Review: Nokia X6

Ok now for the review I’ve been promising (Sorry for the delay…had a couple of issues!!)

I’m sure you have already seen my previous 2 posts…if not check them out:

Nokia X6 Unboxing (Stop Motion)

Gallery: Nokia X6 vs N900 vs N97

I’ve had the X6 now for 4 days and honestly I was split about it until i started to write this review and realised what this phone can really do! I love the look and feel of the phone, it’s comfortable and easy to hold, a bit of weight so you know it’s there but not so much that it feels like it’s weighing you down. I’m not going to bore you with a full list of everything it has as you can see that on the Nokia Site, but it does have a lot, like 5mp camera, A-GPS, capacitative screen (but no multi touch 🙁 …yet), 32GB memory, so with all this you can’t go wrong (or can you!).

In the Box

• Nokia X6
• Nokia Battery (BL-5J) – 1320mAh
• Nokia High Efficiency Charger (AC-8)
• Nokia Connectivity Cable (CA-101) – normal length cable, not the mini one.
• Nokia Stereo Headset (WH-701) – In ear with incline controls.
• User Guide
• Mini DVD
• Comes With Music leaflet – This has your CWM activation code on it.

Nokia X6 - Accessories

You get a decent set of kit in the box, and I’m liking the new(ish) WH-701 headphones, not only are they in-ear, they also have all the controls you would expect on them, such as call, volume, play/pause, next track and previous track, and so it’s not pulling down on you, it has a clip on the back to hold it in place. I did notice that on the proper product page it shows that it comes with the WH-500 headset, the UK shop does show the WH-701, but I checked the Finland shop and it says it has the WH-500! – I think I prefer the WH-701 but know some people might have wanted the WH-500.

Headsets

Software

OK I’ll start with the software, it is basically the same Symbian S60 5th OS that you see on the 5800 and 5530. There is kinetic scrolling in most places like option lists, contacts, etc., but annoyingly there are also a couple of places without it, i.e. in the main menu. Not sure why Nokia decided to do this, but might just bug me more then anyone else because I had the N97 where they put it quite literally everywhere when they finally added it!

This is Nokia’s flagship X-Series phone and as such they finally put the long awaited Capacitive screen on it, which is a joy to use, but I think Nokia forgot one key thing…where is the multitouch??? I have heard speculation that it’s not got it because of apple parents, but then how can palm, HTC, etc. launch phones with it, so lets just hope this is something coming in a future update.

X6 Music - Main

With the music player, it is the standard now that Nokia have set, so you get the album arts, if they are available, the option to change several settings, such as equaliser, shuffle, balance (make one side louder – can be useful for when you connect to external speakers), loudness (Bass booster effect), and Stereo widening.

X6 Music - Equaliser

X6 Music - Setup

One of the things I was disappointed to find was that there was no FM Transmitter, which I think is a shame, as this is a Music phone, and it is something the phone should have!!

The phone does have support for e-mail via IMAP, POP and even Mail for Exchange, but i’m sure that a lot of Nokia fan’s have noticed this in the all latest Nokia smartphones. To pass the time you also get a few games which are pre-installed on the phone which are: Spore, D Mix Tour, and Asphalt4 which all appear to be full versions.

The phone does auto-rotate into landscape mode in almost every place, such as contacts, gallery, maps, even the main menu, and I have read a quick review from someone else which says it’s slow but I personally have not found this to be the case…it takes about 1/2 to 3/4 of a second for it to switch which personally I think is right, any quicker and I think it would just switch over when you don’t want it to. (I will have to admit to you guys that one of the main reason’s I didn’t have this review done earlier is because for some reason my auto-rotate stopped working after a day…it was probably something I did or just the S60 5th playing up, but after a quick reset, all is well! – I will update you if it happens again).

One of the key places this auto rotate is used is for texting or any sort of text input, where in portrait mode, you have the Alphanumeric keypad, and the only way to use the qwerty is by rotating it into landscape, and it makes sense because having a capacitive screen and therefore not being able to use a stylus, trying to fit a qwerty in portrait mode would have been a huge mistake. The only things that are missing from the input methods are predictive on the qwerty and handwriting mode, but I suppose the latter is missing because of the lack of stylus use and honestly I doubt many people use it (although it does have full screen hand writing mode for Chinese text input!)

Alphanumeric vs qwerty

When I was reading through the specs on the Nokia site, I noticed 2 things straight away, it said it had a image and video editor on the phone so I had to check this out as the video editor has been missing from soo many of the N-Series phones lately…strange they would add to a music phone! (this doesn’t mean we want you to take it off Nokia!) Firstly the image editor, which was exactly what you had seen on the N97, etc, you can crop, change brightness, contrast, resize, etc.

Image Editor

Now for the bit I really wanted to check out, the video editor, it seems you can do a few very useful things:

Video Edit Options

• Merge with another video or image file (shows image for about 2-3 seconds before or after the clip!)
• Change sound – Replace the audio with a music file or a pre-recorded audio commentary, etc.
  

  Insert Sound Clip

• Add Text (Shows for about 3-4 seconds before or after the clip) – i.e. if you want to add a title or credits!
• Cut the video (remove some of the start and/or end of the video)
  

  Video Cut

• Take snapshot – this is actually in the  cut menu, just move the top blue/purple bar to where you want and click Options –> Take snapshot

To give you an idea i have shot a video on the x6 and edited it in several ways and saved it separately, you can see results below:

Original Video taken on X6 – Unedited

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpTQ8ChzJ-g]

Edited Video taken on X6 – (Text and image added to start, 8 seconds cut off end, and audio track changed)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8iBgaXo7oQ]

As you can see it’s easy enough to edit on there and I love this feature, so please Nokia don’t remove it from future smartphones!

Hardware

External

I think if you look at the phone, there is no doubt that this is a great looking phone, so far everyone I have shown it to loves the look and feel of it. Here are a few Nokia press photo’s (because I can’t take photo’s to do the phone justice!):

Nokia X6

Personally I got the Black/Red one as I think it looks better but they are both very nice.

The back case is matt hard plastic which I think feels good in your hand, not cheap or flimsy and still has a gloss finish on the top, bottom and front to complement the capacitive glass touch-screen. There is some metal on either side of the screen which is flush thankfully as I found the raised trim on the N97 and N900 a bit annoying. The only other place you see metal is around the camera which is slightly raised and I assume this is to help protect the camera lens as it does not have a cover.

Something I am glad the X6 has is the mechanical buttons for the call/end call/menu like on the 5800, I was not a fan of the touch ones on the 5530 and the N97.

As I’ve already mentioned, the capacitive screen is great to use, no more pushing down to try to press something, but as it’s just the generic S60 5th software it sometimes seems to register the press (i.e. highlight a link) but it does not actually go to the link I clicked which can get annoying…although that might just be me. Now it’s just missing multi touch so common Nokia!!

The inputs are all at the top of the phone, from left to right you have Micro USB connector (Data only – not sure why they have not made it a charger), 3.5 mm audio/video jack, 2mm charger connector, and the Power button. The left side only has the SIM slot and stereo speaker, right side has volume/zoom key, lock key, and camera key, and the base just has the hole for the mic and lanyard.

Nokia’s standard now seems to be the 5mpx camera, which personally I think is just right for phones, do you really need something that takes pictures bigger then 2592 x 1944 pixels?? and if you want to record video’s you have a decent 640 x 480 and up to 30 fps (which is TV quality) – you can also choose widescreen mode which just reduces the hight of the video to 352 but personally I don’t see the point to this as I’d much prefer to shoot at full resolution and crop later if I wanted to (or edit using the in built video editor I mentioned earlier).

Internal

I’ll start off with the storage, you have a huge 32GB to play with here and with the Comes With Music service, you can enjoy a years free music to fill it up, it’s annoying that there isn’t a memory card slot, but to be honest it doesn’t really need it! On top of that, Nokia haven’t skimped out on the C: Phone memory which you get an ample 300mb which I doubt you will fill up!

One of the first things I actually tested on the phone was the GPS, which I love on this phone, it actually picks up (and keeps single) within 5-10 seconds, 90% of the time for me, and that sometimes goes up to about 15-20 seconds when I’m indoors which is probably one of the best I have seen! I won’t go into the navigation as it’s the standard ovi Maps 3.0 but so you know you do get 10 separate days of navigation free (which means you can use any one of those days when ever you want!)

Navigation Licence

You get full 3.5G (HSDPA) and WiFi support, so you know you are getting the fastest internet speeds and loading for normal sites seems quite quick, although some flash heavy sites do take a little while but I personally can’t fault the phone for that!

Overall

Ok I thinks that’s about it, my personal opinion of the phone is that it’s a joy to use and I want thinking of if I would keep the phone or not, but I think I will…I just can’t get enough of it…and not I have gone completely touch screen as this replaced my Nokia 5310 which was a great little phone! (not that I don’t plan to keep it just in case!!)

If I’ve missed anything you want me test to add or you have any feelings about the phone your self, please comment below.

p.s. I will see if I can do a camera comparison with my N900 asap so watch this space! You can see my X6 vs N900 camera comparison here: Camera: X6 vs N900

Tags: 5th Edition, Review, Symbian, Touch

Category: 5th Edition, Music, Nokia, Xseries