In a nutshell: Nokia's
first Xseries phone is an upmarket touchscreen smartphone with a
compact design. Its star features include a superbly responsive
capacitative touchscreen, 32GB of memory, an impressive 5 megapixel
camera with Carl Zeiss optics, video calling, A-GPS, HSDPA, WiFi,
a 3.5mm audio jack and outstanding battery performance. It's not
cheap, but quality never is! Available in Black/Red and White/Blue.
Check out the top 10 independent deals for the X6 below, or
click to read the full review and user reviews.
Top 10 internet deals
Nokia
X6 Review
Review:
December 2009.
The Nokia X6-00 is the first Xseries
phone from Nokia. It's a touchscreen smartphone running the Symbian
operating system, but it's not based on the Nseries phones. Instead,
the X series is an evolution of Nokia's XpressMusic range, and this
a welcome relief, as the XpressMusic phones seem to have been much
more robust than the bug-ridden Nseries.
The Xseries moves the range substantially upmarket,
and the X6 doesn't come cheap. Nokia have taken the hugely popular
mid-range 5800 and pimped
it to the max. It's physically almost the same size as the 5800,
although a few millimetres have been shaved off, making it nice
and slim to hold. At the same time the weight has increased slightly,
lending it a purposeful and solid feel. It's a good phone to hold,
and certainly a lot less bulky than most touchscreens. In fact it's
one of the few touchscreen phones that you can easily operate single-handedly.
The display is a capacitative touchscreen, and
is very responsive. It's the same size and resolution as the 5800:
3.2 inches across and with 640x360 pixels. This gives it one of
the smaller screen sizes amongst the high-end touchscreen phones,
but that's the price you pay for having a compact form factor. The
screen isn't the biggest, but it's big enough to do the job. It
offers a choice of virtual alphanumeric and QWERTY keypads with
automatic display rotation. The user interface is nice, sharing
much with the 5800, including the contacts bar which lets you easily
access friends on your home screen. The contacts bar gives you access
to dialling, call records and texts for up to 20 friends. The capacitative
touchscreen is very responsive and we think that this is a very
easy phone to use.
X stands for XpressMusic, so you'd expect the X6
to be pretty good in the music arena. And it is! The X6 comes with
an Nseries music player and an FM radio. The music player handles
most digital music formats, including MP3, WMA and AAC, and supports
selection of songs by artist, composer, album and genre, with album
graphics displayed. A dedicated audio chip and 3D surround sound
from stereo speakers delivers excellent performance, especially
when the bass booster, stereo widening and loudness effects are
added. There's also an 8-band graphic equaliser for additional control.
Naturally a 3.5mm audio jack is included, so you can plug in your
own headphones, and perhaps best of all is the massive 32GB of built-in
memory. The optional Comes
With Music feature gives you free unlimited music downloads
for a whole year!
The X6 isn't just a phone with a music player attached
though. It's also got an impressive camera. With 5 megapixels, Carl
Zeiss optics, autofocus and dual LED flash, this is an excellent
camera, and it punches above its 5 megapixel weight too. It's the
optics that matter most, and the X6 has quality, so don't worry
too much that there are cameras with more megapixels available.
The X6 has a really excellent still camera. The video recording
capability is good too, with recording at up to 640 x 480 pixels
and 30 frames per second, which is standard definition TV quality.
A second front-mounted video camera enables video calls to be made
too.
A-GPS is included, which works with the new Ovi
Maps. The phone has outstanding connectivity, with quadband GSM
and triband 3G, so your phone will work wherever you take it on
your travels. You should always have the fastest data connection
too, with HSDPA giving downloads of up to 3.6 Mbps and WLAN available
too for even faster data transfer in a WiFi zone. You can connect
wirelessly via Bluetooth, or via USB cable, 3.5mm audio connection
and a TV-Out socket.
Web browsing on the X6 is quite satisfactory. As
mentioned, the screen isn't the biggest available, but 3.2 inches
is a respectable size, and the responsive touchscreen and fast data
speeds make for a good mobile browsing experience overall. The X6
runs the same Series 60 5th Edition Symbian version 9.4 OS/interface
as the 5800, so there are already a good number of apps available
to download from the Ovi store.
The X6 comes with a massive 1320 mAh Li-Ion battery
which gives very impressive performance. Theoretically the X6 is
capable of 8.5 hours of talktime or 35 hours of music playback between
charges. Although real world performance will never match this,
it still means that you'll be able to use the phone for several
days between charges in most cases.
Overall, the X6 is a star performer. It's a very
high powered smartphone in a compact form, with a feeling of quality
and durability. It may not have the biggest screen around, but the
screen is by no means small, and is superbly responsive. The music
player and camera are superb. The X6 ticks all the connectivity
boxes and has outstanding memory and battery life to boot. And perhaps
the best thing is that it's built on a stable operating system that
has been tested in the Nokia
5800, further refined and polished in the 5530
and now seems to be very robust and stable. Revolutionary it is
not, but it is exactly what we've been wanting Nokia to do for such
a long time: take an existing proven product and just make it better.
With the X6, this is exactly what they have done. This will be mobile-phones-uk.org.uk's
last review before Christmas 2009, and we're delighted to award
the Nokia X6 a full 5 stars!
Features of the Nokia X6 include:
Series 60 5th Edition Symbian version 9.4 3G
Smartphone
5 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics, autofocus,
4x digital zoom and double LED flash
Video recording (up to 640 x 480 pixels and
up to 30 fps), 4x digital video zoom, front camera for 3G video
calling
Display: Touchscreen, 16.7 million colours,
640 x 360 pixels (3.2 inches) with automatic display rotation
NSeries music player (MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+,
WMA formats) with 8-band graphical equaliser
FM radio with Visual Radio
Stereo loudspeakers with 3D effect
Ringtones: MP3 & video ringtones, 64-voice
polyphonic ringtones, vibration alert
Voice commands: speaker independent dialling
and voice commands
Voice recorder (digital stereo microphone)
Integrated handsfree speaker
Messaging: SMS, MMS, email (support for IMAP,
POP, SMTP) plus attachments, Audio messaging
Advanced Series 60 personal organiser functions,
Flash Lite 3.0
Connectivity: WiFi, Bluetooth 2.0, USB 2.0,
3.5 mm audio jack, TV-Out
Memory: 16GB / 32GB
Flight mode
Quadband (GSM 850/900/1800/1900 MHz) plus 3G
(WCDMA 900/1900/2100 MHz)
Size: 111 x 51 x 13.8 mm
Weight: 122g
Talktime: 6 hours (3G) - 8.5 hours (2G)
Battery standby: 420 hours
Music playback: up to 35 hours
Nokia X6 Consumer
Reviews
Love
your mobile? Hate it? Please share your experiences to help other
people choose the phone that's best for them. Please do not review
this phone if you have not used it. This is a review site, not a
forum, so please don't just ask questions. Please do not use swear
words or offensive language, and please, no advertising!
Average
rating from 20 reviews:
Reviewed by Kev Smith from England on
14th Mar 2010
I'll start off with the positives:- Bright screen, which is easy
on the eye. Huge storage capacity (16GB is the entry level). Fantastic
music player and radio (whether using earphones or not). Touchscreen
is fairly responsive (although not on a par with the likes of the
Samsung Jet or Iphone). Wide range of applications, and ever-growing
Ovi Store means more will come over time. Now for the negatives.
I hope you're sitting comforably, as this may take a while. First
of all is the build of the handset - it is made of horrible cheap
plastic, the type of which you would expect if you were spending
£10 on an old pay-as-you-go bargain basement phone. The materials
are simply not good enough for what is being marketed as a top-of-the-range
device. I would not be confident that the plastics would fare to
well if the phone got dropped by accident. Secondly, and related
to the build of the handset, is how harsh the top of the phone's
edges are. With how high up the earpiece is, this makes the phone
very uncomfortable against the ear. They could have done with rounding
off the edges a bit to make the phone more comfortable for calls.
The Symbian OS is too slow, whether browsing the menus or browsing
the internet. Nokia - it's all well and good giving the phone HSDPA,
but if the handset doesn't have enough RAM to process the information
it's downloading quickly enough, then it's rather pointless. Despite,
the phone's official review, the X6 is buggy as hell. Memory leaks,
phone resetting itself are some of the bugs I encountered with the
phone. The PC connectivity software that Nokia provide is dreadful
- it's slow and unreliable, often freezing. Much like the phone.
And finally, a mere 2 days after I got the phone, it decided to
freeze and reset itself for the umpteenth time, only this time,
it refused to work afterwards, simply freezing at the initial white
screen with the Nokia logo. Thankfully, my network, Three, have
been rather understanding with my issues and are not making me take
another X6, instead I have a HTC Hero on the way. Annoying as the
phone not working is, it is actually a blessing as it means I won't
be stuck with this frankly appalling handset for 18 months. Rating:
Reviewed by mark from england on
12th Mar 2010
my first touchscreen phone after years with my indestrucable, unbelievably
reliable, does what it says on the tin, next to perfect, 6300. I
wish i hadnt bothered. This is everything the 6300 isnt. Its all
talk no trousers. the os is horrificly slow, the camera is temperemental,
the touchscreen is average. The battery life isnt bad. The menus
are a mess, and unituitive. its just not that good. I'm hoping the
shop will take it back so i can "downgrade" to something which works
properly. Rating:
Reviewed by SAJ from UK on 9th
Mar 2010
Have been using X6 for the last 2 weeks. It has been a pleasure
to use this phone. Although a bit bulky it has a sensitive screen,
wouldn't say amazing but very useful features, obviously user friendly
and intergrated gps(handy). When bought from nokia shop, it comes
with £20/- worth free music download from ovi store. Downloading
apps from ovi store and elsewhere is quite easy. Lots of apps available
from ovi store and other symbian sites. Internet connection(thru
WLAN) and transfer data from other phones is faster and simple.
Ovi maps is free but could have made it better. Rating:
Reviewed by John from UK on 3rd
Mar 2010
I purchased this phone several days ago. I have to admitm reading
some of the old reviews (deleted now) on here I was sceptical as
to whether it was going to end up frustrating me with problems or
not. Well, having used it for a few days now, I can safely say this
phone is INCREDIBLE. Very powerful, its just like a mini laptop
in your pocket. Please take my advice and update the firmware to
the latest version when you get the phone. This can be done through
the phone itself, in the apps menu, select SW update, it installed
on mine without deleting any files/ settings although I'd still
reccommend backing up. Signal is excellent, ALL volumes are nice
and loud, very high quality speaker, battery life is still on FULL
after 2 days of heavy use inc wireless internet, camera, calls etc,
camera is very good for a phone, but some of the Sony Ericssons
have the edge, touchscreen is very very responsive. Great purchase,
highly reccommeneded Rating:
Reviewed by Jon from UK on 28th
Feb 2010
By far the best phone I have ever had. The only issue was trying
to sync with my PC to trans music to my phone. But after I sorted
that issue out, the phone is amazing. It is a bit prone to finger
prints though. Rating:
Reviewed by Paul T from UK on
25th Feb 2010
A new firmware update is now available. This seems more stable and
fixes memory leaks that previously occurred during more complicated
tasks or multi-tasking. Should hopefully stop web browser quitting
on complicated sites. Also. There are some better batteries available
on ebay for very little cost I'd recommend. I got a 1930mAH one
originally as a spare but its so good I'm using it as the main battery
(original is only 1320). Been using it intensively all day for music,
internet, updating software, its been reset several times and is
still on 7/7 bars! The original would be crying out for a recharge
with such use. Rating:
Reviewed by Pault123 from UK on
22nd Feb 2010
Found the reason for the poor reception. Turns out when I removed
what I thought was a black sticker from the phone (thought I needed
to do this to fix on the camera strap, what I'd actually done is
remove the antenna! So not suprising it let me down. Its confusing
having an arrow looking like you have to lift up the black tape.
You don't. Simply need to put it on the little clip next to it!
Managed to refit the aerial (which is basically a couple of copper
strips attached to bottom of the black tape, and reception is now
fine. I've increasingly found that my ipod touch is redundant which
says a lot for the web browsing facilities. Download opera mini
and its super fast even if you only have a 2G signal. Performance
is fine too if you use the basic theme. A shame. It would have been
nice for it to have more memory such that it could cope with all
the fab themes you can fit on it. Run too much at once and it runs
out of memory. But battery life is reasonable, music player is great,
and camera's not bad either. Its a good all rounder. But do not
under any circumstances try and remove the black tape from the base
of the bottom of phone under the battery cover. Can't wait for new
firmware though. Just to make it feel a bit smoother.. If they get
that right and OS utilises memory better and get rid of the quirks
like needing to look through all my music to select a ring tone
(the search takes 10 minutes only to find as they're DRM none of
them work!). Odd it takes so long given that in music player it
takes less than 3 seconds to load my whole list. The gallery is
also too slow. If they can put the speed of some of the apps into
the rest of the phone it'll be a real contender. The main reason
to buy this now is the comes with music which is brilliant. Unlimited
downloads for a year and you can play on one PC too and keep what
you've downloaded when its up. Sound quality is good enough (once
you've tweak ed the EQ a bit) to use connected to my hifi, trouncing
my ipod touch and even my computer itself. I also like the ease
of texting using either an alphanumeric keypad (much bigger and
uses T9 predictive text, or full screen landscape. Rating:
Reviewed by wufter from GB on
19th Feb 2010
good all rounder. i always go for a good canera as this is important.
it has a good memory. the only gripe which is why i have only given
4 stars is the photo viewer. every photo appears when you open the
menu and you have to scroll through them all to find a particular
one. other than that a sound phone. i am on orange and no trouble.
had phone about 4 months now Rating:
Reviewed by Mary from England on
17th Feb 2010
Oh wow fabulous what more can i say Rating:
Reviewed by Paul from UK on 1st
Feb 2010
Sadly this is a phone that wows you when you first use it then frustrates
later. As you can see from an initial 5 star review, then a 4, and
now a 2! So what has caused me to drop the review rating after 4
months? Simple I've used the phone in more circumstances and there
are major issues. The web browser is easy to use and you can use
opera mini but both may quit without warning. Minor issue. If you
put lots of music on your phone and want to select a ring tone or
message tone in profiles it will try and go through every tune you've
downloaded and will take 10 mins before you can even select it!
Good be sorted with a firmware product. The galery takes forever
to browse pictures. The worst thing though is reception quality.
I cannot remember having such a poor signal all over the place.
Either orange is terrible or this phone has a very bad problem.
But I put an o2 sim in my phone which registered full signal on
a basic nokia but on this I only got half signal. So many times
I've had missed calls and if the phones in my pocket its usually
on no signal. Take it out of the pocket place it somewhere and it
will suddenly connect with 4 bars! Pick it up to make a call and
it will drop to 1 bar and sometimes cut me off! The aerial is at
the bottom of the phone, just where you hold it! So your hand cuts
of the reception. Hold it at the top and it'll just about keep the
signal but feels very odd. Had a 5800 and suffered from the same
exact problem but o2 seemed to have better coverage so wasn't as
annoying. Texting is also a bit slow and unresponsive but not too
bad for a touch screen. So it seems they spent plenty of time giving
it a great camera, GPS (which is also very unreliable at times and
takes 2 minutes to reroute on the walking map (no problem with old
N82 here), excellent music facilities, and internet capabilities),
but forgot that it was a phone not an Mp3 player... I need to be
able to use my phone so this will be used as a great Mp3 player/wifi
browser/GPS and I'll get a fairly basic 2730 to deal with the calls
and texts. Its a great MP3 player but if you wanna use it in poorer
reception areas or ground floor flats forget it! Rating:
Reviewed by Audrey from Korea on
31st Jan 2010
The phones great. The design, Calls and sound Rating:
Reviewed by anudeep from india on
6th Jan 2010
at present in the town this is the best phone. Rating:
Reviewed by Paul from UK on 30th
Dec 2009
Performance problems. Once you have lots of music on the phone some
of the other features don't work properly. For example it now takes
10 minutes to select a ring or message tone! This is because it
tries to search every file on the phone and there are now lots,
and they are DRM protected files so can't be used. The general feel
is of something which needs either more ram or a better processor,
perhaps both! Or a firmware upgrade. Hopefully a new firmware version
will fix this as when browsing music to listen to, searching is
instantaneous. Other times scrolling menus is jerky and there seems
to be some slow down at the moment despite switching to a default
theme. Its as if too much stuff is loaded in memory even though
I have no apps running. Other than that the phone is great and reliable
too. Sound quality on the music is excellent and the web browsing
and camera are good. If they could fix the performance it could
be a serious iphone 3G contender. Rating:
Reviewed by Clear Cut Chap from UK on
22nd Dec 2009
The 'X6' is an excellent step forward for Nokia from the Nokia 5800.
It is robust, functional, good looking and most of all works well-
good all rounder! As the review states it delivers on all fronts!
Hopefully in time to come the firmware upgrades would harness the
multi-touch functionality like in the iPhone, now that this phone
has a capacitative screen.-considering the way Nokia has tweaked
the firmware over the last year or so on the Nokia 5800 the signs
bode well. Another good feature to add would be to have radio beamed
via bluetooth so that you can listen to it on your stereo bluetooth
headphones-a feature on the Sony Ericsson Aino. The Camera should
get the Xenon flash for greater depth in low light photography.
The double LED flash-while the best for Nokia-still tends to distort
the colour perception when used to take a photograph in low light.
Sony Ericsson have improved that aspect a lot more with their W995
and even C510 however it lacks depth compared to the Camera with
Xenon flash like on the C905 / K850 etc. This is the best that the
Symbian OS is going to get in its current 'Avatar!' Id definitely
recommend it. Rating:
Reviewed by Caitlin from UK on
20th Dec 2009
This phone is an amazing phone and i would recommend it to anyone.
I've been looking for a new touchscreen for months and when I saw
this I decided to wait for it as it was spoken highly of. It was
definitely worth the wait! The touchscreen is very responsive and
the camera including the flash is brilliant. Texting and calling
is very easy and the speakers are fantastic, espiecially when playing
music-the quality is so clear. With 32GB it's also good for downloading
many apps which you can get in the ovi store. It also has some useful
features such as a quick contacts bar and media bar. This s definitely
one of the best phones out there! Rating:
Reviewed by reuben from uk on
17th Dec 2009
amsing so good rly cool i want it love the touch screen and every
thing Rating:
Reviewed by Ian from UK on 15th
Dec 2009
This phone has got it all, clearly the best phone i have ever owned.
Originally i had the sony ericsson satio, which frankly, isnt much
of anything at the moment due to the constant problems. So this
was my alternative phone. I have never paid £45 a month for a phone
but this is worth it, great touch screen with little flaws. The
apps are good, some people may complain that it takes a long time
to open up some programs, but life should be taken in the slow lane.
The camerea is ace, the best flash ive seen (it even rivals the
satio's flash) Texting is a breeze because of the capacitive touch
screen and the speaks are IMMENSE. My only issue is that when i
open Nokia music or use the GPS, i t seems to drain the battery
in the space of 30 minutes. I am waiting to see if this improves,
but over all A MUST HAVE! Rating:
Reviewed by Paul from UK on 14th
Dec 2009
Big improvement on the 5800. Now uses capacitative screen so it
responds without effort. For music its fabulous. Great music player,
excellent sound quality and comes with music (subject to contract).
1 years free music downloads. I've really enjoyed downloading albums
I lost as well as new stuff. Can be played on 1 computer too as
well as phone and after a year anything you've downloaded you can
keep. Camera is excellent. The 5mp carls zeiss lens is much better
in low light than the rather poor 5800. Messaging is much easier
than before thanks to the responsive screen. Built in web browser
is OK, if a bit prone to freezing up. But fear not. Opera mini works
brilliantly on this phone (unlike 5800 when it wouldn't accept clicks),
and serves up a web experience not far off the iphone. Call quality
and reception are flawless. Built in speakers are good, and you
can happily watch a video on it. I downloaded a free utility and
watched a film from my DVD on it the other day and it look and sounded
fabulous. Still not quite an iphone killer because OS and no. apps
is not in same league. Processor is slower too and can lag if you
ask it to do too much at once. But I'd rather have it due to superior
camera, GPS with ovi maps (downloadable so you don't waste huge
bills abroad, and the free music deal. If you download maps booster
for £3, the GPS finds a signal instantly by locating wifi hotspots
in the area. Its now great for finding your way around when walking
and it no longer costs anything for this service. A very enjoyable
phone. Highly recommended. Oh and it has a massive 32GB of storage,
yet is free on a 35 a month contract. When nokia put a decent processor
in it and perhaps the new memo OS the iphone 3GS will be worried.
As it is its great value on contract. Rating:
Reviewed by John from UK on 14th
Dec 2009
amazing fone slim and it is touch sensitive not heat like the apple
iphone so u can use it with gloves on YAHHHHH Rating:
Reviewed by julian from uk on
14th Dec 2009
the best phone Rating:
