6Mbps HSDPA support
• 5 megapixel autofocus camera with LED flash and VGA@30fps video recording
• Wi-Fi and stereo Bluetooth v2.1
• GPS with A-GPS and free lifetime voice-guided navigation license
• microSD card (16 GB supported, 2GB included)
• Built-in accelerometer for display auto-rotation, turn-to-mute
• 3.5 mm audio jack
• Smart dialing
• Stereo FM Radio with RDS
• microUSB port
• Web browser has Flash support
• Good audio quality
• Office document viewer

Main disadvantages

• Display performs poorly under direct sunlight
• The S60 touch UI is clunky
• Doesn’t charge off USB
• Average loudspeaker performance
• No DivX or XviD video support out-of-the-box
• No office document editing (without a paid upgrade)
• No camera lens protection

These days, communication over text-based channels is bigger than ever – SMS, email, Twitter, Facebook, IM to name but a few. And they have a certain advantage over voice calling. They’re cheap, or absolutely free, even when you’re reaching someone on another continent.

   
Nokia C6 pays us a visit

Text-based messaging is important. But as good as touchscreen input methods are getting (especially with clever tricks such as Swype), there’s just no match for a good hardware QWERTY keyboard.

There isn’t as much pressure on the Nokia C6 as there was on the N97 duo. The C6 is not a top-tier device – it’s a high volume device instead. You know, the one most people end up buying after deciding that the dream device costs too much.

So, how close exactly is the Nokia C6 to the N97 mini? Jump to the next page to find out how the hardware of both stacks up.

Retail package

The retail box covers the essentials and leaves it at that. You have the charger plus a (short) data cable. The charger is absolutely tiny – a good thing since you’ll have to carry it when you travel, as the Nokia C6 doesn’t charge off USB.

 
Nokia C6 retail package

The included headset is one-piece, so replacing the headphones while keeping the remote is not an option. There isn’t a stylus included in the Nokia C6 retail package but we don’t miss that too much.

A 2GB microSD card is supplied, but keep in mind that unlike the Nokia N97 and N97 mini, the C6 doesn’t have much of a built-in memory. You can use a bigger microSD card to compensate, the C6 supports cards of up to 16GB.

Nokia C6 spins 360-degrees

The Nokia C6 is somewhere between the Nokia N97 and the N97 mini in terms of size. It’s got a 3.2” touchscreen just like the N97 mini and the front face dimensions are about equal, too.

However, the C6 stands at 113 x 53 x 16.8 mm and weighs a hefty 150 g. It’s quite a bit thicker than the mini (and heavier). That’s almost a full millimeter thicker too than the regular N97.

   
Nokia C6 vs. the Motorola MILESTONE (DROID)

Unlike the N97 mini, the Nokia C6 has room on the keyboard for a D-pad (like the big N97). The downside here is that while the keys on both keyboards are about the same size, the ones on the C6 keyboard are cramped together.

http://st.gsmarena.com/vv/spin/nokia-c6.swf

We’ll discuss the keyboard in more detail later. For now, let’s just say that the Nokia C6 is on the chubby side of side-sliding QWERTY phones, but it’s not the chubbiest by far. For comparison purposes, the “petite” Sony Ericsson X10 mini pro is 17 mm thick and the Motorola MILESTONE weighs a hefty 165 grams.

Design and construction

It’s more than obvious the C6 is similar to the N97 in many ways. When closed however, it is a dead ringer for the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, the phone which very much set the overall look and feel for many of Nokia’s touch phones. Sliding it open is where the comparisons with the Nokia N97 duo begin.

And it should be where they end, at least regarding the keyboard itself. In many ways, it’s much closer to the Nokia E75 – no tilting display and a four-row QWERTY with no margin between the keys.

The C6 has a 3.2” resistive touchscreen of nHD resolution – the popular choice among Symbian phones. The 360 x 640 pixel resolution is quite right for that size, though obviously no match for the pixel-dense screens of high-end touch phones. The response of the resistive display is good enough, but not as good as capacitive displays are.

  
The 3.2″ display is pretty good

The sunlight legibility on the other hand is poor – taking the Nokia C6 outside on a sunny day means you’ll have to shield the display against bright sunlight if you want to see anything on the screen. That’s quite unlike Nokia N97.

Bellow the screen is the usual trio of green and red receiver keys and the menu key. The menu key is placed in the middle, like on the Nokia 5800. We liked the N97 solution better though of putting it on the side, skewed 45 degrees. That made the key equally easy to use in both portrait and landscape orientation. With the Nokia C6, you have to aim right between the call keys, but you’ll get used to it quickly.

Three keys and a touchscreen

There’s a lot going on above the screen with a bunch of sensors placed around the earpiece at the center. The C6 has an ambient light and a proximity sensor, and a dedicated QVGA video-call camera.

A couple of sensors, a video-call camera and the earpiece are on top

The controls on the sides of the Nokia C6 have a similar layout to that of the 5800 XpressMusic. On the right side, from top to bottom there’re the volume rocker, the lock/hold key and the shutter key. The left side features the protected microSD card slot.

   
The sides of the Nokia C6

At the top of the Nokia C6 is the sealed microUSB port. Right next to it is the 3.5mm audio jack, which is left exposed. The bottom of Nokia C6 holds the 2mm charger plug, the mouthpiece and the lanyard eyelet.

   
The audio jack and microUSB port on top • Charger plug, mic and lanyard eyelet the bottom

One important thing to note here is that the Nokia C6 doesn’t charge off USB – so, you’ll have to carry the charger (which is very compact, but still) when you travel.

The 5 megapixel camera lens is on the back of the Nokia C6, right next to the LED flash. Those aren’t protected by anything, so you’ll have to take care not to scratch them. To the right of the camera we find the single loudspeaker (no stereo speakers here).

  
The 5 megapixel camera and the LED flash are unprotected

Under the battery cover, there’s the SIM card compartment and a BL-4J battery rated at 1200mAh. It is the same capacity as the battery in the N97 mini and is quoted at 384 hours of standby (both 2G and 3G) and up to 7 hours (2G) or 5 hours (3G) of talk time.

The 1200 mAh battery

The Nokia C6 rear cover has a small latch that makes it very easy to open. The rear panel itself is quite wobbly however, which doesn’t make a very good impression.

The badly fitting battery cover aside, the build quality of the Nokia C6 is satisfactory. The matte plastic on the back is nice to the touch and, more importantly, fingerprint resistant. The front, with the touchscreen and all, will inevitably gather smudges, but that’s par for the course these days.

The QWERTY keyboard left a positive impression as did the smooth, spring-assisted slider. There’s an option to lock the phone when you close the slider, but you can’t set it to launch an app (say, the SMS composer) when you open it.

   
The Nokia C6 held in hand

Handling the Nokia C6 isn’t a problem – the phone allows comfortable one-handed operation and the weight balance is good. Its thickness is a bit of problem for pocketability though.

Comfortable QWERTY keyboard

So far the C6 basically sounds like a Nokia 5800 XpressMusic with a better camera. The major feature that the Nokia C6 has over its older cousin, however, is the QWERTY keyboard. The screen doesn’t tilt like it did on the N97 duo, but you can still comfortably hold the keyboard and look at the screen head on.

  
Opening the Nokia C6 – no tilting action here

The keyboard is comparable to the one on the Motorola MILESTONE (or DROID in the US) – and that’s quite a compliment. The keys are about the same size, but not as flat and with good feedback, making the keyboard very comfortable to use. The top row is somewhat cramped against the top half of the slider though.

  
The keyboard is pretty comfy and with good illumination • C6 vs. MILESTONE

The four-row QWERTY on the Nokia C6 has more keys and fewer symbols per key compared to the three-row keyboard of the N97, so occasions where you need to use the function key are rarer.

The backlighting of the keyboard is strong and quite even, so you won’t have problems using it in the dark.

The keyboard is accompanied by a D-pad – it’s on the right side this time rather than the left like it was on the N97. The Nokia N97 mini omitted the D-pad to leave more room for the rest of the keyboard. On the other hand, the wider borders between the keys on the N97 mini improved the typing experience.

We compared the C6 to the Nokia E75, another keyboard we quite liked. The two keyboards are very similar, however the keys on the C6 are smaller – because of the D-pad.

User interface

The Nokia C6 runs S60 5th edition and our test unit comes with the 10.0.024 firmware release. You must have seen plenty of Symbian in touchscreen action and nothing here should come as a big surprise.

Here is our unboxing and user interface video. If you want to skip the retail package exploration, the UI demo starts at 00:50.

We are glad to note that kinetic scrolling keeps on getting better. It is available almost throughout the user interface – from file and web browsers through gallery to contacts and even the main menu. Finger scrolling has been improved as well.

Until now widgets were limited to Nseries, but the C6 is kind enough to bring them on board. A widget-enabled homescreen mimics the good old Active Standby but instead of slots you now get nicely thumbable blocks. However, if you were hoping for thumb-scrollable multiple homescreen panes, you are again out of luck, even though the competition has had these for a long time.

S60 5th is in essence a direct translation of D-pad and soft-key action into touch. Although it has its benefits, the result is hardly the most fluent and intuitive touchscreen interface there is. Scrolling and accessing items across the interface is nothing like other touch platforms we’ve tried. On the other hand, soft-keys work just fine and enhance usability compared to other touch phones.

  
The S60 5th homescreen and menu

So, the user experience with S60 5th is a mixed bag and what you think of it will entirely depend on your background. If you know your way around S60, you’ll be quite at home with the C6 interface. But if you come from an alternative touchscreen platform you’ll find yourself climbing a fairly steep learning curve.

Opening an item in any of the listed submenus requires not one, but two presses – one to select, and another one to confirm the action. Now that’s something that you don’t normally see in other touch phones.

You get used to it with time, but the main issue here is that the interface logic is different when you deal with icons instead of lists.When the opened menu uses icons to represent items as opposed to lists, then a single click usually does the job.

At least kinetic scrolling will make you feel way more comfortable than those first 5800 XpressMusic users.

Homescreen and main menu

The main menu structure leaves no doubt you’re on Symbian turf. Icons are set in a 3 x 4 grid or a list that you can freely reorder. Screen orientation can be set to change automatically thanks to the accelerometer.

The homescreen layout of the C6 is typical Symbian and looks exactly the same as it did on the Nokia N97 mini.

A single press on the clock starts the clock application (with an option for setting up an alarm) while tapping on the date launches the calendar application.

Another tap, this time on the Profile button, leads you to the profile options where you can edit the currently active profile or change it (which does make using the the Power key for that purpose redundant).

   
Calendar, profiles and clock just a touch away

You can also access the connectivity menu from here by tapping around the battery status indicator, which is one of the ways to initiate a WLAN search. It is not as quick as having the WLAN Wizard as a homescreen widget.

Now, let’s take a closer look at the widgets. The space underneath the status icons and the clock can fit up to 5 widgets at a time. A sideways finger sweep will hide or display them.

There are plenty of widgets to choose from – there are tools like the WLAN wizard, music player controls, calendar, email, etc. There’s a widget for favorite contacts and a shortcut widget. You can have two of each at a time. The other widgets are linked to various sites and services: Facebook, MySpace, Bloomberg, CNN video and quite a few more.

  
The Nokia C6 widgets

The Ovi Store comes in handy when you get bored of the preinstalled widgets, but will cover that in more length later.

Arranging widgets is easy and fun. You can remove some of them, add others, change their order (just drag and drop). If all 5 slots have been taken, you have to remove one or more widgets to make room.

On the Contacts bar each contact is represented by the contact photo and their first name. Up to four favorite contacts can be displayed at a time and the list isn’t scrollable left or right.

Selecting a contact from the Contact bar brings up a screen with buttons to start a voice or video call, compose a text message or E-mail.

 
The Contacts bar • viewing a contact from the Contacts bar

The Shortcuts bar is ready to accommodate shortcuts to your favorite apps or web sites. You can even have two Favorite Contacts widgets and two Shortcut widgets displayed on the homescreen (if you happen to need them).

The Nokia C6 features a task manager which is launched by a press-and-hold on the menu key. The task manager itself is identical to what you get on Symbian S60 3.2 devices. Much like in the previous version of the UI, it appears on top of every pop-up menu. To close running applications use the hardware backspace key or press and hold the app’s icon to display two virtual buttons: Open and Exit.

The task-manager

The dedicated hardware switch on the right-hand side of the device will lock / unlock the phone. The lockscreen has a virtual swipe-to-unlock button .

A decent phonebook

The Nokia C6 phonebook has virtually unlimited capacity and its functionality is certainly among the best out there. The Nokia C6 contacts list also has kinetic scrolling enabled and it’s among the best examples to find on a Nokia touch phone.

Contacts can be freely ordered by first or last name and you can also set whether the contacts from the SIM card, the phone memory and the service numbers will get displayed.

   
The fully-functional phonebook

When searching for a contact you make use of a clever dynamic keypad, which shows you only the letters that correspond to actual contacts. Once you type in a first letter, their number decreases, leaving only the ones that actually make up real contacts names. A really convenient tool indeed, even if you have a real QWERTY keyboard to use.

  
Nokia have a pretty convenient solution for searching the contact list

Editing a contact offers a variety of preset fields and you can replicate each of them as many times as you like. You can also create new fields if you happen to be able to think of one.

You can also assign personal ringtones and videos. If you prefer, you may group your contacts and give each group a specific ringtone.

  
Editing a contact’s details in the S60 phonebook Nokia C6

The Call log keeps track of your recent communications. The application itself comes in two flavors – accessed by pressing the Call key on the stand-by screen or from the main menu. The first one brings 20 call records in each of its tabs for outgoing, received and missed calls.

  
The call log keep a detailed record of your recent communications

If you access the Log application from the main menu, you’ll see a detailed list of all your network communications for the past 30 days. These include messages, calls and data transfers.

Telephony: smart dial on QWERTY

Voice quality is good on both ends of calls, the earpiece sound is crisp and there were no reception problems whatsoever.

Smart dialing is enabled and the implementation is quite good. Ass soon as you hit a few keys on the keyboard, all the matches are displayed. You get the contact’s name and photo on screen – pressing and holding will bring up virtual buttons to start a voice or video call, or compose a text message.

Smart dialing works fine

You get an onscreen virtual dial pad too – it will be used we think, as the physical QWERTY keyboard doesn’t have a numpad – the number keys are on the top row (computer keyboard style).

The dialing pad

Voice dialing is also enabled on the Nokia C6. The voice dial mode is activated once you press and hold the Call key. It is fully speaker-independent and doesn’t require pre-recording the names of your contacts. Bear in mind though, that if you have multiple numbers assigned to a contact, it will dial the default one.

Thanks to the built-in accelerometer, you can silence an incoming call (or snooze an alarm) by simply flipping the handset over. Also when in calls, the proximity sensor makes sure the screen turns automatically off when you pick the phone up to your ear.

  
The in-call screen and available options

Using the hardware screen-lock switch you can not only unlock the phone but also silence it.

The Nokia C6 scored an Average in our traditional loudspeaker test. More info on our test can be foundhere.

Speakerphone test	Voice, dB	Pink noise/ Music, dB	Ringing phone, dB	Overal score
Nokia E66	66.9	66.1	66.8	Below average
Sony Ericsson Vivaz pro	69.2	65.6	72.6	Below average
Nokia 5730 XpressMusic	68.7	61.7	75.1	Average
Nokia C6	68.0	61.7	77.3	Average
Sony Ericsson Aspen	71.0	66.6	75.7	Good
Palm Pre	71.3	68.0	80.3	Very Good
LG GW300	78.2	75.7	77.6	Excellent

QWERTY-fied messaging

The QWERTY-enabled Nokia C6 supports all common message types – SMS, MMS and email. They all share a common intuitive editor which by this point should be quite familiar to everyone.

  
The Nokia C6 message editor

The email client is really nice, there to meet almost any emailing needs. The easy setup we found in the latest Nokia handsets is also available with the C6. If you are using any public email service (it has to be among the over 1000 supported providers), all you have to do is enter your username and password to start enjoying email on the go. The phone downloads all the needed settings to get you going in no time.

Multiple email accounts and various security protocols are supported, so you can bet almost any mail service will run trouble-free on your Nokia C6.

 
Checking email

The client can download headers only or entire messages, and can be set to automatically check mail at a given interval. A nice feature allows you to schedule sending email next time an internet connection is available. This can save you some data traffic charges since you can use the next available WLAN connection instead.

Here might just be the right time to mention the input options on Nokia C6. Along with the pretty comfortable hardware QWERTY keyboard, the handset also offers a standard on-screen numpad and support for handwriting recognition. There is no virtual QWERTY keyboard.

  
The on-screen text input options: numpad and handwriting recognition

Image gallery is still quite slow

The gallery of Nokia C6 is nicely touch optimized and there are sweep gestures enabled for flipping through photos displayed fullscreen.

You can sort images by date, title or size and you can also copy, move and delete them. Sending them via Bluetooth, email, MMS or sharing them online is also available straight from here.

 
Browsing images on the Nokia C6

The default view is portrait but you can go to landscape automatically thanks to the built-in accelerometer. A slide show is also available but it doesn’t have as many customizable settings as on some Nseries handsets.

You can also zoom in the photos to see more detail. Zoom is controlled via either the volume rocker or an on-screen touch slider. In all other cases, images are displayed full screen.

  
The transition from portrait to landscape is automatic

One of the gallery problems is speed. Loading a picture takes a couple of seconds even for small images. If you have a large number of photos it might take ages before the thumbnails are generated. Zooming and panning are not that much faster either. On the other hand, kinetic scrolling has been vastly improved. The real nuisance though is that photos in a folder require a double tap to display – one to select, another to open.

Good ol’ music player

The Nokia C6 music player is pretty functional but its design could use a little freshening up – it hasn’t changed since we first saw it in the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. With user friendliness such a key aspect of full touch phones, it would be nice from Nokia to add some fun to the mix.

Your music library is automatically sorted by artist, album, genre and or composer and searching tracks by gradual typing is available. You can also create your own playlists in no time.

   
The music player does the job but could use a new skin

The process of adding tracks to the library is as simple as choosing the refresh option. You won’t need to do that if you upload the music via the proprietary PC Suite application. With the huge number of supported formats you will hardly ever come across an audio file that the phone won’t handle.

Album art is also supported and if you don’t like the default sound of the device you can enhance it by applying one of the five equalizer presets. And if they’re still not enough you can set new ones up in a matter of seconds.

  
Creating a new equalizer preset is easy

Quite naturally, the player can also be minimized to play in background. However , if you haven’t set the Music Player widget on the homescreen, you will have no way to control it. Your only option would be to go back to the full music player app using the Task manager.

Good audio quality

Nokia C6 isn’t the loudest handset around but provides nicely clean audio output. The readings it achieved in our test are very satisfying and there is very little to moan about really.

The frequency response indicates slightly cut-off extreme high frequencies (nothing you can actually hear anyway) and the intermodulation distortion is slightly high but that’s it. The noise levels, dynamic range and stereo crosstalk readings are just great, comparable to the best in class. Here go the results so you can compare it to some of the other handsets we have tested.

Test	Frequency response	Noise level	Dynamic range	THD	IMD + Noise	Stereo crosstalk
Nokia C6	+0.11, -0.80	-90.5	90.2	0.0091	0.884	-90.4
Nokia N97 mini	+0.05, -0.32	-90.5	90.4	0.0049	0.487	-91.0
Nokia N97	+0.04, -0.27	-90.7	90.7	0.0048	0.896	-89.5
Nokia 5230	+0.03, -0.05	-86.7	86.5	0.0033	0.016	-84.0
Nokia 5530 XpressMusic	+0.11, -0.84	-90.9	90.8	0.010	0.454	-90.6
Nokia C5	+0.05, -0.25	-87.6	87.4	0.0046	0.019	-87.8

Nokia C6 vs Nokia C5 frequency response graphs

You can learn more about the whole testing process here.

DivX/XviD support is still a no-go for the video player

The ample screen generally makes watching a video on the Nokia C6 a pleasure. However the lack of DivX and XviD codecs makes actually playing one somewhat of a harder task.

Of course, you can use the Nokia PC suite built-in application that automatically converts all kinds of video files to the format and resolution your phone supports. The automatic converter though seems to compress the videos too much, even at the highest quality setting, and they look over pixelated’ but so far it’s the easiest way of getting compatible video to your handset.

 
The video player is somewhat of a disappointment

The video player itself only works in fullscreen landscape mode but, since anything else would have made the widescreen display useless, this is understandable. When in fullscreen, a tap on the screen shows the controls which are normally hidden.

Using the RealPlayer, you can not only watch the videos saved in the phone’s memory or in the memory card but also to stream Internet video content.

FM radio with RDS

The FM radio on Nokia C6 has a neat and simple interface and can automatically scan and save the available stations in your area. It also has RDS support and automatic scanning for an alternative frequency. This means that if you’re on the go, the C6 should take care of staying tuned to your selected radio station.

 
We have no grudges with the FM radio

Decent 5 megapixel camera

Nokia C6 has a 5 MP camera for a maximum image resolution of 2592×1944 pixels. The camera UI is similar to what you get in the 5800 XpressMusic, the N97 or the N97 mini.

All the settings are squeezed in a combined menu, except for the flash, which has its own dedicated shortcut. We understand that a tabular layout isn’t the easiest of things to do on this kind of device but some of the more important features could have had their own shortcuts too.

 
 
The camera UI

At least the range of settings that the Nokia C6 offers is extensive enough: from manual white balance and ISO to exposure compensation, sharpness and contrast. Various effects are also at hand, labeled as Color Tones.

Geotagging is enabled but the Nokia C6 omits some of the modern features competing manufacturers are using, such as face detection, smile detection and even blink prevention.

The viewfinder on the Nokia C6 doesn’t occupy the whole screen – a bar on the right is reserved for the touch controls. You have a settings button that launches a semi-transparent overlay of all available shooting options, a dedicated Flash button, an on-screen shutter key and finally, the Options menu key.

The on-screen shutter key seems absolutely redundant – it doesn’t have a half press/full press action to properly handle auto focus. It would’ve been way better to have a Quick Settings button instead.

Image quality

The picture quality is pretty decent by our books. First of all, resolved detail is more than adequate. Noise reduction finds a good balance between keeping noise levels low and preserving fine detail. There is no purple fringing whatsoever and the white balance and auto ISO settings are well tweaked. Photos have good contrast and accurate colors.

And there go some photo samples from the C6 camera.

   
   
   
Nokia C6 camera samples

Synthetic resolution

We also snapped our resolution chart with the Nokia C6. You can check out what that test is all abouthere.

 
Nokia C6 resolution chart photo • 100% crops

Video recording

The camcorder interface doesn’t differ from the still camera much. The camera can capture video in either VGA or the screen resolution (640 x 352 px) resolution, 30 fps in either case.

 
 
The camcorder UI

The C6 video quality is OK. Colors turn out just fine, but the compression seems too aggressive in most of the clips and produces noticeable artifacts. Anyway, VGA@30fps seems to be the best that Nokia can offer until N8 hits the market.

Here is a VGA video sample from the Nokia C6.

All-in-one connectivity

Smartphones are usually well-heeled in terms of connectivity and the Nokia C6 is no exception: all contemporary means of data transfer are supported.

User have GPRS, EDGE and 3G with HSDPA (3.6Mbps) at their disposal. The GSM/EDGE network support of course comes in quad-band flavor and the 3G is tri-band – 900/1900/2100.

Both USB and Bluetooth are version 2.0 and the latter naturally also sports A2DP. Wi-Fi with UPnP support is also at hand. There is a dedicated homescreen widget for the WLAN wizard.

A 3.5mm audio jack is also onboard and you’ll have no problems switching to your favorite headphones.

Unfortunately, Nokia C6 doesn’t charge off a USB connection. It’s a common issue among the midrange Nokia smartphones and C6 joins the unfortunate list.

Finally, the storage. Nokia C6 has 240MB internal storage, expandable via a microSD slot. A 2GB card is included in the retail box but you’re likely to need more. The C6 cannot match the built-in storage capacity of the N97 duo.

Web browser goes in right direction

The S60 web browser is decently usable, especially now that is also offers kinetic scrolling. Yet there is quite a lot of work remaining before it is able to rival the best in class. The Android and iPhone browsers are miles ahead in terms of user-friendliness.

The Nokia C6 browser has very good page rendering and boasts some nice features such as different font sizes (5 options), auto fill-in of web forms and a password manager.

   
The S60 web browser still needs some polishing

The built-in RSS reader will handle your feeds, while the download manager keeps things in order. There’s also a popup blocker, but bear in mind that you cannot open a new window in any other way but clicking a pop-up link. We’d have really preferred to see an option to open links in a new window.

A minimap is available for finding your way around elaborate pages and the Find on page feature is welcome. The visual history is a nice bonus that can help you easily find a page you’ve visited.

And now we get to Flash support. Yes, there is Flash support and it’s way better that it was back on X6. The YouTube videos we’ve tested did well with almost none dropped frames. Unfortunately the small screen and resolution won’t allow you to fit the whole YouTube screen in there. Luckily you’ll get about 80% of the windows, which should be enough. Of course, the mobile version of YouTube is always an option.

 
Watching YouTube videos

Another upgrade over the X6 web browser is the better kinetic scrolling. It now works fine and manages to catch up with most of its competitors.

Double tapping on a block of text zooms it in on screen, but again, the text doesn’t fit the zoomed area and you still need to scroll sideways.

So, generally speaking, the S60 touch-browser is going in the right direction but there’s still a lot of work to be done to catch up with the rest. The improved usability and performance is a nice start but it’s nowhere near the iPhone or Android standards. The same goes for the resolution, which is hardly a match for WVGA.

Organizer

The S60 5th edition organizer is pretty well stocked although its applications are already in need of refreshment – especially on a touchscreen. Some of the apps are starting to look boring and dated, having had the same interface for over 3 years now.

The developers are still hesitant to put the touch input of Nokia C6 to some good usage and maybe some cool new features. They have only gone as far as to touch-optimize the S60 3rd edition apps.

The calendar has four different view modes – monthly, weekly, daily and a to-do list, which allows you to check all your To-Do entries regardless of their date. There are four types of events available for setting up – Meeting, Memo, Anniversary and To-do. Each event has unique fields of its own, and some of them allow an alarm to be activated at a preset time to act as a reminder.

   
The organizer centerpiece – the calendar

Mobile office is also very well geared, with preinstalled applications able to open Word, Excel and PowerPoint files seamlessly.

   
Only viewing of documents is supported out of the box

Unluckily, editing documents is not supported by the included Quickoffice version. If you would like editing enabled you will have to get the upgrade at the Ovi Store for a fee.

The organizer package also includes a great unit converter, calculator and voice recorder, as well as the Notes application.

   
Some of the other organizer apps

The Active notes is advanced application for managing notes. It allows you to attach pictures, sound files or video clips to your memo and has nice and touch-friendly user interface. It’s not so daily used app, but still it will find its fans for sure.

  
Active notes, settings

The alarm application allows you to set up as many alarms as you want, each with its own name, trigger day and repeat pattern. If this seems too complicated, there is a quick alarm setup where all you do is set the time and you’re good to go. This is quite convenient for, say, setting up your wake-up alarm.

In addition, the number of alarms is not limited. Thanks to the built-in accelerometer you can also snooze the alarm by simply flipping your phone, much like with the Nokia 8800 Arte and 5800 XpressMusic.

  
We are quite fond of the alarm application

GPS, Ovi Maps and free voice navigation

The Nokia C6 comes with a built-in GPS receiver that managed to get satellite lock in about a minute upon cold start (A-GPS turned off at the time) and keeping the lock was not an issue for the C6 even in dense urban environments.

The phone comes with Ovi Maps 3.3 Touch preinstalled (the rebranded Nokia Maps). Since January 2010 all Nokia GPS-enabled Symbian handsets have free lifetime voice-guided navigation.

Ovi Maps navigation is currently available in 74 countries and 46 languages, with even traffic information for more than 10 of those. In addition, Nokia have also greatly upgraded the Ovi Maps application itself, so it now packs a cooler looking interface, the Lonely planet city guide and the Michelin restaurant guide with lots and lots of points of interest. There’s also an events guide that lists all events happening within a 3km range of your position and provides you with details on each one.

The touch-enabled Ovi Maps application itself is doing pretty well in terms of features too. It has four different view modes including satellite and hybrid maps. Those however do need an internet connection. The more regular 2D and 3D view modes are also at hand.

   
Ovi Maps 3.0 Touch application offers four different view modes

The route planning algorithm is also rather easy to customize to best suit your preferences. Toll roads and motorways can be avoided and so can tunnels and ferries. Route selection can be set to either fastest or shortest. The app is also usable for pedestrian navigation or you can switch the GPS receiver off and use the phone as a hand-held map.

   
Main menu • weather info • navigation • navigation options

Ovi Store

Browsing the Ovi Store, you can choose between several sections – Applications, Games, Audio and Video content, Personalization, Recommended and of course, My Stuff, which shows you the apps you’ve already installed.

The structure of the Ovi Store client is simple. It’s a list with the name and logo of each app (or podcast, or whatever), the category it’s in (Entertainment, Utilities, etc), price and a star rating out of three.

   
The Ovi Store has a simple but easy to use structure

Selecting an app, gives you more details – a description, info on size, reviews by people who have tried it, an option to write your own review or send the description page to a friend, a list of related apps and a Report issue button, which helps you report fraud, spam, abuse, etc., but not bug reports or feature requests.

Searching the Store is quite easy if the Recommended section and the Related apps list don’t get you what you’re looking for.

Our Nokia C6 came with very little preinstalled content: just a few apps and one game. Some of them are very handy tools for reading news, handling social networks, weather forecasts, etc.

Of course, since this is Symbian we are talking about, you can also pay a visit to some of the numerous software sites online. You can download the apps straight on your phone or on your desktop computer to transfer to the handset later.

Applications

The Nokia C6 comes with just a few preinstalled applications.

World Traveler is a handful open platform application developed by Psiloc. It offers four services – weather, world clock, currencies, and world map. More about this piece of software to be found here.

   
World Traveler

Nokia Drawing is a new and simple piece of software that lets you draw stuff with different colors and thickness of the pencil.

Nokia Drawing

The Bloomberg app brings you up to date financial information. It has four tabs – news, markets, my stocks, and a search section. If you are into finance, you can find out more about it at their website.

  
Bloomberg application

AP Mobile is an application that enables users to follow Associated Press news, offering personalized delivery of content. Consumers can browse stories and AP photo galleries as well as watch AP videos. Interesting images, videos or news can be directly shared via Twitter or Delicious.

   
AP Mobile is great for the Associated Press readers

There’re also Facebook, MySpace, Shazam, Friendster and hi5 social clients.

   
Some of the social clients

CNN Video app lets you watch videos from CNN news reports, while ESPNsoccernet caters to soccer fans – it has schedules, news, results, everything about soccer leagues around the world.

 
CNN Video • ESPNsoccernet

Only one game

The Nokia C6 comes with only one game preinstalled: Bejeweled Twist.

 

Final words

It may look like the same old same old prima facie, but that’s exactly what the C series are all about. They are just not the kind of phones to set the place on fire. It’s a lineup aimed at the mass market and it doesn’t need inspiration and creativity when a couple of tried and tested recipes will do.

The C series are the melting pot for designs, forms and features that are proven to work. It’s a low-cost and risk-free operation – what comes out of the C series isn’t burdened with expectations and is more or less immune to criticism.

Every phone in the C series can trace its lineage generations back. With the C6, it’s a clear case of N97 meets 5800 XM. Some may rightfully claim that Symbian touch UI needs quite a bit of genetic engineering to get things right. It can certainly use some new graphics, animations, transition effects and all that eye-candy but it isn’t up to the Nokia C6 to deliver it. There’s Symbian^3 and ^4 for that.

What you have every right to expect from the Nokia C6 is reasonable build quality, full-suite connectivity, great typing and reliability. And it delivers on all counts – save for a shaky battery cover (we hope it’s our unit) and the clunky touch interface.

On Symbian turf, the Nokia C6 has one major competitor, the Sony Ericsson Vivaz Pro. It has a similar screen, but far better processing and graphics, crowned with HD video recording. The features you sacrifice over Nokia C6 are the free voice navigation and access to the growing Ovi Store.

Sony Ericsson Vivaz pro

Among the Android species of QWERTY messengers, the Nokia C6 will have to watch out for the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 mini pro and LG GW 620. The X10 mini pro runs Android 1.6 Donut, but the Eclair update is on the way. The small size, the capacitive screen and the cool Timescape user interface count in X10 mini pro’s favor. The LG GW620 likes to keep a low-profile but might be a reasonable alternative as well.

Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 mini pro • LG GW620

The Motorola BACKFLIP and the MB220 DEXT are two QWERTY-enabled droids to offer you the MOTOBLUR UI, which takes social networking to a whole new level.

  
Motorola BACKFLIP • Motorola DEXT MB220 • Nokia N97 mini

The Nokia C6 is the most advanced and expensive C series phone so far but it obviously is on the cheap side of smart QWERTY messengers. It’s got quite a bit of pressure to handle from competitors and finds it hard to identify a unique selling point. Plus currently it goes for almost the same amount of money as the N97 mini and until its price moves down, the C6 will hardly earn a place for itself in the Nokia’s Symbian lineup. We are yet to see how things go though.

Source : http://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_c6_review-review-497p9.php

Nokia C6

It would do that partly on cost grounds (this is the smartphone that a lot of networks are going to push as the middle of the road monthly contract phone), partly on functionality (capacitive touch screen, GPS, eight megapixel camera) and partly on style.

The C6 in-hand and in landscape mode.

Slightly squatter than the 5800, the eye is tricked into thinking this is not as “tall and thin” as the 5th Edition touchscreen phones. In fact, the screen is the same 3.2 inch 640×360 nHD resolution as devices like the X6. It wouldn’t surprise me that the capacitive layer is exactly the same, the same gentle touch and pressure I’m used to on the X6 is all that is needed on the C6 to select menus, options, text, and interact with the device.

While there are external buttons, these are just the standard volume, keylock, camera, menu and call buttons – nothing superfluous is on show here, it’s as simple as the Nokia designers can make it within their remit. To be honest I’m not even using the keylock slider – mostly because I’m finding it faster to press the central silver menu button and the on-screen unlock than it is to use the unlock slider, but also because the slider is quite stiff and my curled index finger doesn’t have enough leverage to move it enough (and my thumb is right over the other buttons in the interface).

…and running in portrait mode.

I’m bringing this stiff slider up because it’s one of the very few grumbles I have about the construction of the C6. The ergonomics of this diminutive phone are well suited to the hand, the curve on the back of the phone allows it to sit comfortably in the hand for a long time. It’s also a stainless steel cover around the back, lending a feel of solidity and weight to the device – without this, the C6 feels impossibly light, and while a very light smartphone might be something to aim for, the C6’s construction balances that requirement with the need to make the C6 feel a solid and trustworthy phone.

One area that does look a bit cheap on the C6 is the loudspeaker grill – four oval shaped cutouts in the plastic below the camera lens might be economical to produce but would I be happy having it slide around a table at a pub, open to the elements as it is? No, I would not. Even the presence of small piece of mesh under the cut-out would be reassuring, but there’s none of that here.

The screen, of course, is the big question. How good is this “blacker than black” display announced by Annsi Vanjoki with more than a passing nod to Spinal Tap? Well it’s pretty impressive.

Under strong Scottish sunlight, the C6-01 stays legible while the X6 washes out and has horrible reflections.

The screen technology is an active matrix OLED screen, the same as that in the N8 and C7. The difference is the extra layer added by Nokia that goes by the name of CBD – the Clear Black dDisplay. This is a filter that has two goals – to reduce reflections on the screen, and to make the black a true black, thus boosting the contrast of the colours around them. Coupled with the physics of the screen requiring less power the more black there is on display, this makes the “coloured icons on black background” theme not only hugely power efficient but also one of the best Symbian screens out there.

Indoors, there’s a noticeable difference between the C6 and the previous capacitive-screened X6 when under bright light, and the vibrancy of the colours is clear to see. Even next to a Nokia N8 (with a similar home screen layout of widgets) the C6 has the edge – not enough to sway a purchasing decision, but enough to be a factor.

Step outside though, and that’s where you really see the change, and why the C6, even with its smaller size and slightly depressed specifications, is going to give those trying to decide which of the new smartphones to buy, a hard time. In weather that would see other phones almost impossible to view without angling my body to cast a shadow and squint hard, the C6 remains legible. Yes the colour still washes out, basic physics takes care of that, but the physics of having less reflections from the screen also comes into play to ensure you can still make out what is on display.

While Edinburgh at the start of winter allows only brief moments to test this, I’m confident that this could be taken out into bright, constant sunshine and be one of the most legible smartphones on the market today.

Is that enough to help swing a buying decision towards the C6? Because with identical software, there is very little technical difference between the N8, C7 and C6, it’s all in the styling and maybe one headline feature. The N8 has its camera, the C7 has its fashionable good looks, and the C6 has the screen technology. Following it through, the E7 will have the keyboard, and I think that for a lot of those looking for a smartphone that does everything, the E7 is going to be the chosen one – and it also has the CBD display.

For me, the C6 is going to win out, but I know that’s very much a personal decision based on the size of the phone. The C6, being smaller in height and thickness, is a far more pocketable device, either in the trouser or shirt pocket. Yes, the screen is smaller, but with the same number of pixels as the other new devices, the information on display is identical, and I prefer having a denser packing of the information. There’s also the comfort factor, with the physical screen size identical to the X6. My fingers, eyes and fine motor memory are all keyed to this screen.

Styling on the side of the C6.

Coming to the handset fresh, I think the overall size is going to be the most attractive feature to new customers. This is a small handset, and if it is marketed alongside the huge slabs of N8’s and Android devices in the stores, but with the same connectivity and features emphasised, then it’s going to be a huge hit.

But is it ever going to be considered a smartphone?

This is not a phone that’s going to be pushed to those looking for power. It’s further down the line, to those looking for connectivity while on the go, for a “social network” phone that happily talks to Facebook, Twitter and like, a phone that’s going to be marketed to a lower common denominator than even the C7. That’s a good thing in my opinion. Someone scared off by a hulking great big “complicated” phone like the N8 is more likely to be attracted to the C6 that just does what they want it to do.

This variant of the C6 (remember, it’s officially the C6-01) in my mind is a winning design – from the curved steel back plate through to the very subtle lip around the top edge to the expansive glass of the touch screen. The buttons that are there are work well, with good feedback, and the tweaks to the vibration motor give a wonderful haptic feedback. In the thirty seconds that people will get to see this in store, the C6 becomes a winner, and that doesn’t change over time.

Nokia’s hardware team has delivered another winner. The question on the C6 is now what to make of the new flavour of Symbian software, and specifically how this is suited not for those looking for a smartphone, but for those who just want to get stuff done in the mid tier price range. And that’ll be the next part of this review.

Source : http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/reviews/item/12297_Nokia_C6_part_1-.php

Nokia C6 (4)

User experience

Responsiveness, multitasking and RAM

The consistent aspect of the user experience on the Nokia C6 is that of its speed – it really is a nippy little device. It has 128MB of RAM; within a minute of cold start, RAM usage creeps up to 62%, leaving an ample 47MB available. Impressively, the C6’s performance was sustained during multitasking stress tests. In these tests, it handled insufficient RAM without throwing up an error message. Instead, it opted to shut down other applications that were running in the background. Both of the tests were fairly exaggerated circumstances, as one might expect. Although, as free RAM began to run below 10%, general performance slowed, but the device remained perfectly usable.

Compared to earlier Symbian^1 devices the C6 seemed to have better overall performance and RAM handling, reflecting the maturity of the platform at this point in its life cycle. However, such judgements are, inevitably, somewhat subjective.

C6 Device Info
The home screen

The home screen of the C6 is the same as found on the N97 and N97 mini. That is, the home screen can be filled with up to six widgets; and if having all six widget slots occupied looks cluttered, a sideways swipe will hide (or reveal) all but the default widget.

Among the widgets on offer are some rather utilitarian ones based on the built-in applications, which wouldn’t look out of place on an Eseries home screen; such as:
Calendar
E-mail
Favourite Applications (up to two widgets of four apps each)
Favourite Contacts (up to two widgets of four contacts each)
Music Player (with playback controls)
Share Online
WLAN Wizard

The Symbian home screen widgets

The RAM measurements mentioned above were taken while using a full complement of widgets (in this case: Calendar, E-mail, Music and both favourite application widgets). Therefore, the C6 clearly has enough RAM to make full use of this new home screen system.

Further to the widgets, another feature of the home screen is the smart dialing feature as found on Eseries devices. Simply by beginning to type a name while at the home screen, a list of matching contacts is presented, and is refined as more of the name is entered.

Smart dialling

One final pleasing feature to the home screen is a the on-screen unlock interface. When the screen has been locked due to inactivity or using the lock slider, a press of the menu key temporarily activates the screen. A large digital clock is displayed, along with a touch screen element inviting the user to swipe to unlock the device. This may be a little seen aspect of the phone, but just demonstrates an attention to detail that the author of this review appreciated.

Applications

Calendar and Contacts

The Calendar and Contacts applications on the C6 are the same as found on other Symbian^1 phones. Anyone looking for category support will be disappointed, as this is a long standing omission from the S60 PIM suite. However, both applications have simple user interfaces, which present the most commonly used functions via large finger friendly buttons.

In Calendar, the main buttons are: toggle the display mode (Month, Week, Day, To-Do); Add new meeting; and add a new To-Do. The content display is almost split in half between showing the desired chart, while the other half displays the contents of the currently selected entry.

Calendar

Similarly, Contacts is a relatively simple application. The main content is composed of a kinetically scrolling list of all your contacts. There are three tabs, the first is for locally stored contacts, the second is for contacts stored on-line via an Ovi Contacts account, the third is for contact ‘Groups’ (as seen on Eseries devices).

Contacts
Web Browser

The C6 comes with a bang up to date version of ‘Web’, the Symbian Web Browser; version 7.2.6 to be precise. Despite lacking a service layer as the Opera browsers have, Web is quite a capable browser. Most notably, it renders quickly (as expected, being based on WebKit), it supports Flash, and has an efficient scaling system. On zooming however, a feature lacking in Web is to reflow text. While it is possible to zoom in to a great extent, sideways scrolling will be needed.

Web user agent info

Web shows pages in full screen mode by default, with just a small icon overlaid in the lower-right corner that will recall the on-screen buttons. Pages scroll smoothly with kinetic dynamics, again benefitting from the evident optimisations in the C6’s operating system.

Web’s main menu

Finally, a new feature so-far only added to the C6’s browser is the dual URL and Search bar. This may seem like a trivial addition, but it’s another example of attention to detail, best using the area available for the user interface to provide more desktop-like functionality. Hidden fairly deeply in the browser settings are options to change the search provider – these are currently limited to just Google and Bing.

The C6’s new dual URL & Search bar
Messaging

Starting with the basic Messaging application (for SMS & MMS). The main menu presents the message views one would expect to find (Inbox, Sent, Drafts, etc.). Other S60 devices have included E-mail accounts as part of the main Messaging menu. However, because the C6 uses the dedicated Nokia Messaging client, E-mail has been completely separated from the Messaging application.

Messaging menu

The Nokia Messaging client can be used as a stand alone POP/IMAP E-mail client, or used in conjunction with Nokia’s Push E-mail service of the same name. Third party Push E-mail services can also plug into this client; for example, the C6 includes supports for Microsoft Exchange (Mail for Exchange). In testing the Push features of Nokia Messaging with GMail, we had mixed results, clearly there are kinks that need to be ironed out with the service, and we will report on this in more detail.

Previously, the Nokia Messaging client has only been seen on recent Eseries devices and is light-years ahead of the basic Nokia E-mail application, truly offering a desktop-like E-mail experience. Automatic configuration for popular E-mail services is provided, so that by only entering your username and password, the client can automatically configure itself.

As noted above there is support for Mail for Exchange (MfE) for third party Push E-mail. Configuring with MfE also offers the option of synchronising Calendar, Contact and To-Do items. Although when testing with Google services, this feature didn’t seem to work, even though the Google MfE Push E-mail worked well. There were no such problems on a standard Microsoft Exchange server, so the issues we observed may be related to Google’s Exchange implementation.

The Nokia Messaging client

The C6 is the first device to get the new version of the Nokia Messaging client. Performance is significantly improved, as is support for folders and HTML email. We’ll be take a closer look at this new client, which will also be appearing on the N8, in due course.

Ovi Store and Ovi Maps

The C6 comes with the latest version of the Ovi Store client (version 1.07), and an almost up to date version of Ovi Maps – version 3.3, pre-loaded with mapping data.

Many applications in the Ovi Store are available for free, however prices for most other applications range from £1.00 to £5.00. Conveniently, the Ovi Store can take payment via the user’s mobile network billing system, which means no need to type in credit card details.

The Ovi Store client and the Ovi Maps main menu

Ovi Maps 3.3 is recent enough to qualify for free lifetime navigation, and to include the Loney Planet, Michelin, Qype, and Expedia guides. The Software Update application of the C6 reviewed here immediately offered an upgrade to version 3.4, which enables Ovi Maps to download more location based services, such as Trip Advisor and Map Reporter.

The C6 has all of the current positioning methods that are available to Nokia phones, even including WiFi based location. With all positioning methods switched on, the C6 could gain an accurate position lock within a minute, while in an open environment. The only navigational component missing is a digital compass which means there is no automatic map rotation.

Office applications.

The C6 comes with the now-standard compliment of office software. The basic applications here being: File Manager, Dictionary, Unit Converter, Zip file manager, Calculator, Notes and finally Message Reader for users with impaired vision. However, the heavy duty office applications are of course version 6.2.2 of the Quickoffice document viewer, and Quickoffice’s Adobe PDF Reader version 2.5LE.

Quickoffice’s Adobe Reader 2.5LE

These applications work well and the new style user interface is pleasing to use. The PDF file viewer lacks the line wrap feature, although with a 3.2″ screen this is forgiveable. However, given that the C6 has a physical QWERTY keyboard one might argue that the editing version of the Quickoffice viewer should have been included. Although, the C6 is a budget phone and this would have driven up retail prices.

Quickoffice spread sheet viewer
Extra applications

The C6 comes with a handful of other applications. Well known S60 applications included here are; ‘Active Notes’ for making rich-text notes; ‘Drawing’ for anyone who wants to do some doodling on their touch screen; and ‘Recorder’ allowing the user to use the phone as Dictaphone or even record phone calls (with permission!). Finally, there is the well known Symbian Facebook application, which also integrates with the C6’s home screen.

The Nokia Facebook application

Two notable third party applications are Psiloc’s ‘World Traveller’, which has been a complementary app on many Eseries devices. This application aims to provide useful information for people on the move, such as weather forecasts and live currency conversion rates. Also included is Popcap’s “Bejeweled Twist” – the only game to be supplied on the C6.

Psiloc’s World Traveller and Popcap’s Bejeweled Twist
Conclusion

Before I began reviewing the C6, I wondered whether it would be a competent Jack of all trades, or if it would be an overly compromised device that was priced too highly for its target market. Almost two weeks later as I wrap up this three part review, I know I’m going to miss it when it’s gone. This is largely thanks to its speed of operation and good keyboard – both of which means that whatever I want to do, it doesn’t slow me down.

That’s not to say that the C6 isn’t compromised. Video capture is its weakest feature (might improve with future firmwares), and those who do a lot of navigation might miss the digital compass. I would hesitate to criticise its battery life – even though it’s not enough for my liking. It certainly isn’t any worse than most devices out there. While the C6 is constructed from low-cost materials, there is actually nothing wrong with its build quality – it feels like a solid device; especially the sliding mechanism. Ironically, my only criticism with its physical profile is the overly-curved rear which still occasionally makes the device shoot out of my hands when I’m sliding the screen.

The Cseries is a new brand from Nokia, and we have yet to see how it will position itself in relation to the other Nokia brands. However, as well as being a physical hybrid (i.e. touch screen & QWERTY keyboard), the C6 seems to be something of an Nseries and Eseries hybrid too. First and foremost it is an S60 5th Edition (Symbian^1) device, but there a couple of hints towards an Eseries like device too. For example, the smart dialling system on the home screen, and inclusion of the Nokia Messaging client.

Finally, let’s look at the economics. During the time I have been reviewing the C6, the retail price has already gone down by £10. Outlets like Play.com and MobileFun.co.uk are selling the white version for £239.99. At this rate, a price tag of ~£220 wouldn’t be out of the question within just a few months. The already mature 5800 and N97 mini seem to have settled at RRP’s of £189.99 and £299.99 respectively. In which case, the C6 achieves its goal of being a budget device for those wanting a hybrid design.

Recommended.

Source : http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/reviews/item/Nokia_C6_Part_3_Applications_and_user_experience.php 

Nokia C6 (3)

Music and Podcasting

The C6 comes with the standard S60 5th Edition Music application. The first screen offers links into sub-applications for audio playback. The first of which is of course the main Music player. This is followed by a link to Nokia’s “Ovi Music” store, allowing users to purchase either individual tracks or whole albums for direct delivery to their phone. However, Ovi Music still sells music with DRM, something I hope Nokia will move away from as soon as is practical. Finally, there is the radio receiver application; as ever though, a wired headset is required to act as an antenna. Also disappointing here is the lack of any internet radio application for streaming audio from the internet. This isn’t specific to the C6, as Internet Radio has been missing from all of Nokia’s S60 5th Edition (and some Eseries 3rd Edition) devices.

The standard Nokia Podcasting application is supplied with the C6, and is integrated into the Music application, being shown along side the other categories. Those being: Artists, Albums, Playlists, ‘All songs’, Genres and Composers. However, more advanced users might like to try out the Podcatcher application that is being designed for Symbian^3, and back ported to Symbian^1, as it has a more up to date and relevant content discovery system (at least for the technologically inclined!).

The S60 Music player application has been justly criticised for being slow and unreliable to build its music library (based on tagged music files loaded by the user). In testing with other flagship S60 5th Edition phones I’ve found that even scrolling through long lists of artists or albums has often been a stuttering experience. However, the experience with the C6 is consistently fluid. The library is updated speedily, and scrolling through lists is smooth and fast – top marks for user experience here.

As mentioned in part one of this review, the C6 has a single speaker on its back. It has a decent volume and is (subjectively) fine for casual listening to podcasts and background music.

Viewing and sharing of photos and videos

The C6 comes with S60’s standard photo gallery application, and Nokia Share Online for publishing content to the web. Share Online is still only supplied with the same old three services as with other Nokia devices (i.e. Flickr, Ovi & Vox). However, free plugins by Furtiv are available via the Ovi Store for a wide range of other social networks and sharing services (e.g. Facebook, Twitpic, Picasa, YouTube, etc.).

The theme of speed continues with the photo gallery application. Even when the C6 has hundreds of photos to present thumbnails of, it does so in short order, and seems able to generate thumbnails on the fly while performing fast kinetic scrolling without stuttering. This is a big improvement, particularly when compared against the N97. Also, zooming and panning on individual photos (subjectively at least) feels faster on the C6 than with most other devices.

From the thumbnail view, there are toolbar touch buttons for sending photos via messaging, flagging photos for bulk operations, and for launching Share Online. More operations are available from the options menu, such as tagging photos with keywords and launching the photo editor. The S60 photo editor is familiar but quite versatile, providing the following functions: brightness adjust, contrast adjust, sharpness adjust, down scaling, cropping, rotate, speech bubble insert, insert clip art, overlay text, Posterise, overlaying a frame, Red-eye reduction, black and white, Sepia, and ‘Vivid’ colour.

A confusing aspect of the S60 gallery application is that videos are not just shown in the “Video and TV” application, but they are also shown in the photo gallery application. There is very limited video editing capability too. The video editor just has the capability to add text, trim, merge and replace sound. In the following section, readers will find a YouTube video that was completely edited together on the C6.

The dedicated video gallery is an application called “Video & TV”, as found on the N97 and N97 mini. However, this would imply that there is some sort of content delivery system for TV programmes, which there is not. While the N97 was officially supported by the BBC iPlayer application, and it was possible to install the same on the N97 mini, the C6 is not supported at all. The Video & TV application starts with three options: “Last watched”, “My video clips” and “Video feeds”. The first is self explanatory, and the latter takes the user to the Ovi Store video department. Going into ‘My video clips’ presents a list of categories: ‘All video clips’, ‘Downloads’, ‘Captured video clips’, and ‘Other’. This is fine, although the rhyme and reason as to what goes where isn’t clear. Captured videos are the only videos that do seem to go where one might expect. Videos downloaded via the Ovi Store appear only in the ‘All video clips’ list, not in the Downloads list as might be assumed. It seems that the only content that appears in the Download category are videos downloaded with the standard Nokia Podcasting application. These inconsistencies aren’t unique to the C6, they apply across all recent Symbian^1 devices.

Video playback on the C6 is generally good. All of my transcoded for Symbian test video files play smoothly with the C6 (that is, MPEG4 at 480kbps, with 128kbps MP3 audio). The 3.2″ screen and passable audio output make the C6 a reasonable personal media player, although this is an activity that shouldn’t be undertaken if it isn’t possible to recharge the C6, as video playback will quickly draw down the 1200mAh battery.

Camera
Stills

The C6 has a 5 megapixel auto focus camera. Within the C6’s budgetary scope, the camera has unbranded optics, and a single LED flash (not that dual LED’s are that much better!) Therefore the camera is by no means one of the C6’s major selling points. However, in tests for this review, the C6’s camera produced better than expected results. The C6’s autofocus system even copes well with close-up (macro) photography, capturing an impressive amount of detail. This just goes to show how mature Nokia’s image processing software has now become, which benefits all devices.

The user interface for the camera is standard for Symbian^1 devices. The most common features are overlayed in a finger-friendly grid of icons. These give access to: Scene mode, Video mode, Show Grid (to aid composition, e.g. rule of thirds), Self-timer, Colour Tone, White balance, Exposure, Light Sensitivity (ISO level), Contrast, Sharpness, Sequence mode, and a short-cut to the photo gallery. More functions, including settings menu and flash control are accessed via on-screen buttons down the right-hand side of the screen. Unfortunately, there doesn’t appear to be a panoramic image capture mode for the C6. On the bright side, the C6 does support geo-tagging photos via its AGPS system.

There are some criticisms to make of the C6’s camera system. First, and most importantly, is that the C6 has a simple TFT screen with no transflective layer, along with a resistive touch layer. This makes it almost impossible to use the C6 as an outdoors camera. Even on a dull day as shown in the example pictures below, the C6 screen was highly reflective. Secondly, the camera application is relatively slow to load. From first pressing the shutter key and launching the application, it takes around 3-4 seconds until photos can be taken. It doesn’t sound much but it is noticeable when you want to take a photo right away. Third and finally, after a photo has been taken, there is the usual preview of the photo, along with some text indicating that the photo is being processed. However, I found that even after the processing notice had gone, I would get a “Camera in use” error if I tried to delete the photo. I would have to wait over 5 seconds longer than the apparent processing time before the image could be deleted.

Here are some sample pictures taken on the C6:

The full gallery of my C6 test shots can be found here, and for readers who would like to compare the C6 to other Nokia flagship devices, please follow the links for my N97 test gallery and my N97 mini test gallery.
Video

The video capture user interface is similarly laid out to that in still capture mode. However, the main functions menu has less options, only having: Scene mode, Image Mode, White Balance, Colour Tone, and a short-cut to the photo gallery.

Video capture on the C6 is mediocre. Even though the camera module has an autofocus system, video capture has no autofocus or pre-focus, instead focusing on infinity. Resolution goes up to VGA (640×480), but options for wide screen (640×352) and MMS friendly (176×144 in H.263) video are available.

Videos captured with VGA width are encoded in MPEG4 with a minimum of 15 frames per second. However, the C6 will produce adequate results for the likes of YouTube and Facebook, but don’t rely on this phone for important video capture, such as special events. Again, with the budgetary considerations of the C6, being a primary video capture device is most definitely not its modus operandi. Here’s an example video that was filmed and edited together on the C6.

Source : http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/reviews/item/Nokia_C6_Part_2_Multimedia_and_Camera.php 

Nokia C6

Nokia C6 review: A playful character

Introduction

Yesterday’s high-end is the new midrange we like to say. The Nokia C6 has almost exactly the same features as the Nokia N97 mini but hangs a big Sale sign. Time to shop for high-end features off high street.

The C-series are trying to distill the Nokia knowledge and experience into a lineup of simple and affordable phones. There’s a bit of everything there: from cheap entry-level handsets to smartphones that border on the Eseries and Nseries.

Nokia C6 official photos

And Nokia is in no mood to relax it seems. The C-series went from one to six in almost no time, and a C7 may as well be on the way. Now, technically there is no number four –but that’s one number Nokia isn’t really fond of. Anyway, if there ever was to be a C4 we just know it would’ve been dynamite.

Being a C-series phone, you can expect the C6 to be a decent all-rounder. And it is. There’re no mind-blowing features but there’s nothing major missing either. And what isn’t there (e.g. document editing) can be easily fixed with the right app.
Key features
3.2″ 16M-color resistive touchscreen of 640 x 360 pixel resolution
Symbian OS 9.4 with S60 5th edition UI
Slide-out four-row full QWERTY keyboard
ARM 11 434MHz CPU
Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE
Tri-band 3G with 3.6Mbps HSDPA support
5 megapixel autofocus camera with LED flash and VGA@30fps video recording
Wi-Fi and stereo Bluetooth v2.1
GPS with A-GPS and free lifetime voice-guided navigation license
microSD card (16 GB supported, 2GB included)
Built-in accelerometer for display auto-rotation, turn-to-mute
3.5 mm audio jack
Smart dialing
Stereo FM Radio with RDS
microUSB port
Web browser has Flash support
Good audio quality
Office document viewer
Main disadvantages
Display performs poorly under direct sunlight
The S60 touch UI is clunky
Doesn’t charge off USB
Average loudspeaker performance
No DivX or XviD video support out-of-the-box
No office document editing (without a paid upgrade)
No camera lens protection

These days, communication over text-based channels is bigger than ever – SMS, email, Twitter, Facebook, IM to name but a few. And they have a certain advantage over voice calling. They’re cheap, or absolutely free, even when you’re reaching someone on another continent.

Nokia C6 pays us a visit

Text-based messaging is important. But as good as touchscreen input methods are getting (especially with clever tricks such as Swype), there’s just no match for a good hardware QWERTY keyboard.

There isn’t as much pressure on the Nokia C6 as there was on the N97 duo. The C6 is not a top-tier device – it’s a high volume device instead. You know, the one most people end up buying after deciding that the dream device costs too much.

So, how close exactly is the Nokia C6 to the N97 mini? Jump to the next page to find out how the hardware of both stacks up.

Retail package

The retail box covers the essentials and leaves it at that. You have the charger plus a (short) data cable. The charger is absolutely tiny – a good thing since you’ll have to carry it when you travel, as the Nokia C6 doesn’t charge off USB.

Nokia C6 retail package

The included headset is one-piece, so replacing the headphones while keeping the remote is not an option. There isn’t a stylus included in the Nokia C6 retail package but we don’t miss that too much.

A 2GB microSD card is supplied, but keep in mind that unlike the Nokia N97 and N97 mini, the C6 doesn’t have much of a built-in memory. You can use a bigger microSD card to compensate, the C6 supports cards of up to 16GB.
Nokia C6 spins 360-degrees

The Nokia C6 is somewhere between the Nokia N97 and the N97 mini in terms of size. It’s got a 3.2” touchscreen just like the N97 mini and the front face dimensions are about equal, too.

However, the C6 stands at 113 x 53 x 16.8 mm and weighs a hefty 150 g. It’s quite a bit thicker than the mini (and heavier). That’s almost a full millimeter thicker too than the regular N97.

Nokia C6 vs. the Motorola MILESTONE (DROID)

Unlike the N97 mini, the Nokia C6 has room on the keyboard for a D-pad (like the big N97). The downside here is that while the keys on both keyboards are about the same size, the ones on the C6 keyboard are cramped together.

We’ll discuss the keyboard in more detail later. For now, let’s just say that the Nokia C6 is on the chubby side of side-sliding QWERTY phones, but it’s not the chubbiest by far. For comparison purposes, the “petite” Sony Ericsson X10 mini pro is 17 mm thick and the Motorola MILESTONE weighs a hefty 165 grams.
Design and construction

It’s more than obvious the C6 is similar to the N97 in many ways. When closed however, it is a dead ringer for the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, the phone which very much set the overall look and feel for many of Nokia’s touch phones. Sliding it open is where the comparisons with the Nokia N97 duo begin.

And it should be where they end, at least regarding the keyboard itself. In many ways, it’s much closer to the Nokia E75 – no tilting display and a four-row QWERTY with no margin between the keys.

The C6 has a 3.2” resistive touchscreen of nHD resolution – the popular choice among Symbian phones. The 360 x 640 pixel resolution is quite right for that size, though obviously no match for the pixel-dense screens of high-end touch phones. The response of the resistive display is good enough, but not as good as capacitive displays are.

The 3.2″ display is pretty good

The sunlight legibility on the other hand is poor – taking the Nokia C6 outside on a sunny day means you’ll have to shield the display against bright sunlight if you want to see anything on the screen. That’s quite unlike Nokia N97.

Bellow the screen is the usual trio of green and red receiver keys and the menu key. The menu key is placed in the middle, like on the Nokia 5800. We liked the N97 solution better though of putting it on the side, skewed 45 degrees. That made the key equally easy to use in both portrait and landscape orientation. With the Nokia C6, you have to aim right between the call keys, but you’ll get used to it quickly.

Three keys and a touchscreen

There’s a lot going on above the screen with a bunch of sensors placed around the earpiece at the center. The C6 has an ambient light and a proximity sensor, and a dedicated QVGA video-call camera.

A couple of sensors, a video-call camera and the earpiece are on top

The controls on the sides of the Nokia C6 have a similar layout to that of the 5800 XpressMusic. On the right side, from top to bottom there’re the volume rocker, the lock/hold key and the shutter key. The left side features the protected microSD card slot.

The sides of the Nokia C6

At the top of the Nokia C6 is the sealed microUSB port. Right next to it is the 3.5mm audio jack, which is left exposed. The bottom of Nokia C6 holds the 2mm charger plug, the mouthpiece and the lanyard eyelet.

The audio jack and microUSB port on top • Charger plug, mic and lanyard eyelet the bottom

One important thing to note here is that the Nokia C6 doesn’t charge off USB – so, you’ll have to carry the charger (which is very compact, but still) when you travel.

The 5 megapixel camera lens is on the back of the Nokia C6, right next to the LED flash. Those aren’t protected by anything, so you’ll have to take care not to scratch them. To the right of the camera we find the single loudspeaker (no stereo speakers here).

The 5 megapixel camera and the LED flash are unprotected

Under the battery cover, there’s the SIM card compartment and a BL-4J battery rated at 1200mAh. It is the same capacity as the battery in the N97 mini and is quoted at 384 hours of standby (both 2G and 3G) and up to 7 hours (2G) or 5 hours (3G) of talk time.

The 1200 mAh battery

The Nokia C6 rear cover has a small latch that makes it very easy to open. The rear panel itself is quite wobbly however, which doesn’t make a very good impression.

The badly fitting battery cover aside, the build quality of the Nokia C6 is satisfactory. The matte plastic on the back is nice to the touch and, more importantly, fingerprint resistant. The front, with the touchscreen and all, will inevitably gather smudges, but that’s par for the course these days.

The QWERTY keyboard left a positive impression as did the smooth, spring-assisted slider. There’s an option to lock the phone when you close the slider, but you can’t set it to launch an app (say, the SMS composer) when you open it.

The Nokia C6 held in hand

Handling the Nokia C6 isn’t a problem – the phone allows comfortable one-handed operation and the weight balance is good. Its thickness is a bit of problem for pocketability though.
Comfortable QWERTY keyboard

So far the C6 basically sounds like a Nokia 5800 XpressMusic with a better camera. The major feature that the Nokia C6 has over its older cousin, however, is the QWERTY keyboard. The screen doesn’t tilt like it did on the N97 duo, but you can still comfortably hold the keyboard and look at the screen head on.

Opening the Nokia C6 – no tilting action here

The keyboard is comparable to the one on the Motorola MILESTONE (or DROID in the US) – and that’s quite a compliment. The keys are about the same size, but not as flat and with good feedback, making the keyboard very comfortable to use. The top row is somewhat cramped against the top half of the slider though.

The keyboard is pretty comfy and with good illumination • C6 vs. MILESTONE

The four-row QWERTY on the Nokia C6 has more keys and fewer symbols per key compared to the three-row keyboard of the N97, so occasions where you need to use the function key are rarer.

The backlighting of the keyboard is strong and quite even, so you won’t have problems using it in the dark.

The keyboard is accompanied by a D-pad – it’s on the right side this time rather than the left like it was on the N97. The Nokia N97 mini omitted the D-pad to leave more room for the rest of the keyboard. On the other hand, the wider borders between the keys on the N97 mini improved the typing experience.

We compared the C6 to the Nokia E75, another keyboard we quite liked. The two keyboards are very similar, however the keys on the C6 are smaller – because of the D-pad.

User interface

The Nokia C6 runs S60 5th edition and our test unit comes with the 10.0.024 firmware release. You must have seen plenty of Symbian in touchscreen action and nothing here should come as a big surprise.

Here is our unboxing and user interface video. If you want to skip the retail package exploration, the UI demo starts at 00:50.

We are glad to note that kinetic scrolling keeps on getting better. It is available almost throughout the user interface – from file and web browsers through gallery to contacts and even the main menu. Finger scrolling has been improved as well.

Until now widgets were limited to Nseries, but the C6 is kind enough to bring them on board. A widget-enabled homescreen mimics the good old Active Standby but instead of slots you now get nicely thumbable blocks. However, if you were hoping for thumb-scrollable multiple homescreen panes, you are again out of luck, even though the competition has had these for a long time.

S60 5th is in essence a direct translation of D-pad and soft-key action into touch. Although it has its benefits, the result is hardly the most fluent and intuitive touchscreen interface there is. Scrolling and accessing items across the interface is nothing like other touch platforms we’ve tried. On the other hand, soft-keys work just fine and enhance usability compared to other touch phones.

The S60 5th homescreen and menu

So, the user experience with S60 5th is a mixed bag and what you think of it will entirely depend on your background. If you know your way around S60, you’ll be quite at home with the C6 interface. But if you come from an alternative touchscreen platform you’ll find yourself climbing a fairly steep learning curve.

Opening an item in any of the listed submenus requires not one, but two presses – one to select, and another one to confirm the action. Now that’s something that you don’t normally see in other touch phones.

You get used to it with time, but the main issue here is that the interface logic is different when you deal with icons instead of lists.When the opened menu uses icons to represent items as opposed to lists, then a single click usually does the job.

At least kinetic scrolling will make you feel way more comfortable than those first 5800 XpressMusic users.
Homescreen and main menu

The main menu structure leaves no doubt you’re on Symbian turf. Icons are set in a 3 x 4 grid or a list that you can freely reorder. Screen orientation can be set to change automatically thanks to the accelerometer.

The homescreen layout of the C6 is typical Symbian and looks exactly the same as it did on the Nokia N97 mini.

A single press on the clock starts the clock application (with an option for setting up an alarm) while tapping on the date launches the calendar application.

Another tap, this time on the Profile button, leads you to the profile options where you can edit the currently active profile or change it (which does make using the the Power key for that purpose redundant).

Calendar, profiles and clock just a touch away

You can also access the connectivity menu from here by tapping around the battery status indicator, which is one of the ways to initiate a WLAN search. It is not as quick as having the WLAN Wizard as a homescreen widget.

Now, let’s take a closer look at the widgets. The space underneath the status icons and the clock can fit up to 5 widgets at a time. A sideways finger sweep will hide or display them.

There are plenty of widgets to choose from – there are tools like the WLAN wizard, music player controls, calendar, email, etc. There’s a widget for favorite contacts and a shortcut widget. You can have two of each at a time. The other widgets are linked to various sites and services: Facebook, MySpace, Bloomberg, CNN video and quite a few more.

The Nokia C6 widgets

The Ovi Store comes in handy when you get bored of the preinstalled widgets, but will cover that in more length later.

Arranging widgets is easy and fun. You can remove some of them, add others, change their order (just drag and drop). If all 5 slots have been taken, you have to remove one or more widgets to make room.

On the Contacts bar each contact is represented by the contact photo and their first name. Up to four favorite contacts can be displayed at a time and the list isn’t scrollable left or right.

Selecting a contact from the Contact bar brings up a screen with buttons to start a voice or video call, compose a text message or E-mail.

The Contacts bar • viewing a contact from the Contacts bar

The Shortcuts bar is ready to accommodate shortcuts to your favorite apps or web sites. You can even have two Favorite Contacts widgets and two Shortcut widgets displayed on the homescreen (if you happen to need them).

The Nokia C6 features a task manager which is launched by a press-and-hold on the menu key. The task manager itself is identical to what you get on Symbian S60 3.2 devices. Much like in the previous version of the UI, it appears on top of every pop-up menu. To close running applications use the hardware backspace key or press and hold the app’s icon to display two virtual buttons: Open and Exit.

The task-manager

The dedicated hardware switch on the right-hand side of the device will lock / unlock the phone. The lockscreen has a virtual swipe-to-unlock button .

A decent phonebook

The Nokia C6 phonebook has virtually unlimited capacity and its functionality is certainly among the best out there. The Nokia C6 contacts list also has kinetic scrolling enabled and it’s among the best examples to find on a Nokia touch phone.

Contacts can be freely ordered by first or last name and you can also set whether the contacts from the SIM card, the phone memory and the service numbers will get displayed.

The fully-functional phonebook

When searching for a contact you make use of a clever dynamic keypad, which shows you only the letters that correspond to actual contacts. Once you type in a first letter, their number decreases, leaving only the ones that actually make up real contacts names. A really convenient tool indeed, even if you have a real QWERTY keyboard to use.

Nokia have a pretty convenient solution for searching the contact list

Editing a contact offers a variety of preset fields and you can replicate each of them as many times as you like. You can also create new fields if you happen to be able to think of one.

You can also assign personal ringtones and videos. If you prefer, you may group your contacts and give each group a specific ringtone.

Editing a contact’s details in the S60 phonebook Nokia C6

The Call log keeps track of your recent communications. The application itself comes in two flavors – accessed by pressing the Call key on the stand-by screen or from the main menu. The first one brings 20 call records in each of its tabs for outgoing, received and missed calls.

The call log keep a detailed record of your recent communications

If you access the Log application from the main menu, you’ll see a detailed list of all your network communications for the past 30 days. These include messages, calls and data transfers.
Telephony: smart dial on QWERTY

Voice quality is good on both ends of calls, the earpiece sound is crisp and there were no reception problems whatsoever.

Smart dialing is enabled and the implementation is quite good. Ass soon as you hit a few keys on the keyboard, all the matches are displayed. You get the contact’s name and photo on screen – pressing and holding will bring up virtual buttons to start a voice or video call, or compose a text message.

Smart dialing works fine

You get an onscreen virtual dial pad too – it will be used we think, as the physical QWERTY keyboard doesn’t have a numpad – the number keys are on the top row (computer keyboard style).

The dialing pad

Voice dialing is also enabled on the Nokia C6. The voice dial mode is activated once you press and hold the Call key. It is fully speaker-independent and doesn’t require pre-recording the names of your contacts. Bear in mind though, that if you have multiple numbers assigned to a contact, it will dial the default one.

Thanks to the built-in accelerometer, you can silence an incoming call (or snooze an alarm) by simply flipping the handset over. Also when in calls, the proximity sensor makes sure the screen turns automatically off when you pick the phone up to your ear.

The in-call screen and available options

Using the hardware screen-lock switch you can not only unlock the phone but also silence it.

The Nokia C6 scored an Average in our traditional loudspeaker test. More info on our test can be found here.Speakerphone test Voice, dB Pink noise/ Music, dB Ringing phone, dB Overal score
Nokia E66 66.9 66.1 66.8 Below average
Sony Ericsson Vivaz pro 69.2 65.6 72.6 Below average
Nokia 5730 XpressMusic 68.7 61.7 75.1 Average
Nokia C6 68.0 61.7 77.3 Average
Sony Ericsson Aspen 71.0 66.6 75.7 Good
Palm Pre 71.3 68.0 80.3 Very Good
LG GW300 78.2 75.7 77.6 Excellent

QWERTY-fied messaging

The QWERTY-enabled Nokia C6 supports all common message types – SMS, MMS and email. They all share a common intuitive editor which by this point should be quite familiar to everyone.

The Nokia C6 message editor

The email client is really nice, there to meet almost any emailing needs. The easy setup we found in the latest Nokia handsets is also available with the C6. If you are using any public email service (it has to be among the over 1000 supported providers), all you have to do is enter your username and password to start enjoying email on the go. The phone downloads all the needed settings to get you going in no time.

Multiple email accounts and various security protocols are supported, so you can bet almost any mail service will run trouble-free on your Nokia C6.

Checking email

The client can download headers only or entire messages, and can be set to automatically check mail at a given interval. A nice feature allows you to schedule sending email next time an internet connection is available. This can save you some data traffic charges since you can use the next available WLAN connection instead.

Here might just be the right time to mention the input options on Nokia C6. Along with the pretty comfortable hardware QWERTY keyboard, the handset also offers a standard on-screen numpad and support for handwriting recognition. There is no virtual QWERTY keyboard.

The on-screen text input options: numpad and handwriting recognition

Image gallery is still quite slow

The gallery of Nokia C6 is nicely touch optimized and there are sweep gestures enabled for flipping through photos displayed fullscreen.

You can sort images by date, title or size and you can also copy, move and delete them. Sending them via Bluetooth, email, MMS or sharing them online is also available straight from here.

Browsing images on the Nokia C6

The default view is portrait but you can go to landscape automatically thanks to the built-in accelerometer. A slide show is also available but it doesn’t have as many customizable settings as on some Nseries handsets.

You can also zoom in the photos to see more detail. Zoom is controlled via either the volume rocker or an on-screen touch slider. In all other cases, images are displayed full screen.

The transition from portrait to landscape is automatic

One of the gallery problems is speed. Loading a picture takes a couple of seconds even for small images. If you have a large number of photos it might take ages before the thumbnails are generated. Zooming and panning are not that much faster either. On the other hand, kinetic scrolling has been vastly improved. The real nuisance though is that photos in a folder require a double tap to display – one to select, another to open.
Good ol’ music player

The Nokia C6 music player is pretty functional but its design could use a little freshening up – it hasn’t changed since we first saw it in the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. With user friendliness such a key aspect of full touch phones, it would be nice from Nokia to add some fun to the mix.

Your music library is automatically sorted by artist, album, genre and or composer and searching tracks by gradual typing is available. You can also create your own playlists in no time.

The music player does the job but could use a new skin

The process of adding tracks to the library is as simple as choosing the refresh option. You won’t need to do that if you upload the music via the proprietary PC Suite application. With the huge number of supported formats you will hardly ever come across an audio file that the phone won’t handle.

Album art is also supported and if you don’t like the default sound of the device you can enhance it by applying one of the five equalizer presets. And if they’re still not enough you can set new ones up in a matter of seconds.

Creating a new equalizer preset is easy

Quite naturally, the player can also be minimized to play in background. However , if you haven’t set the Music Player widget on the homescreen, you will have no way to control it. Your only option would be to go back to the full music player app using the Task manager.
Good audio quality

Nokia C6 isn’t the loudest handset around but provides nicely clean audio output. The readings it achieved in our test are very satisfying and there is very little to moan about really.

The frequency response indicates slightly cut-off extreme high frequencies (nothing you can actually hear anyway) and the intermodulation distortion is slightly high but that’s it. The noise levels, dynamic range and stereo crosstalk readings are just great, comparable to the best in class. Here go the results so you can compare it to some of the other handsets we have tested.Test Frequency response Noise level Dynamic range THD IMD + Noise Stereo crosstalk
Nokia C6 +0.11, -0.80 -90.5 90.2 0.0091 0.884 -90.4
Nokia N97 mini +0.05, -0.32 -90.5 90.4 0.0049 0.487 -91.0
Nokia N97 +0.04, -0.27 -90.7 90.7 0.0048 0.896 -89.5
Nokia 5230 +0.03, -0.05 -86.7 86.5 0.0033 0.016 -84.0
Nokia 5530 XpressMusic +0.11, -0.84 -90.9 90.8 0.010 0.454 -90.6
Nokia C5 +0.05, -0.25 -87.6 87.4 0.0046 0.019 -87.8

Nokia C6 vs Nokia C5 frequency response graphs

You can learn more about the whole testing process here.
DivX/XviD support is still a no-go for the video player

The ample screen generally makes watching a video on the Nokia C6 a pleasure. However the lack of DivX and XviD codecs makes actually playing one somewhat of a harder task.

Of course, you can use the Nokia PC suite built-in application that automatically converts all kinds of video files to the format and resolution your phone supports. The automatic converter though seems to compress the videos too much, even at the highest quality setting, and they look over pixelated’ but so far it’s the easiest way of getting compatible video to your handset.

The video player is somewhat of a disappointment

The video player itself only works in fullscreen landscape mode but, since anything else would have made the widescreen display useless, this is understandable. When in fullscreen, a tap on the screen shows the controls which are normally hidden.

Using the RealPlayer, you can not only watch the videos saved in the phone’s memory or in the memory card but also to stream Internet video content.
FM radio with RDS

The FM radio on Nokia C6 has a neat and simple interface and can automatically scan and save the available stations in your area. It also has RDS support and automatic scanning for an alternative frequency. This means that if you’re on the go, the C6 should take care of staying tuned to your selected radio station.

We have no grudges with the FM radio

Decent 5 megapixel camera

Nokia C6 has a 5 MP camera for a maximum image resolution of 2592×1944 pixels. The camera UI is similar to what you get in the 5800 XpressMusic, the N97 or the N97 mini.

All the settings are squeezed in a combined menu, except for the flash, which has its own dedicated shortcut. We understand that a tabular layout isn’t the easiest of things to do on this kind of device but some of the more important features could have had their own shortcuts too.

The camera UI

At least the range of settings that the Nokia C6 offers is extensive enough: from manual white balance and ISO to exposure compensation, sharpness and contrast. Various effects are also at hand, labeled as Color Tones.

Geotagging is enabled but the Nokia C6 omits some of the modern features competing manufacturers are using, such as face detection, smile detection and even blink prevention.

The viewfinder on the Nokia C6 doesn’t occupy the whole screen – a bar on the right is reserved for the touch controls. You have a settings button that launches a semi-transparent overlay of all available shooting options, a dedicated Flash button, an on-screen shutter key and finally, the Options menu key.

The on-screen shutter key seems absolutely redundant – it doesn’t have a half press/full press action to properly handle auto focus. It would’ve been way better to have a Quick Settings button instead.
Image quality

The picture quality is pretty decent by our books. First of all, resolved detail is more than adequate. Noise reduction finds a good balance between keeping noise levels low and preserving fine detail. There is no purple fringing whatsoever and the white balance and auto ISO settings are well tweaked. Photos have good contrast and accurate colors.

And there go some photo samples from the C6 camera.

Nokia C6 camera samples
Synthetic resolution

We also snapped our resolution chart with the Nokia C6. You can check out what that test is all about here.

Nokia C6 resolution chart photo • 100% crops
Video recording

The camcorder interface doesn’t differ from the still camera much. The camera can capture video in either VGA or the screen resolution (640 x 352 px) resolution, 30 fps in either case.

The camcorder UI

The C6 video quality is OK. Colors turn out just fine, but the compression seems too aggressive in most of the clips and produces noticeable artifacts. Anyway, VGA@30fps seems to be the best that Nokia can offer until N8 hits the market.

Here is a VGA video sample from the Nokia C6.
All-in-one connectivity

Smartphones are usually well-heeled in terms of connectivity and the Nokia C6 is no exception: all contemporary means of data transfer are supported.

User have GPRS, EDGE and 3G with HSDPA (3.6Mbps) at their disposal. The GSM/EDGE network support of course comes in quad-band flavor and the 3G is tri-band – 900/1900/2100.

Both USB and Bluetooth are version 2.0 and the latter naturally also sports A2DP. Wi-Fi with UPnP support is also at hand. There is a dedicated homescreen widget for the WLAN wizard.

A 3.5mm audio jack is also onboard and you’ll have no problems switching to your favorite headphones.

Unfortunately, Nokia C6 doesn’t charge off a USB connection. It’s a common issue among the midrange Nokia smartphones and C6 joins the unfortunate list.

Finally, the storage. Nokia C6 has 240MB internal storage, expandable via a microSD slot. A 2GB card is included in the retail box but you’re likely to need more. The C6 cannot match the built-in storage capacity of the N97 duo.

Web browser goes in right direction

The S60 web browser is decently usable, especially now that is also offers kinetic scrolling. Yet there is quite a lot of work remaining before it is able to rival the best in class. The Android and iPhone browsers are miles ahead in terms of user-friendliness.

The Nokia C6 browser has very good page rendering and boasts some nice features such as different font sizes (5 options), auto fill-in of web forms and a password manager.

The S60 web browser still needs some polishing

The built-in RSS reader will handle your feeds, while the download manager keeps things in order. There’s also a popup blocker, but bear in mind that you cannot open a new window in any other way but clicking a pop-up link. We’d have really preferred to see an option to open links in a new window.

A minimap is available for finding your way around elaborate pages and the Find on page feature is welcome. The visual history is a nice bonus that can help you easily find a page you’ve visited.

And now we get to Flash support. Yes, there is Flash support and it’s way better that it was back on X6. The YouTube videos we’ve tested did well with almost none dropped frames. Unfortunately the small screen and resolution won’t allow you to fit the whole YouTube screen in there. Luckily you’ll get about 80% of the windows, which should be enough. Of course, the mobile version of YouTube is always an option.

Watching YouTube videos

Another upgrade over the X6 web browser is the better kinetic scrolling. It now works fine and manages to catch up with most of its competitors.

Double tapping on a block of text zooms it in on screen, but again, the text doesn’t fit the zoomed area and you still need to scroll sideways.

So, generally speaking, the S60 touch-browser is going in the right direction but there’s still a lot of work to be done to catch up with the rest. The improved usability and performance is a nice start but it’s nowhere near the iPhone or Android standards. The same goes for the resolution, which is hardly a match for WVGA.
Organizer

The S60 5th edition organizer is pretty well stocked although its applications are already in need of refreshment – especially on a touchscreen. Some of the apps are starting to look boring and dated, having had the same interface for over 3 years now.

The developers are still hesitant to put the touch input of Nokia C6 to some good usage and maybe some cool new features. They have only gone as far as to touch-optimize the S60 3rd edition apps.

The calendar has four different view modes – monthly, weekly, daily and a to-do list, which allows you to check all your To-Do entries regardless of their date. There are four types of events available for setting up – Meeting, Memo, Anniversary and To-do. Each event has unique fields of its own, and some of them allow an alarm to be activated at a preset time to act as a reminder.

The organizer centerpiece – the calendar

Mobile office is also very well geared, with preinstalled applications able to open Word, Excel and PowerPoint files seamlessly.

Only viewing of documents is supported out of the box

Unluckily, editing documents is not supported by the included Quickoffice version. If you would like editing enabled you will have to get the upgrade at the Ovi Store for a fee.

The organizer package also includes a great unit converter, calculator and voice recorder, as well as the Notes application.

Some of the other organizer apps

The Active notes is advanced application for managing notes. It allows you to attach pictures, sound files or video clips to your memo and has nice and touch-friendly user interface. It’s not so daily used app, but still it will find its fans for sure.

Active notes, settings

The alarm application allows you to set up as many alarms as you want, each with its own name, trigger day and repeat pattern. If this seems too complicated, there is a quick alarm setup where all you do is set the time and you’re good to go. This is quite convenient for, say, setting up your wake-up alarm.

In addition, the number of alarms is not limited. Thanks to the built-in accelerometer you can also snooze the alarm by simply flipping your phone, much like with the Nokia 8800 Arte and 5800 XpressMusic.

We are quite fond of the alarm application

GPS, Ovi Maps and free voice navigation

The Nokia C6 comes with a built-in GPS receiver that managed to get satellite lock in about a minute upon cold start (A-GPS turned off at the time) and keeping the lock was not an issue for the C6 even in dense urban environments.

The phone comes with Ovi Maps 3.3 Touch preinstalled (the rebranded Nokia Maps). Since January 2010 all Nokia GPS-enabled Symbian handsets have free lifetime voice-guided navigation.

Ovi Maps navigation is currently available in 74 countries and 46 languages, with even traffic information for more than 10 of those. In addition, Nokia have also greatly upgraded the Ovi Maps application itself, so it now packs a cooler looking interface, the Lonely planet city guide and the Michelin restaurant guide with lots and lots of points of interest. There’s also an events guide that lists all events happening within a 3km range of your position and provides you with details on each one.

The touch-enabled Ovi Maps application itself is doing pretty well in terms of features too. It has four different view modes including satellite and hybrid maps. Those however do need an internet connection. The more regular 2D and 3D view modes are also at hand.

Ovi Maps 3.0 Touch application offers four different view modes

The route planning algorithm is also rather easy to customize to best suit your preferences. Toll roads and motorways can be avoided and so can tunnels and ferries. Route selection can be set to either fastest or shortest. The app is also usable for pedestrian navigation or you can switch the GPS receiver off and use the phone as a hand-held map.

Main menu • weather info • navigation • navigation options
Ovi Store

Browsing the Ovi Store, you can choose between several sections – Applications, Games, Audio and Video content, Personalization, Recommended and of course, My Stuff, which shows you the apps you’ve already installed.

The structure of the Ovi Store client is simple. It’s a list with the name and logo of each app (or podcast, or whatever), the category it’s in (Entertainment, Utilities, etc), price and a star rating out of three.

The Ovi Store has a simple but easy to use structure

Selecting an app, gives you more details – a description, info on size, reviews by people who have tried it, an option to write your own review or send the description page to a friend, a list of related apps and a Report issue button, which helps you report fraud, spam, abuse, etc., but not bug reports or feature requests.

Searching the Store is quite easy if the Recommended section and the Related apps list don’t get you what you’re looking for.

Our Nokia C6 came with very little preinstalled content: just a few apps and one game. Some of them are very handy tools for reading news, handling social networks, weather forecasts, etc.

Of course, since this is Symbian we are talking about, you can also pay a visit to some of the numerous software sites online. You can download the apps straight on your phone or on your desktop computer to transfer to the handset later.
Applications

The Nokia C6 comes with just a few preinstalled applications.

World Traveler is a handful open platform application developed by Psiloc. It offers four services – weather, world clock, currencies, and world map. More about this piece of software to be found here.

World Traveler

Nokia Drawing is a new and simple piece of software that lets you draw stuff with different colors and thickness of the pencil.

Nokia Drawing

The Bloomberg app brings you up to date financial information. It has four tabs – news, markets, my stocks, and a search section. If you are into finance, you can find out more about it at their website.

Bloomberg application

AP Mobile is an application that enables users to follow Associated Press news, offering personalized delivery of content. Consumers can browse stories and AP photo galleries as well as watch AP videos. Interesting images, videos or news can be directly shared via Twitter or Delicious.

AP Mobile is great for the Associated Press readers

There’re also Facebook, MySpace, Shazam, Friendster and hi5 social clients.

Some of the social clients

CNN Video app lets you watch videos from CNN news reports, while ESPNsoccernet caters to soccer fans – it has schedules, news, results, everything about soccer leagues around the world.

CNN Video • ESPNsoccernet
Only one game

The Nokia C6 comes with only one game preinstalled: Bejeweled Twist.

Final words

It may look like the same old same old prima facie, but that’s exactly what the C series are all about. They are just not the kind of phones to set the place on fire. It’s a lineup aimed at the mass market and it doesn’t need inspiration and creativity when a couple of tried and tested recipes will do.

The C series are the melting pot for designs, forms and features that are proven to work. It’s a low-cost and risk-free operation – what comes out of the C series isn’t burdened with expectations and is more or less immune to criticism.

Every phone in the C series can trace its lineage generations back. With the C6, it’s a clear case of N97 meets 5800 XM. Some may rightfully claim that Symbian touch UI needs quite a bit of genetic engineering to get things right. It can certainly use some new graphics, animations, transition effects and all that eye-candy but it isn’t up to the Nokia C6 to deliver it. There’s Symbian^3 and ^4 for that.

What you have every right to expect from the Nokia C6 is reasonable build quality, full-suite connectivity, great typing and reliability. And it delivers on all counts – save for a shaky battery cover (we hope it’s our unit) and the clunky touch interface.

On Symbian turf, the Nokia C6 has one major competitor, the Sony Ericsson Vivaz Pro. It has a similar screen, but far better processing and graphics, crowned with HD video recording. The features you sacrifice over Nokia C6 are the free voice navigation and access to the growing Ovi Store.

Sony Ericsson Vivaz pro

Among the Android species of QWERTY messengers, the Nokia C6 will have to watch out for the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 mini pro and LG GW 620. The X10 mini pro runs Android 1.6 Donut, but the Eclair update is on the way. The small size, the capacitive screen and the cool Timescape user interface count in X10 mini pro’s favor. The LG GW620 likes to keep a low-profile but might be a reasonable alternative as well.

Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 mini pro • LG GW620

The Motorola BACKFLIP and the MB220 DEXT are two QWERTY-enabled droids to offer you the MOTOBLUR UI, which takes social networking to a whole new level.

Motorola BACKFLIP • Motorola DEXT MB220 • Nokia N97 mini

The Nokia C6 is the most advanced and expensive C series phone so far but it obviously is on the cheap side of smart QWERTY messengers. It’s got quite a bit of pressure to handle from competitors and finds it hard to identify a unique selling point. Plus currently it goes for almost the same amount of money as the N97 mini and until its price moves down, the C6 will hardly earn a place for itself in the Nokia’s Symbian lineup. We are yet to see how things go though.

Source : http://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_c6_review-review-497p9.php

Nokia C6

Introduction

The Nokia C6-00 is the first hybrid form factor in Nokia’s new Cseries range. The Cseries fits in with Nokia’s plan to ‘democratise’ the smartphone market by providing the majority of flagship device functionality at a budget price. Clearly, the C6 will mostly be compared against the N97 mini. Over the forthcoming parts of this review I’ll explore how many compromises have been made to keep costs down with the C6, and how reasonable a price gap there is between it and its premium cousins.

The Nokia C6.
Specifications
Networks:
GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
HSDPA 900 / 1900 / 2100
WLAN IEEE 802.11 B/G
Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR
Operating System: S60 5th Edition (also now known as Symbian^1)
Storage:
RAM: 123.71MB (48MB available at cold start)
Internal drive C: 282.92MB
Peripheral storage: Micro SDHC (2GB supplied)
Screen:
3.2″ TFT
Resistive touch layer
640×360 “nHD” Pixels
Battery: BP-4J, 1200 mAh
Camera:
5 Mega-pixel
AutoFocus
Single LED Flash
Ports:
2mm Charging socket
Micro USB high speed data, not charging
3.5mm headphone socket
Physical dimensions:
Size: 113.4 x 53.0 x 16.8 mm
Volume: 80 cc
Mass: 150g
Navigation:
A-GPS
There is no digital compass
Design

In its closed form, the C6 is reminiscent of the Nokia 5800. This is due to its rounded corners, screen size, and three physical keys for call, menu and end. The end key doubles as the power key too (and thus profile menu launcher). The front of the C6 is otherwise quite featureless, which makes for a nice clean look. An early sign of the budget components used is with the touch screen. This is noticeably soft, like earlier touch screen phones from Nokia. Also, holding the screen up to the light reveals distorted reflections, demonstrating that the surface is not perfectly flat. This isn’t necessarily due to the resistive technology being used, as I have reviewed the Vivaz Pro, whose resistive touch screen was firm, almost feeling like a capacitive touch screen. Having said all that, the C6’s touch screen is perfectly responsive and accurate in everyday use.

The Nokia C6 – Closed.

The size and shape of the C6 are my main complaints with its design. While it is a good looking device, it doesn’t feel good to hold. The rear is so prominently curved, and it is fairly narrow, that it can be tricky to get a firm grip for one-handed operation. It can often be the proverbial slippery bar of soap, and I’ve already dropped the C6 more times than I’d care to mention (fortunately, only a few inches to my desk!). This problem continues into sliding the screen aside to access the keyboard. The screen section constitutes the only flat area of the C6’s side, and so there is only the sloped rear section to press against when sliding the screen. There is a definite learning process to know how to apply sufficient pressure to the curved rear side so that the screen will move, without the whole phone popping out of one’s hands.

Note the wide curvature around the back of the C6.

On the subject of the sliding screen, its action is firm and satisfying. The only sign of a budget mechanism is when the C6 is viewed side-on, where a clear millimetre gap is visible between the two sections. Again, this has no effect on everyday use, and there is absolutely no compressional movement between the two sections.

The base of the C6 is a clean design, with the microphone and lanyard holes clustered together at one corner. Adjacent to those is the 2mm charging socket, which has a little surprise. The plastic sleeve around the socket illuminates via a white LED, to indicate charging. It is a constant light, and so has no way to indicate that the C6’s battery is fully charged though.

The C6’s base, with illuminated charging port.

The top of the C6 is similarly sparse, just having the 3.5mm headphone socket and a covered microUSB socket. As mentioned above, the end key doubles as the power key, which means one less button on top! The port cover works fairly well and is similar to that found on the E72; although I would have preferred a cover that could have rotated out of the way. Another point of criticism to make is that the USB port is for data only, it will not charge the battery. This is a real backwards step and is probably one of the budgetary compromises of the C6. If you want to transfer files and charge the C6 at the same time, you have to have wires coming out of the top and bottom of the phone. It would have been preferable to have had data and charging sockets adjacent to each other, if they had to have mutually exclusive functions.

The C6’s top – featuring a 3.5mm heaphone socket and covered microUSB port (which doesn’t charge the battery).

The right side of the C6 has the usual complement of volume keys, screen lock slider, and camera shutter button. The buttons certainly have a no-frills feel to them, particularly so because they are narrow pieces of plastic with uncomfortably sharp corners. However, this is partly due, again, to the curvature of the C6’s back. The degree of curvature leaves little area to fit in button slots, which makes them necessarily narrow and thus uncomfortable. Despite this, it should be said that the two-stage action on the camera button works well and provides enough tactile feedback. The left side of the C6 is pleasingly blank, with just a discrete cover for the microSDHC card slot.

Right side – Two stage camera button, screen lock slider, and volume keys.

Left side – Just the microSDHC card slot cover.

The back of the C6 is dominated by the matt plastic battery cover, which features cut-outs for the camera, LED light, and speaker. With the C6’s budget nature in mind, I wasn’t expecting much of its speaker, but I was pleasantly surprised. It has enough volume to fill a small room, and there is only a very slight distortion with high frequencies, perfectly acceptable for everyday use. The battery cover stays firmly in place, and it is held on by a plastic catch, which again reflects on the budget materials. The cover doesn’t spring open when the catch is pressed, so one has to hold the catch back, and at the same time lever the cover off with a finger nail.

The rear of the C6, including a metal back plate as part of the sliding mechanism.

There is no camera cover on the C6. The camera glass is slightly recessed to avoid excessive scratching. However, it isn’t recessed enough to avoid picking up grease from your hand during normal phone use. On the bright side, the lack of a cover means the LED is available to use as a torch (e.g. using PhoneTorch or Bright Light Touch). We’ll be returning to look at camera performance in a later part of our review.

The C6’s 5 megapixel camera. Note the lacquered effect bezel.
Battery Life

Beneath the battery cover is the SIM card slot and the 1200mAh BP-4J battery. It is not surprising that the battery life isn’t stellar on the C6. Especially considering many Eseries devices last for days with a 1500mAh battery and only a 2.4″ screen to illuminate. While the likes of the N97 mini and C6 have a much larger screen to run, but with 20% less battery capacity. For simple phone duties, the C6 will last a day. Mind you, trying to maintain a data connection, or do anything that will drive the screen for a long time, will quickly exhaust the BP-4J battery.

The Nokia C6’s battery
Keyboard

When the C6’s screen is slid aside, the full QWERTY keyboard is revealed. I expect that most people will be pleased with this keyboard. The C6 sports a d-pad, rather than cursor keys. However, the d-pad has a bowl-like design that is comfortable in one or two handed operation, and is not a problem to reach over while typing. One unfortunate aspect is that the d-pad’s select button is vertically aligned with, and adjacent to the delete key. This can potentially lead to a literal faux pas; e.g. causing a message to be sent prematurely. This problem was completely avoidable by simply leaving some space between the d-pad and the keyboard, there is plenty of empty space on the right-hand side of the d-pad for it to have been moved a few millimetres.

The Nokia C6 d-pad. Very comfortable to use, but the select key is too close to the delete key.

The keyboard is sensibly set out, with modifier keys grouped together on the left-side of the bottom row. In comparison to other QWERTY keyboards, the C6 caters for more popular symbols by not requiring a modifier key, e.g. for ‘@’, the apostrophe, and question mark. Another good difference between the C6 and N97 mini keyboard is that there are four rows, rather than the mini’s three rows (see my editorial on keyboard geometries). However, the C6 keys are softer than those found on the N97 mini. It’s subjective as to how this affects individuals, but it’s worth being aware of when choosing which phone to buy. Another subjective point is the placement of the space-bar, which is still off-centre, as with the N97 and N97 mini. This is a design decision which may have as many fans as critics, although it is interesting to note that from the N97 to the N97 mini, and now to the C6, that the space bar seems to be drifting towards centre with each iteration.

The QWERTY keyboard of the Nokia C6 – set out well and comfortable to use.
Software first impressions

Later instalments of this review will look at all of the C6’s software in greater detail. However, to give a a brief overview, it would be fair to say that anyone familiar with the the N97 or N97 mini will be at home with the C6. To start with, there is the same widget-based home screen, the standard Symbian PIM applications, and Quickoffice viewers for MS Office files and PDF files. A notable addition is the Nokia Messaging e-mail client, as seen in S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2 Eseries phones, a very welcome addition. The C6 also comes with Ovi Maps 3.3, not the latest version, but recent enough for free navigation.

The Nokia C6 sporting the N97-style home screen widgets.

Source : http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/reviews/item/Nokia_C6_Part_1_First_Impressions_and_Hardware.php