Nokia X6 (5)

Video Home System… on your mobile

As well as capturing your own video, you can bring over video from your desktop to watch on the move. The 16:9 ratio screen of the X6 suddenly comes into its own here, as the video is automatically rotated, even if you have the rotate sensors turned off. Smart thinking Nokia – get whoever did that looking at the rest of the UI please. Placing the speakers on the bottom of the unit makes a little less sense. If you have a stand for the unit then you get some reflection of the tabletop, but most of the time the phone is in your hand and you need to do some reorganising of your fingers to keep the speaker pathways clear.

Video codecs have always been a bit hit and miss when getting video from one format on your desktop computer over to a portable device. Thankfully, users of the latest version of PC Suite and Ovi Suite have a much easier choice. Connect the X6, open up the main Suite window and note the “Drag and Drop content here to copy to your phone.” Slide a video file on there, let the CPU do its magic, and over the file goes to your X6, for viewing in the Gallery application.

How good is this conversion and video file handling? Well I decided to give it the biggest stress test I could find. The 2008 Eurovision Song Contest Grand Final. A three and a half hour long HD video file. And while it took well over an hour to convert the file, the resulting file plays as smoothly as you would want it to on the X6 screen. You can scan and jump around the file without the video player stuttering, the sound stays in sync right to the end.

Conversion and playback gets a ‘douze points’ [enough of the Eurovision! – Ed]. Unfortunately, the organisation of these videos on the device leaves quite a bit to be desired. The videos you transfer over are listed in the same Gallery section as the videos you shoot with the X6 camera; the thumbnail is the first frame of the video; and you have to do an extra click on the video file to see the file name. You will need to explore a bit every time to find the latest episode of Glee on your phone, it seems.

If Nokia continue to push video on their smartphones, they’re going to need something with at least the organisational ability of the Music Player.

(Oh yes, and if the BBC iPlayer team are reading this, can you update the client so it recognises the X6? Ta!)

Loading up the Tunes

In its current version, the X6 is one of Nokia’s Comes With Music phones, and as such there’s a reliance on the Ovi Music application to load up a huge volume of music. I’ve looked at Comes with Music and both the Ovi Music Store and PC application previously, so it’s far easier to point you to that article (Comes with Music in the Real World), because the desktop software itself hasn’t changed – although the musical choice has expanded in the last six months, as you would expect.

The Music Store client on the X6 works much like previous clients, but there is a hint of UI improvements in here that mirror what we’re seeing of the proposed UI for Symbian^4. In any case, the capacitive screen makes this easy and friendly to use with a gentle touch of your finger. This makes all the difference, as well as the Music Store ecosystem that allows you to re-download tracks, grabbing some while on the road and the rest when you get back to your computer.

One of my favourite bugs has to be in the Music Player and the DRM. Each Comes with Music tracks needs to be validated by the DRM certificates, and I’ve had two occasions when the Music Player simply locked up and refused to play. Thankfully a restart sorted the problem but was the quirk one of low memory or of DRM issues? I’m unsure – it’s likely the former but this sort of error would make most people think twice about their music collection.

The User Interface that used to work

It’s fair to say that a lot of the perceived improvements in the X6 are down to just one thing… Columbo. The capacitive screen. This lifts the touch enabling away from an accuracy focused stylus control (or the careful application of a fingernail) to something that requires just a glancing touch from your fingers or thumb. It makes the X6 much more enjoyable when compared to the 5800 and its resistive screen, and that alone has me incredibly tempted to upgrade to the X6.

As an aside, I’d expect capacitive screens to become the default touch screen on smartphones in 2010 and beyond, and I’d recommend any touch-based device looking to capture the high end markets to focus on using capacitive tech.

Many of you will probably think that there are two things I should be mentioning – the second being that of kinetic scrolling. I disagree, because while kinetics are present, it’s been added in a haphazard and inconsistent way. In my opinion, if you are going to have scrolling that continues when you flick your finger along and off the screen, then you need to have it in every area of scrolling – not just in the bits you think need to be updated.

The second kinetic fail is something that on the surface seems incredibly picky, but actually has a huge impact on the user experience. Different applications, menus and dialogs all scroll at a different speed when scrolling, and some are more ‘sticky’ than others. There is no opportunity to build up a consistent muscle memory in terms of moving through screens of information, forcing you to always look at the screen and guess what will happen next. That’s before you are forced to consider that this page might be one that doesn’t even have kinetic and you are left looking at a scrollbar on the side.

That Nokia have done nothing more than the bare bones to get touch working across all their devices is an agreed rule of thumb, but the annoyances of an inconsistent interface, when a few apps in the X6 have touches of joy and understanding, is baffling and infuriating at the same time. In waiting to do touch (on S60) for so long, and then doing a poor job (continuing to do a poor job, when you look at the feedback from the 5800 and the N97 range) Nokia have seriously dropped the ball and other manufacturers have punted it a long way up the field.

Adventures in going online

Of course, getting online, once a quirky thing to do with a phone, is now expected. The X6 hasn’t made any leaps here, coming with the regular Webkit-powered Nokia Browser for web browsing. As mentioned above, the ease of touch makes moving around a web page much easier, and this is one of the big improvements the X6 has over the 5800 and other resistive screen devices. Where the web browser breaks down? An almost invisible amount of kinetic scrolling. It’s there, but maybe for about five pixels worth before it slows and stops.

I’m not that fussed over the non-inclusion of elements such as pinch to zoom – while it would be nice to have, it’s known from only one major device, and I’m sure the lawyers would have a field day if it was included. That didn’t stop me from actually trying it once or twice without thinking, but on the whole it wasn’t missed.

Email is part of the Messaging application, and again, little has been altered here. The same good parts of the app, such as the set-up new account wizard are here, as well as the ability to set up regular times for the app to check in and get your mail (thus largely negating the need for push email); and with the screen size you get far more text than on the equivalent 320×240 screens on the older/Eseries Nokia phones.

But the negatives are all there as well. Messaging still doesn’t handle HTML formatted email, you’re left with very few choices in terms of what information to display in the inboxes and will spend most of the time with the first half of an email address and two words of the subject to help you sort through your mails. Again, it’s an app that’s not been updated, for the same reasons as all the others.

The capacitive screen doesn’t have as much impact here, and what there is comes across as a negative. Sarcastic thanks to Nokia for not making its mind up if it wants a one-tap metaphor (touch something and a specific action is performed), or a two-tap metaphor (once to highlight, and then you have to click the highlight to perform the specific action).

Oh and as for the PIM suite – it’s almost identical to every other Nokia phone on the market… underpowered, no flexibility, not enough fields to allow full syncing and it’s still not fixed.

Summary

It’s saying something that for a device with so many icons, the out of the box application load out is quite small. The X6 handles video and audio media well (at least it will do in the future), it’s got a good camera for you to create content with, and it goes online and does what it is asked for under most circumstances. Does a smartphone targeted at the upper middle end of the market need much more? Maybe not… after all, the 5800 managed to do very well with an almost identical software set.

Source : http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/reviews/item/Nokia_X6_Review_pt_4_Apps_Apps_Glorious_Apps.php 

Nokia X6 (4)

Where do Nokia see the X6 in its media line up? Obviously music is going to play a large part, and we’ve spent some considerable time looking at the built in Music player. Next up is the media you capture yourself… photos and video.

The X6 is carrying the Carl Zeiss lens that the majority of high end Nokia phones carry, and it’s a similar sized lens to that which is present on the Nokia N95. Of course, we’ve shown that simply chucking in this lens and a five megapixel camera aren’t going to give you identical results because there are a huge number of factors that make up a good camera phone.

Luckily, Nokia have (unlike other areas of the X6) carried on the iterative process of getting a good picture, tweaking settings for sharpness and colour, and lots of arcane bits and pieces. The end result is that you can get some perfectly acceptable ‘fun’ pictures out of the X6 as long as you take a little bit of care [or aren’t called Ewan Spence – Ed]. They’re certainly as good as those from a low end standalone pocket camera, with the advantage that you’re always sure to have the X6 in your pocket.

To help out in low light situations, the X6 comes with a dual LED flash. No it’s not the Xenon flash that some commentators think is needed in a camera phone, but there have been huge improvements in LED flash technology and this is miles better than the original N95’s single LED flash.

Video quality is also great for a pocket device, although Nokia’s insistence on sticking to a maximum frame size of 640 by 480 pixels is starting look a little bit short-sighted, with HD video featuring in a number of smartphones, and available on the High Street in portable Kodak and Flip cameras. Is it vital to this phone? Strictly speaking no, but the current package is a pricey one thanks to the Comes With Music package, and at that price you’d expect to have a well specced out phone. I think HD video recording is going to have to be added into the next run of phones coming out at the end of 2010. The X6 (just) manages to get away without its inclusion.

As well as VGA at 640×480, you’re also offered 640×352 resolution – almost the same pixel resolution as the X6 itself, and (handily) in the widescreen 16:9 ratio that’s becoming more popular online. You can record up to 30 frames per second, and the sound is an acceptable (but not brilliant) 96kbps bitrate.

Thankfully there’s no memory leak while using the camera, so the worries that I had in using the music application are not here, and I’m more than happy to trust my snaps and memories to the X6. As I said above, this is a phone that should be with you at all times. In that sense an above average phone always with you (e.g. the X6) is far better than a high quality camera you only carry occasionally.

The external camera button with two pressures, one for focus/lock and one for taking the picture, has been a feature of Nokia’s design for a long time, and I’m glad to see that it is still here and working well. The preference to have the camera application brought to the foreground when you first (long) press the button means that getting to the app quickly is easy.

Classic bowl of fruit shot using the LED Flash (click through for full image)

What’s not great are the rest of the controls of the camera. When you’re sitting around inside, calling up the options screen (with the twelve icons) is a sensible interface, and is easy to navigate. However, there are two problems with this. The first is a small but practical one. Thanks to the capacitive screen requiring skin contact to register a touch (as opposed to a resistive screen just needing pressure), the X6 is torture to use outside in the ongoing cold weather…. needing my gloves off to take a picture of the snow might not induce frostbite but it’s not something I looked forward to.

The second is an issue that all the S60 5th edition touch based phones have; the mix of two different user interface paradigms. The first is the pop up icons for settings, which in my mind is exactly what a touch phone needs. The second is the ‘classic’ S60 menu system, hanging off the ‘Options’ button. By using two ways of presenting information and changes to the user, Nokia kills any feel of a joined up device because the brain is always switching between two ways of doing things.

What could be a problem is the camera lens cover, which is left exposed to the elements. There is a raised lip around the plastic, but I doubt this is going to stop any small rough elements reaching the lens (or keys in your pocket).

The underlying processing and hardware is acceptable, but the S60 5th Edition software is yet again a kludge of menus and options held together by string code.

Once you’ve captured the media, you’ve got options to edit and touch up your creations. For your pictures, as well as altering the colour levels, brightness and contrast of your images, you have some basic clip art and the ability to add captions and annotations.

Edinburgh in the Summertime (Click through for full pic).

I liked the red eye removal option, and given my camera skills, this can prove useful. The basic video editor that I loved using on previous 3rd Edition devices is back here – via the Gallery application, you can edit each clip either to trim out a shorter clip from your raw footage taken on the camera, or to merge two video clips and add captions. You also have the option to replace the soundtrack with any music or recorded audio on your phone.

While both of these editing options are relatively basic, given the focus Nokia has placed on sharing media and interacting with networks like Facebook directly from the handset, the ability to make a few quick (if coarse) changes before you send them up to the internet is actually pretty useful. I’ve tended to boost the brightness and colour in quite a few images so it would be nice if these tweaks would become an automatic filter, but that would be icing on the cake.

Nokia’s Share Online application is still in here, allowing you one touch uploads of your media to Flickr, Vox and Nokia’s Ovi services. There have been no visible updates to this service in recent years, and like many of these services if your favourite is supported then it becomes very smooth and quick to use – which means that as a Flickr user I’m pretty happy.

As always, you have the option to email your pictures in, and most web services have an email gateway you can use as well, so there is always a fall-back. It’s a pretty competent fallback as well, one that I’m happy to use. It’s nice that the handful of widgets that give you out the box connections to Facebook, MySpace and other sites will also allow you to upload pictures already in the device gallery, or to take new pictures.

Just as in the Music Player, Nokia have done little more than port their existing software into the X6. Sure it might have the new capacitive screen, new physical styling and a decent bit of camera hardware for a phone of this type, but the camera software is showing its age. The editing capability is a welcome addition (actually more a return as it’s similar to that which came in the original N95), but Nokia haven’t really put the effort in on the software side.

It doesn’t matter if this is down to a shortage of developers, a focus of resources on the next Symbian release for a new device this year, or simple mis-management, the X6 really does deserve something a little better than this.

Source : http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/reviews/item/Nokia_X6_Review_pt_3_life_through_a_lens.php

Nokia X6 (3)

Part two of a phone review here on All About Symbian is typically where we look at the major software elements of the review unit to see just how well it holds up in its primary role. Sometimes it takes a bit of time to work to work out what the phone’s main use is… the E75 is a good example here (after six months we’re all agreed that the E75 was the “brilliantly average in every single way” phone). But for the X6 this task is incredibly simple.

The box has a slip cover around it advertising the Comes with Music service; you can (currently) only buy the phone with this all you can listen to music service; there is a music icon is at the top of the quick access launcher… even without stepping out and hitting you over the head with a drumstick, you know this is a music phone.

Which means that I have to wonder why Nokia have let the X6 out of Finland in the state that it’s in – it’s almost unforgivable. The amount of free RAM after booting the phone (less than 45MB, with a full-loaded Music player then grabbing 20MB of this for itself) is even less than on the N97, so applications shut down as others are opened, screen changes and animations are jerky and slow to activate… but that’s not the worst part. The Music Player is buggy, slow and (both Steve and I are pretty sure that) there is a memory leak in this key application for the phone.

A real world load out, but The Muppets needed a reboot to be verified

Was nobody testing this? Did they never think to try playing music in the background while browsing some photos? Or going online with the web browser at the same time as listening to some Steeleye Span? It’s embarrassing for me to be afraid to run anything else on the X6 while listening to music because it might crash and require a power cycle to get working again. Over the New Year I had an overnight trip to make, and on these trips I tend to keep my headphones in and Mike Oldfield’s “Songs of Distant Earth” looping quietly in the background. As Lennon sings, whatever gets you through the night.

At the bottom of my travel bag is an iPod Nano. It’s my ’emergency’ MP3 player when I’m away and is normally there for those long trips if something catastrophic happens to my main devices. After about ninety minutes with the X6 cutting out, crashing, refusing to play tracks because it was lost in a ‘verifying licence’ loop, I shut the X6 down in disgust and switched to the dust-encrusted Nano for the rest of the trip.

Yes we have Apple products as well.

Okay, this should be a problem that Nokia solves at the very next firmware update, so the rest of this part of the review is not going to specifically mention the memory problems again. But come on – the music player crashing within ten minutes of switch on? You missed this? Seriously?

Right then, I’m on record as thinking that Nokia’s Music Player application is one of their better applications, and was probably the leading music interface when it was updated on the N95 8GB. In last year’s 5630 review, I lamented that it hadn’t really been updated since then and was starting to look a little tired.

Well a few months later, and paired up with the latest screen technology, Nokia have made a few changes to the Music Player application to accommodate the capacitive screen – and in the process have removed the one key benefit the Music App still had.

Search is gone.

I had to check with the 5800, and it was still there in the last touch screen music phone – the second entry in the Options menu was “Find”, allowing you a look-up option over your song database. On the X6, it’s nowhere to be seen. Unless you can remember exactly what you have in your music collection then you’re left to just randomly browse trying to find that song with “Diane” in the title. Given the sheer volume of new music that Comes with Music will be able to supply, the loss of this feature is crazy, especially given the 32GB of storage.

There is a workaround – the global Search application in S60 does have the option to search for music. But the ability to search your music is not in the music application. There’s not even a shortcut to the search app (but there is a menu entry to launch the Music Store widget). There are times when pointing out the designer is right is the correct thing to do. This isn’t one of them. Search your music should be in the music app.

I think I know what’s going on – the ‘tweaked’ touchscreen version of the Music Player for the N97has been carried over into the X6. That didn’t have “Find” on the menu either, but critically the N97 and N97 mini had a Qwerty keyboard. Start typing on that, and you found that this was kicking up a quickmatch system. The X6… er… has no keyboard. So why has something that worked on the 5800 been taken away? Because Nokia wanted the X6 to do less than the phone it’s replacing?

That’s a bucket of fail right there.

Next up is the MP3 playback. Yet again, Nokia has released a device that doesn’t support gapless playback. While I wasn’t expecting this to be added, it would have been nice. What was more upsetting is the gap itself. Compared to the 5800, the gap is a little bit longer, and the MP3 decoding software has managed to add two two tiny clicks when going between the tracks – one when the older track ends and a second when the newer track starts. A similar background tick happens when jumping back to the start of the track. Not nice, not nice at all.

Now that there is a significant amount of music on the X6, the Music Player’s limitations in navigation are beginning to show. There are small inconsistencies throughout the app – things that should be available in every screen, or displayed in every list just aren’t there. For example, when you look at a track listing for an album, you get a handy icon that lets you know which track is playing (or paused), which helps as you scroll through a list. Go back one step though, to the list of albums and the icon disappears – why would you not want to let me know what I am listening to?

Play/Pause shown on one list, but not the next.

It’s easy to point to the menu and say “just use the ‘now playing’ option” but that’s not the point. A UI should be consistent, deliver extra value without extra clicks, and just work. As a music-focussed smartphone with a capacitive screen, the X6 will be compared to the iPhone – and the respective music apps and their UI’s will be where many users spend a lot of time.

You want another crazy example? Let’s take album art, specifically my copy of Mike Oldfield’s “Amarok” (more Oldfield? Are we getting The Exorcist as a video test? – Steve). Looking at the album listings, there’s no cover art. Go into the album and the track listing, and (in an effective move) the artist and album are listed at the top. With no cover art. Click on the album track to the playback screen, and what do you see… Cover art!

No I don’t understand why it’s in one place and not another either.

Album art – Now you see it, now you don’t

Even when album art shows up in the listings, it is incredibly slow to actually be displayed. There is a noticeable gap of a second or so between opening up a song or album list and seeing the text appear, and then the artwork. Can these not be cached somewhere so they appear the moment the screen is displayed? Other portable media players in phones can manage this.

The speed of navigating the Music Player UI is slow. You will find yourself waiting for the X6 to catch up on almost any browse through your music. There must be a better way to handle this, because again it’s going to lose in any head to head comparison. By a mile.

And yes, it’s time to do a complete clean sheet re-write on the music player – there are too many bits that have been added as required, with little overall vision. It’s great that you can now kinetically scroll through the listings, and I love the touch of having the initial letter on display in the middle of the screen as you use the scroll bar. I just wish that these cues were consistent over the whole application, and had a logical progression, rather than the mish-mash on show.

Yet again, the lack of joined up thinking from Nokia seems to be hurting a damn good product. Instead of just grafting on bits to an app that was pretty spiffy on the N95, they should have started again. If they were smart, the experience on the X6 would be very similar to the experience of the Ovi Music Player on your PC – as it is there are completely different methodologies at work between the two elements… the X6 plays music instantly and moves down a track listing, while the Ovi Player on the PC puts tracks in a “play queue” (like a temporary playlist) and you listen to that, not the next track on the album. Make your mind up Nokia!

Given that blank sheet of paper, I’d want the Finns to look at making a more visual contrast between the name of the Album and the Artist in a track listing; I’d like to see the ID3 tag element of “Album Artist” picked up so that compilation albums are listed as “Various Artists” if that is in the field, rather than the first artist on the album; I’d like an option so the volume keys work even when the device is locked, and I’d certainly want a faster way to get to the music controls from a keylocked phone that doesn’t have the music app already in the foreground.

The music application needs a lot of work to bring it up the expected standard in 2010. The annoying thing is that it is ‘close’ to brilliance, but to get those final few percentage points that make this a great app, and make the X6 a top notch music phone, that will require something more than bolting on a nice touch screen and adding in a few extra bits of code.

Source : http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/reviews/item/Nokia_X6_Review_pt_2_the_central_core_of_music.php 

Nokia X6 (2)

Introduction

In the world of Nokia it’s all about evolution, rather than revolution. So don’t expect the specs on the X6 to blow your mind. The handset is the next step for the market leader scrambling to make up for a late start in touch- screens. To be honest, the Symbian S60 touch edition has been struggling to catch up with the standard setters in terms of user experience. And the X6 claims to have the answer: the responsiveness only a capacitive screen can bring.

Nokia X6 official photos

The Nokia X6 is also the first XpressMusic handset to head straight for the high-end. Midrange is the highest the music Finns have gone so we are interested to see how this change of approach works. Nokia have always had a strong appeal to the masses, but pleasing the selected few is undoubtedly harder.
Key features:
Quad-band GSM support
Tri-band 3G with HSDPA support
3.2″ 16M-color TFT LCD 16:9 capacitive touchscreen (360 x 640 pixels)
Symbian S60 5th edition UI
ARM 11 434 MHz CPU, 128 MB of RAM memory
5 megapixel autofocus camera with dual-LED flash
VGA video recording at 30fps
Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, UPnP technology
Built-in GPS receiver
32GB built-in storage
FM radio with RDS
Bluetooth and USB (standard microUSB connector) v2.0
3.5mm standard audio jack
Very good audio quality
Proximity sensor for screen auto turn-off
Accelerometer sensor for automatic UI rotation and motion-based gaming
Stereo speakers
TV out
“Comes with music” edition gives you a year of all-you-can-eat music subscription
Landscape on-screen virtual QWERTY keyboard
Ovi Maps 3.0 Touch
Further Ovi and MySpace service integration (direct image and video uploads)
Most regional retail packages include a set of the great Nokia WH-500 headphones
Main disadvantages:
X6 is still quite pricey (around 500 euro at the time of writing)
UI is still immature with somewhat inconsistent user experience
Touch web browser not quite polished and with dodgy Flash support
No voice-guided navigation license
No office document viewer preinstalled
Doesn’t charge off microUSB
Very poor sunlight legibility
Slow image gallery
No DivX/XviD support for the video player
No microSD card slot (as a connectivity solution)

As you can see in the two lists above there is almost nothing new in the software package, so it all falls on the hardware to justify the high asking price. The well-stuffed retail package is a great place to start but does the capacitive screen improve usability enough to be worth the extra money over, say, the 5800 XpressMusic? And the difference in price is by no means trivial.

Nokia X6 at ours

In the increasingly competitive touchscreen market manufacturers don’t have much room for error. The unpolished S60 UI is enough of a burden already, so Nokia X6 has to be near perfect in every other respect. A tall task indeed, but let’s see how they’ve tackled it.

Nicely geared retail package

The retail box of the Nokia X6 really manages to sweeten the whole deal. It doesn’t have too many items inside but the Nokia WH-500 headset is a real gem. At the price of an entry-level Nokia phone on its own, the stereo headphones are the kind of accessory music lovers will be delighted to get.

Nokia X6 retail package

The WH-500 headset isn’t of course the best piece of audio equipment money can buy but it gets near enough so most people won’t even see (or rather hear) the difference. The audio experience is miles away from the one you get from the regular headphones Nokia usually include in their retail packages. And as a small bonus, the remote on the cord is also nicely designed.

The WH-500 headphones

Nokia must’ve thought (and quite reasonably) there’s no way users will need a different headset, so they designed the whole thing together rather than using a detachable remote on the headphones.

Bear in mind though that Nokia chose to ship the X6 without a replacement in-ear set instead of the WH-500 headphones in some markets so you’d better check out the package contents before handing out the money. We don’t say you shouldn’t get the phone without them, we simply mean you should only do so if the price is adequately lower.

The other things that you will find in the box are a charger and a microUSB data cable. Luckily this time, Nokia included a regular cable rather than the extra short thingies they’re so keen on shipping with their midrange phones.

A small booklet with the key you will need for enabling your Comes with Music service is also included. Finally, there’s the usual CD and quick user guide that we suspect 95 percent of the users never get around to even unpacking.

You can also check out our Nokia X6 unboxing video.

Nokia X6 360-degree spin

At 111 x 51 x 13.8 mm, the Nokia X6 fit perfectly in our hands. That, of course, is strictly a personal thing and it’s best that you check it out yourself. It doesn’t take too much space in your pocket either but we’ve seen touchscreens go even slimmer.

The weight of 122 g is about what you would expect from a device of this size.

Focusing on the capacitive touchscreen

The Nokia X6 centerpiece is, of course, its 3.2″ 16M color touchscreen display with a resolution of 360 x 640 pixels. Its size is about average for a pocketable touchscreen device and so is the resolution. We have seen plenty of WVGA displays recently which sport quite a lot more pixels so we can hardly consider it too great of an achievement. Yet with the HVGA still being quite popular we wouldn’t go as far as calling outdated either.

The capacitive display is the handset’s main feature

The main novelty that the Nokia X6 display brings (at least to the Nokia portfolio anyway) is capacitive technology. It only requires a very gentle touch, rather than a push for a click to be registered. The downside is it’s impossible to use with gloves, styluses or (for the ladies) long nails.

We made a simple test to check the accuracy of the Nokia X6 display by drawing straight lines on it. Any bumpiness on them would indicate hardware inaccuracies of the screen but luckily there were almost none to be seen. In this regard it ranks very near to the top of the capacitive pyramid, almost rivaling the resistive screens accuracy.

Unfortunately, the underlying hardware is not powerful enough to make the best use of the increased responsiveness. While the improved sensitivity is visible in simple menus where the phone doesn’t have a lot of calculations to make, in most cases it is simply nullified by the laggy software.

It’s a good thing that Nokia try to move forward with this one, but the improvement has to be on more than one level for the user experience to change. As things stand now, there will be more people missing the stylus input option and handwriting capabilities than those that will appreciate the increased screen responsiveness.

Another bad thing about the Nokia X6 screen is its poor legibility under direct sunlight. As a matter of fact this is the worst display in terms of sunlight legibility that Nokia have produced in years. The Nokia 5800, 5230 and 5530 trio wasn’t great but the X6 is the worse of all those.

Design and construction

The Nokia X6 looks pretty nice with its opaque plastic finish. You can’t be too imaginative when designing a full-touch handset but a huge display up front always has a positive impact on a handset’s look.

Nokia X6 next to the 5800 XpressMusic and the Apple iPhone

Our main concern is the all plastic body. While it might suit nicely an entry or midrange handset, we can’t help but wish for some metal both for looks and durability. We’ve never seen much steel on an XpressMusic phone, but then again, we’ve never had to pay this much to get one.

Below the display we find the three traditional for the S60 touch devices keys. Those include Call and End buttons as well as a menu knob. They aren’t touch-sensitive so the transition between them and the screen might be a bit awkward. On the other hand their size and tactility renders no other usability obstacles.

There are three keys under the screen

At the top of the front panel of Nokia X6 we find the earpiece, the video-call camera and the Media key and a couple of sensors. The sensors are embedded in the earpiece hole this time rather than needing a separate space on the front panel.

The Media key is touch-sensitive and is noticeably more sensitive than those of previous Nokia touch phones.

The video-call camera, the earpiece and the touch-sensitive Media key

The top of Nokia X6 is quite crowded with no less than four functional elements to be found here.

The power key, which is also used for alternating the active profiles and locking the device, is the first thing of interest. Next come the 3.5mm standard audio jack and the charger plug, followed by the microUSB jack. The microUSB slot is covered by a lid to prevent dust and dirt from accumulating.

The power key is next to the charger plug, the 3.5mm audio jack and the microUSB slot

The Nokia X6 right side features three keys – the volume rocker, the camera key and the screen lock slider. They are large and comfortable enough so using them is no trouble at all.

The three keys on the right: volume rocker, screen lock slider and camera button

The stereo speakers and the SIM card slot are on the left side of the X6. You actually need to remove the battery to eject the SIM card but you don’t have to do that when inserting it. Yet you shouldn’t expect some kind of hot-swap functionality or anything like it. You still need to restart the device for the new card to work.

The stereo speakers and the SIM card slot are at the left

The bottom is quite bare. The microphone pinhole is here along with the gap you use to pry open the back cover.

There isn’t much to see at the bottom

The back side of Nokia X6 hosts the 5 megapixel camera lens and its dual-LED low-light assistant. The Carl Zeiss branding sits right next to it, suggesting good optical quality. Unfortunately, there is no lens protection aside from the edgy frame surrounding it.

The 5 megapixel camera is the star backstage

Removing the battery cover reveals the 1320 mAh BL-5J Li-Ion battery. Its got an impressive performance rating on paper and in real-life scenario as well.

Quoted at up to 420 hours of stand-by and up to 8.5 hours of talk time, it could give you good two and a half days of extensive usage (half an hour of web-browsing, 20 minutes of talk-time, an hour of listening to music and 30 minutes of using the other features of the phone per day).

Taking a look at the 1320mAh Li-Ion battery

If you are planning to use the Nokia X6 as a dedicated music player (for which it definitely seems fit) it can give you an amazing 35 hours of playback. That of course counts only in offline mode with the display backlighting switched off. But it gives you an idea what to expect.

The general build quality of the Nokia X6 is quite nice. However we suspect that the opaque plastic might polish itself here and there when used for a longer time and lose a large part of its appeal.

On the positive side it is perfectly prone to fingerprints so the X6 doesn’t become a smudgy mess.

Nokia X6 held in hand

User interface is the same, despite the new touchscreen

As far as touchscreens go, the Nokia X6 is a first for Nokia -it’s their first capacitive touchscreen phone. The S60 5th edition hoever hasn’t changed at all. So, by now you should have seen plenty touch Symbian OS reviews and nothing here should come as a big surprise.

New touch technology, old software

The first thing to note is kinetic scrolling which, in fact, works quite well and is available almost throughout the user interface – from file browser through gallery to contacts (and even web browser, though with quite spotty implementation). Unfortunately, it won’t work in icon menus, like the main menu.

In those icon-centric menus you push the selection to the edge of the screen, which will scroll things in the opposite direction. It’s very unintuitive and confusing, since everything else works the other way around. You can use the scroll bar for icon menus, but scrollbars are so 1990s.

Still, the good news is that finger scrolling has been improved everywhere as far as lists of items are concerned. You can scroll with the same ease as with the Apple iPhone – you push it one way and it moves in the oppsite direction as if you are pushing the actual list off the screen.

On the homescreen, the Contacts bar is side-scrollable and thus accommodates a lot more phonebook shortcuts.

Turning the handset landscape in text-input mode automatically brings a full QWERTY keypad up on the screen. Of course, there’s still a long way to go. We’d still have to wait for auto-rotation of the homescreen, smart dial and a more elaborate Active Standby – with room for the WLAN scanner plugin, for instance.

Widgets are NSeries stuff so don’t expect any of those here. And if you were expecting thumb-scrollable multiple homescreen panes, then you are out of luck as well, despite the fact that the touchscreen 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.

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 X6 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.

The scrolling as described earlier is equally confusing due to the two contradictory approaches. At least kinetic scrolling will make you feel way more comfortable than those first 5800 XpressMusic users. Plus, it does at least show Nokia are serious about polishing the Symbian touch platform.

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 and you can freely reorder. Screen orientation can be set to change automatically thanks to the accelerometer.

The homescreen, however, is one spot where auto-rotation is badly missed as the extra screen estate would’ve made it much more usable. For one, more shortcuts would’ve been visible on the Contacts bar. It’s scrollable anyway – that’s true – but if the 5730 XpressMusic can do it, why can’t the touchscreen version?

Otherwise, the homescreen layout of the X6 is typical Symbian and looks exactly the same as it did on the Nokia 5530.

A single press on the clock starts the clock application (with an option for setting up an alarm) while tapping on the date opens a drop-down menu where you can either launch the calendar application or change the currently active profile, 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 the quickest way to initiate a WLAN search. It is not quite as quick as the 3rd edition plug-in where you only needed a single click for that purpose but it is better than nothing.

The Contacts bar follows right beneath: each contact is represented by the contact photo and their first name – and it’s possible to have three contacts displayed at a time but the list is scrollable left or right.

For each contact you can add an RSS feed, so we guess it is a nice trick to add a contact that isn’t a person just so that you’ll have quick access to your favorite feeds on the homescreen.

Selecting a contact from the Contact bar brings up a screen with info on the contact (different from you get if you select the contact from the Contacts list). It has the contact photo, name and phone number. Underneath are four buttons – call, send message, update feed and settings.

Further down is an area that shows the communication history for that contact – both calls and messages. And finally, at the bottom there are the top two lines from an RSS feed.

The new Contacts bar • viewing a contact from the Contacts bar

Under the Contacts list, it’s pretty much standard Active Standby but with fewer slots. You only get email notification showing the number of unread messages, along with the sender and subject of the most recent message. The blank area beneath is reserved for the music player and radio mini apps – they get displayed when either is set to play in the background.

At the very bottom of the homescreen is the Shortcuts bar. Both the Contacts and the Shortcuts tab are optional and can be hidden.

Contacts bar theme, the Contacts bar and the shortcuts tab are optional • Shortcuts bar • Basic

The Media key, placed above the screen on the right, is a shortcut to the Music player, Gallery, Ovi Share, Videos, and the web browser. It’s an excellent control that offers quick access to the handset’s multimedia features. It’s haptic-enabled too with a slight vibration confirming each touch on screen.

With the Media key some of most frequently used features are only a tap away

The Nokia X6 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. There’s no C key to close running applications – instead you press and hold the app’s icon to display two virtual buttons: Open and Exit.

The task-manager

Pretty decent phonebook

The Nokia X6 phonebook has virtually unlimited capacity and its functionality is certainly among the best out there. Nokia X6 contacts list also has kinetic scrolling enabled that’s a welcome enhancement but nowadays all Nokia touch phones have that already.

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 (in our case – “E” and “X”). A really convenient tool indeed.

Nokia have thought of 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 X6

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 nowhere to be seen

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

The only real downside is the still missing smart dialing functionality. Some may argue it’s not as essential on a touchscreen phone but most of the competition has it duly covered. Not to mention WinMo devices have a very elaborate smart dial system that even searches in your Calls log for numbers that are not in your contacts list.

The dialing pad

Voice dialing is an option with the Nokia X6 as with most other phones. The voice dialing 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 X6 scored a Good in our traditional loudspeaker test. This puts it on par with the majority of XpressMusic handsets, so while you might not hear it in the noisiest environments, you should be OK most of the time.Speakerphone test Voice, dB Pink noise/ Music, dB Ringing phone, dB Overall score
Apple iPhone 3G 66.1 62.1 71.7 Below Average
Apple iPhone 3GS 69.5 69.5 71.7 Good
Nokia X6 69.2 66.7 72.5 Good
Motorola MILESTONE 68.5 66.3 77.9 Good
Nokia N97 mini 68.8 66.7 83.6 Very Good
HTC HD2 75.5 73.2 75.7 Very Good
HTC Touch2 75.9 75.3 82.7 Excellent
LG GD510 Pop 76.6 76.2 85.0 Excellent

Touchscreen messaging quite adequate

Nokia X6 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 X6 message editor

Delivery reports can be turned on – they pop up once the message reaches the addressee, and on the screen and are then saved in a separate folder in the messaging sub-menu. When you are exiting the message editor without having sent the message, you get prompted to save it in Drafts or discard it.

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 X6. 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 X6.

Checking our 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 X6. The handset offers a standard alphanumeric on-screen keypad, which automatically turns into a full QWERTY keyboard when you tilt the handset thanks to the accelerometer.

The available text input options: alphanumeric keypad and QWERTY keyboard
Image gallery way too slow

The gallery of Nokia X6 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 X6

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

Probably the main problem of the gallery is its speed. Loading a picture takes a couple of seconds even for small images. If you have a large amount of photos it might take ages before the thumbnails are generated.

Zooming and panning are not that much faster either. However as we mentioned the kinetic scrolling implementation has its flaws as it doesn’t gain as much momentum as we would expect and stops too abruptly. That means that you will need several rapid sweeps to get from one end of an image to the other if you have zoomed in.
Same old music player

Nokia X6 music player is pretty functional but its design could use a little freshening up – it hasn’t change 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 seem insufficient you can create new ones in a matter of seconds.

Creating a new equalizer preset is easy

Quite naturally, the player can also be minimized to play in background. In this case a tab appears on the stand-by screen indicating the currently running track. You can pause the current track or skip to next/previous. Of course, you can go back to the full music player app using the dedicated Media key above the screen.
Playlist DJ makes the music fit your mood

One of the new additions to the multimedia arsenal of the Nokia X6 is the Playlist DJ. It’s similar to Sony Ericsson’s SensMe, but is controlled a little differently.

You have four sliders – Joy, Passion, Anger and Tempo. You adjust the sliders according to what kind of music you’re in the mood for – joyful or angry, slow and passionate and so on. After setting the sliders to the desired positions, the Playlist DJ will go through your music library and create a playlist.

The Playlist DJ creates playlists based on your mood

It also offers the “Playlist of similar songs” that finds songs with a mood similar to the current song you’re listening to. This definitely seems like the more useful option making the joy, passion and anger sliders seem a bit redundant.

To work with Playlist DJ, each song must be analyzed (profiled) and profiles are downloaded from the Internet, so keep that in mind.

Music Store and Comes With Music

The Music Store is present in a lot of other Nokia handsets but we haven’t paid too much attention to it. But with the Nokia X6 we just can’t ignore it – the X6 comes with a year of free subscription to the Nokia Music Store.

The Comes With Music subscription means unlimited free downloads (apart from possible data charges) and you get to keep the songs when the subscription runs out, though the songs are DRM protected.

With 32GB of internal memory, that means you can download a huge music collection. But you can also listen to the songs on your PC and burn a song or album up to ten times on a CD (though that might not be available for all songs).

The Music Store keeps things simple – a banner for a popular performer from your country, a search bar and the option to browse songs and albums by genre or charts from the chosen country. Searching is done by performer or title.

The Nokia Music Store is easy to work with

Below that you have a section for new releases, top songs, top albums, playlists like Best of 2009, French Hip Hop and so on.

Selecting an album or song displays the basics on top – album art, year of release, genre and label. There’s more comprehensive information too. You can download a song or entire album. For each song you can listen to a 30 seconds preview of the song before downloading.

You get comprehensive information for each track and suggestions for similar music you might like

There’s also an “Inspire me” section at the bottom of the info page for the performer, album or song suggesting similar music you might like.

The whole interface is browser based, which makes it a little sluggish as you have to wait for the content and interface. Aside from that, we don’t really have any complaints about the Music Store. It’s intuitive and easy to work with and comes with a comprehensive selection of music.
Pretty good audio quality

We are now used to seeing the XpressMusic handsets deliver excellent audio quality so the Nokia X6 hardly managed to surprise us. It isn’t too much better than that of its much more affordable siblings but that is enough to secure it a place quite close to the best in business.

Save for the slightly high intermodulation distortion, Nokia X6 performs excellently in every part of our test. The frequency response is great with the slightly larger number that appears in the table is only due to the extreme heights of the audible range being slightly cut off.

Compared to the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic the X6 has an edge in the stereo crosstalk reading, while in the other elements trails behind by the slightest of margins. Here goes the table and the graph so you can see for yourselves.Test Frequency response Noise level Dynamic range THD IMD + Noise Stereo crosstalk
Nokia X6 +0.10, -0.72 -91.1 91.0 0.0095 0.667 -89.3
Nokia 5530 XpressMusic +0.11, -0.84 -90.9 90.8 0.010 0.454 -90.6
Nokia 5800 XpressMusic +0.09, -0.77 -92.2 92.1 0.013 0.297 -75.0
Nokia 5130 XpressMusic +0.04, -0.16 -89.9 89.0 0.0033 0.014 -83.6
Nokia X3 +0.07, -0.44 -88.3 88.3 0.0067 0.016 -89.0
HTC Hero +1.04 -2.13 -91.3 92.3 0.458 0.902 -95.8
Apple iPhone 3GS +0.01, -0.05 -92.1 92.1 0.0035 0.011 -95.0

Nokia X6 frequency response graph

You can learn more about the whole testing process here.
No DivX/XviD support for the video player

The ample screen generally makes watching a video on the Nokia X6 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 pixilated’ 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 or the Video center (accessed by the Media key positioned above the display), 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 X6 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 X6 should take care of auto-switching to the frequencies of your selected radio station.

We have no grudges about the FM radio

The radio station name gets displayed with cool effects across the whole screen, while the rest of the RDS readings are printed in nicely legible text on a line at the bottom. Perhaps we would have preferred this font a bit larger, but it isn’t that much of an issue.

The camera has its ups and downs

Nokia X6 has a 5 MP camera with a maximum image resolution of 2592×1944 pixels. Carl Zeiss optics promise nice photos with a lot of detail.

The camera UI is similar to the one found in 5800 XpressMusic and a carbon copy of the one in N97 and N97 mini – the few changes made are not really for the better.

All the settings are squeezed in a common menu, except for the flash, which has its own dedicated shortcut. We understand that a tabular layout isn’t the easiest of things 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 X6 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.

The geo-tagging option is available out of the box.

Nokia X6 lacks all the modern features that the other competing manufacturers are using such as face detection, smile detection and even blink prevention.

The viewfinder on the Nokia X6 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 the picture detail is enough to qualify the photos as very nice. The next thing is that the noise reduction algorithm is mature enough and finds a good balance between noise levels and detail. There is no purple fringing and the white balance and auto ISO settings worked just fine. Photos have good contrast and accurate colors.

The typical-for-Nokia slight yellowish tint is present in the Nokia X6 camera too, but it’s not too obtrusive and most consumers prefer photos with warmer colors.

And there go some photo samples from the X6 camera.

Nokia X6 camera samples
Synthetic resolution

We also snapped our resolution chart with the Nokia X6. You can check out what that test is all about here.

Nokia X6 resolution chart photo • 100% crops

Nokia N97 mini 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, in both cases at 30 frames per second.

The camcorder UI

The X6 video capture quality is OK. Colors and white balance turn out just fine, but the compression seems too aggressive in most of the clips and produces noticeable video artifacts. Anyway, VGA@30fps seems to be the best that Nokia can offer right now.

Connectivity is great

Smartphones are usually well-heeled in terms of connectivity and the Nokia X6 is no exception: all contemporary means of data transfer are supported.

All kinds of network connectivity are at the user disposal – GPRS, EDGE and 3G with HSDPA (3.6Mbps). The GSM/EDGE networking of course comes in quad-band flavor and the 3G in 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 no shortcut key for the Wi-Fi manager, but it can be easily found in the Connectivity menu and connecting to a WLAN network is two taps away.

Finally, the storage. Unlike a lot of other phones, the Nokia X6 doesn’t have a microSD card slot and doesn’t need one either. With 32GB built-in memory, we can’t imagine filling it up and needing more space.
Web browser still has some catching up to do

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 usability and user-friendliness.

But let’s not digress. The Nokia X6 browser has a good rendering algorithm, displaying most of the sites we visited correctly. It also offers some nice functionality 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 allows you to download any kind of files while surfing. 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 new window.

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

And now we get to Flash support. Yes, there is Flash support, but we had a miserable experience with YouTube (and the other video sharing sites we tested). Half the time, the player wouldn’t even load and when it did, simply turning the phone in landscape orientation was enough to crash the browser.

Another disadvantage of the web browser concerns the kinetic scrolling – it is certainly a nice feature to have on board and all but its implementation in the web browser needs polishing. The scrolling is there but it lacks the momentum you see when scrolling listed items in the menu and you’ll need several sweeps for even moderately-sized pages.

Double tapping any 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 is a nice start but it’s nowhere near the iPhone or Android standards. The same goes for the resolution, which is a lot better than the QVGA non-touch predecessors but hardly a match for WVGA.
Organizer misses a document viewer

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 X6 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

Unfortunately, the Quickoffice application wasn’t preinstalled on our Nokia X6. It’s available from Ovi Store but it costs 25 euro and the PDF reader is sold separately for 10 euro. Today a document viewed is about as basic as email, so even if document editors are paid, the viewer should be free and preinstalled. Many feature phones have one, so why not this high end device?

The calculator application is very familiar but it lacks the functionality of some of its competitors. The square root is the most complicated function it handles and this is no longer considered an achievement. If all you do with it is split the bill at the bar though, you’re free to disregard that last sentence.

Square root function is as good as the calculator gets

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

There is also unit converter and voice recorder onboard

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. Thanks to the built-in accelerometer you can also snooze the alarm by simply flipping your phone.

Setting up an alarm

Ovi Maps 3.0 comes to back up the GPS

The Nokia X6 comes with a built-in GPS receiver The handset managed to acquire a satellite lock from a cold start in about a minute upon the first attempt (A-GPS turned off at the time) and keeping the lock was not an issue for the X6 even in dense urban environments.

The large high-resolution screen sounds like a serious candidate for genuine use as a dedicated navigation unit. Unfortunately, the X6 has only a 10-day trial voice-guided navigation (region dependant) and you need to pay for more. There’s a lifetime City Explorer license though.

The phone comes with Ovi Maps 3.0 Touch preinstalled (the rebranded Nokia Maps). As you might have guessed this is merely a touch-enabled version of the standard Nokia Maps 3.0 application. It offers extensive map coverage for free but you do need to pay for most of its extra features such as traffic information or city guides.

As we just mentioned you will also have to buy the voice-guided navigation license, should you pick the application for the purpose. At least the actual purchase itself is quite simple directly via the phone interface. If you prefer an alternative navigation software, you might want to carefully look around for a compatible version.

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.

Some of the available settings

One of the gripes we had with Maps 3.0 was the lack of “Go to my location” shortcut. On the positive side, panning and zooming in the maps is really fast and the high-res screen is capable of showing quite a lot of data.

The overall impression with GPS navigation on Nokia X6 is positive but, you have to factor in that a 1-year voice-guided navigation costs a lot and we are not sure whether many people will go for that. And the screen doesn’t do too well under sunlight, which is a major drawback if you want to use the Nokia X6 as a replacement for dedicated SatNav units.
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 – a list with the name and logo for each app (or podcast, or whatever), the category it’s in (Entertainment, Utilities, etc), price and a three star rating.

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, the ability to write a review yourself or sent 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 X6 came with very few preinstalled apps – just a few games and apps. 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 sites for software available online. Here is one to get you started, while a simple Google search will show you the rest.

You can download the apps straight from your phone or from your desktop computer and than transfer them as you find fit.
Applications

The Nokia X6 comes with just a few preinstalled applications. One of the interesting applications is Ovi Files. You have to install an application on your computer but after that’s done, you can access all the files on that computer from your phone or a browser on another computer. You also get “Anytime files”, which lets you store 10GB of data that is accessible even if the computer is turned off.

Ovi Files gives you access to any file on your computer

Amazon is a simple application with different categories. There is also a search engine, which opens results directly in the Amazon site. You are also allowed to choose in which country you’d like to look for an item, which is great for the local buyers.

The Amazon application

There’s also a Facebook application.

The Facebook application

Games to pass the time

The Nokia X6 comes with three games preinstalled, all of which are quite familiar.

The first one is Spore – a simple but fun arcade game with a twist. You gain DNA points in the game that can eventually be spent to “evolve” the little critter that you control and make it faster, stronger and so on.

Stay away from bigger creatures with bigger teeth

Next up is Asphalt 4: Elite Racing. With its pseudo-3D graphics, it’s hardly worth bragging about with today’s portable gaming machines.

Asphalt 4: Elite Racing

Finally, there’s the DJ Hero wannabe – DJ Mix Tour, a simple rhythm game.

DJ Mix Tour is riding on Guitar Hero’s popularity
Final words

A first capacitive screen for Nokia and a first truly high-end device in the XpressMusic lineup, the X6 is a phone that requires attention. It’s good that Nokia do try and improve their touchscreens and respond to users’ demands.

Yet we don’t think the screen sensitivity is the main problem of the Nokia touch phones. Resistive screens have strengths of their own (better accuracy, stylus use and handwriting, etc.) over capacitive ones, so it’s more about picking your priorities rather than ranking the two technologies.

Don’t get us wrong – we are pleased with Nokia for giving their users a choice. It’s great that they are creating handsets for different customers, rather than relying on the one-size-fit-all approach. However, there are other issues that need more urgent attention and we believe Nokia should focus their efforts there.

That focus should be the software on their smartphones, of course. The S60 UI is neither user-friendly nor attractive enough to rival the best in class. The core functionality is all there but when we are talking about that much money, only covering the basics just doesn’t cut it.

The Nokia X6 is an expensive device all right (around 500 euro), even if we discount the Comes With Music license and the great headphones. And at this price point the flaws are not easily forgiven. Competition in this segment is tough to start with, and the fact that there’s too many affordable alternatives with comparable feature sets doesn’t help either.

The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, 5530 XpressMusic and the 5230 might be placed in a much lower segment but they do match most of the X6 functionality and cost a lot less. If you are willing to sacrifice some screen estate and GPS (5530) or Wi-Fi (5230) and a couple of megapixels of image resolution (5230) you can save yourself more than half the money and get the same software package, even with the Comes with music goodies (5235).

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic • Nokia 5800 XpressMusic • Nokia 5230

The HTC Hero and Acer Liquid are the two Android alternatives that give you great performance, a much more fluid UI and solid multimedia capabilities. They don’t offer the same in-box headphones or all-you-can-eat music downloads but cost less and you can use the money you save on either of those. And all other things equal, the Nokia loses on points despite the 32GB built-in storage.

HTC Hero • Acer Liquid

All those alternatives listed above pinpoint the main weakness of Nokia X6: its low bang-for-buck ratio. The capacitive display is nice but when the performance necessary to back it up is missing, there is little benefit for the user. And real audiophiles are likely to already own a top-notch headset, so another major selling point is moot.

There is always a chance that the market will see to it that the X6 price is adequately adjusted, which will improve the phone’s prospects. At this stage, the handset is not really a smart buy in the way that the 5800 XpressMusic is. But maybe smart buys belong in the midrange, premium phones are a different story.

Source : http://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_x6-review-439p11.php 

Nokia X6

So here comes the X6. As the de facto sequel to the surprise hit of the 5800 XpressMusic, the X6 has a lot to live up to in the eyes of the media and the consumers. Actually, being honest, a touch screen device, with music support, operator backing and a stylish black look such as the 5800 had all the indications of being a successful device even before launch. Shall I cut a long review short and simply say that the X6 doesn’t (yet) manage this, but if Nokia apply themselves, it could do so in the future?

And now, the longer version, over multiple parts.

The X6 doesn’t have the first mover advantage of being Nokia’s first touch screen S60 device, but you can’t help but fail to notice the biggest change in Nokia’s touch screen devices with the X6, and this is the switch from a resistive touch screen to a capacitive touch screen. No more stylus needed (or in fact, able to be used), the X6 screen will only pick up on the touch of human skin on the screen (normally your finger).

This has an impact on the S60 UI, and I’ll come onto that in a subsequent part, but in general this change to the interface has made the X6 a much more tactile and gorgeous device to handle. You don’t need to struggle with a stylus, aim a fingernail at the screen, or even be pixel perfect accurate – a glancing stroke with a finger or a thumb swiping across the screen is more than enough to have your touch picked up and acted on.

Just to give you a heads up that the S60 5th Edition changes in the X6 lack one word – consistency – but this is nothing to do with the physical hardware of the screen. Not only is it excellent and responsive, but the colours and sharpness give the X6 a wonderful clarity; I’d go so far as to say that it demands to be held and touched.

Also on the front of the machine are the call/end call/app buttons. Unlike on the 5800, which had these as three raised buttons, a strip of plastic that takes up all the space at the bottom of the screen carries the three buttons here. Rather than being touch sensitive, this is a physical set of buttons where the whole strip pivots slightly depending on which button you press. It suddenly takes away from the glorious screen and dumps a cheap plastic phone back in your hand. Not good mojo.

This bendy and cheap plastic feel also applies to the back cover. It’s a single sheet of moulded plastic, and instead of slides, catches and runners to hold it in place, you just bend it up at the bottom edge and pop it off. It makes for a smooth construction (and lower production cost) but again, adds to the tacky feel of the phone.

And then you have a SIM card slot cover which is little more than a plastic wedge over a push in slot – there’s nothing seamless or tactile about these buttons and covers. Okay the SIM slot is a thing that the average user might only use once, but it has an impact on perceptions of the machine.

Which is a shame because the X6 is more stylish than the 5800. With the two long edges nicely curved, it sits comfortably in your hand, while the slight off-vertical surfaces at the short edges give an almost trapezoidal shape. The curve fits my hand, it’s easily picked up from a table,and perhaps my only complaint is that with no lip around the screen (as the 5800 has) it’s very easy in this thin candybar format to have your fingers stray into the touch screen area.

Right then, let’s address the biggest issue I’m having with the X6 – and it’s a physical problem. The key-lock slider on the side of the unit, which unlocks the touch screen has two problems. It’s far too stiff and the sliding key needs far too much pressure when pulled towards the base of the unit to be at all comfortable. Also, unlike the similarly functioning key on the 5800 which was heavily ridged, there’s a tiny raised padlock symbol which gives almost no purchase on the key. This is a backwards step from the 5800 and one that seems to be more a lack of oversight than anything else.

Yes, there should be some style, but this is a step too far.

The top edge of the X6 carries all the connectivity and power options. There’s a microUSB connector hiding under a plastic grommet that seems securely fixed to the X6 body, the 3.5mm headphone/headset socket, an charging socket and the power/profile button. That button seems to have a huge amount of play before it actually does anything, which isn’t particularly reassuring; and the inclusion of the charging socket is required as the X6, amazingly, does not charge over USB.

The volume buttons and camera buttons are in the expected place, on the right side with volume at the top and the two stage camera shutter button at the bottom. This is Nokia’s design language and not something you would expect to see changed. What’s interesting is that these two buttons are a different style to the key lock and power buttons. Much like the software of the X6, the outside seems to be two different ideals running into each other and compromising as best they can.

On the opposite long edge to the volume buttons are the speakers – one at the top and one at the bottom. I like this positioning, both of them are on the left long spine of the X6. This makes little difference when the phone is thrown on the kitchen worktop as I bake another masterpiece (really? – Vikki Spence), but the benefit becomes clear when you watch video on the 16:9 ratio screen, you’ve got yourself some stereo separation for the latest feature film (or in my case Question Time on the BBC iPlayer). They’re also a substantial set of speakers for such a small unit. You won’t get high fidelity from them, but you will get enough noise to fill a hotel room as you get ready in the morning. That’ll do for me.

One problem with the diagonal styling on the top of the unit is around the 3.5mm headphone socket. Because the socket is at right angles to the screen, but the plastic moulding around it carries the angle. With certain cables that need to fit flush, they’re pushed very slightly out of the socket, which is just enough in some cases to cause connection problems, especially for audio playback.

Plugging in a generic peripheral to the socket and you’re asked to confirm what you’ve just put in… every time. A default setting here would be nice. What would also be nice is if the Music Player paused when something is removed from the headphone socket, or at least have another option to set this, because it’s really useful. Of course a certain company already does this – and if Nokia were to add this usability feature would they be hit with another patent/copying lawsuit? Who knows, but I wish they would take the chance.

The X6, once it gets into the supply chai,n either on a hugely subsidised contract or in a version which removes the Comes with Music addition and brings the SIM free price into the ‘disposable’ range, should be a popular phone. And anything that makes the X6 punch above its RRP is to be welcomed. That’s why some of these styling faults are going to be disproportionately punishing on the fortunes of the X6. People don’t want to be seen with a ‘cheap’ phone; and the little niggles in the construction detailed above move the X6 away from ‘stylish’ to ‘tacky.’ It’s not insurmountable – the screen and front style is lush and modern, but someone needs to get a grip in the factory and break some knuckles before the X6 breaks too many hearts on the High Street.

Source : http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/reviews/item/Nokia_X6_Review_pt_1_styling_and_physical_presence.php