One of the first in Espoo’s X series line up, the Nokia X6 takes its cue from the vastly underrated XpressMusic mobiles, which this phone seeks to replace. Rocking a 3.2-inch capacitive touchscreen, 16GB of on board storage and a five megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics, the X6 has everything within it to become Nokia’s hottest handset, not just a musical winner.

First impressions

Initial impressions of the Nokia X6 are mixed. While Nokia’s shift from stylus-favouring resistive touchscreens to a finger-friendly capacitive effort is very much welcome, only the most diehard of Nokia fans would say that this is s good-looking mobile.

It’s chunky, feels unfeasibly long and can’t shake that cheap styling that seemingly all Nokia phones must come with these days. That said, the first time you start it up you’ll find it a joy to use if you’re after easy music access and a decent snapper for your on-the-go antics.

6/10

Design

If we’re being brutal, the Nokia X6 is definitely one of the uglier phones around right now. This is an issue Nokia has across its entire range, but the X6 feels unnecessarily chunky and has a heft that doesn’t feel pleasing in the hand. The sides do feel ruggedised however - not that we’d want to be dropping it on any concrete floors any time soon.

Somewhat awkward looks aside, there are some rather welcome features. The SIM slot isn’t located beneath the battery, so you can easily swap it out using the port at the side. And the 16GB model does mean you don’t have the need for an SD slot sullying the body.

All your tunes are stored on the phone itself. As ever, Nokia has chucked in a 3.5mm jack up top, but we would have liked to have seen some dedicated media keys, so there wasn’t so much reliance on the touchscreen.

5/10

Features

Music is obviously the key focus when it comes to the Nokia X6, with Nokia Music store access onboard and a Comes With Music version also up for grabs. But it’s the five megapixel camera that’s the real winning feature away from the software side of things.

Nok has really up its imaging game in the past year and the X6 continues that. It utilises the capacitive touchscreen to full effect, letting you zoom with your digits before tapping an icon to capture your masterpieces. It works particularly well in low light courtesy of the double LED flash. Video is also peachy thanks to the inclusion of a video light for shooting clips when the sun goes down.

8/10

Software

Symbian S60 is the unsurprising OS of choice for the X6 and while it remains a distant second to Android and the iPhone, this is one of the better iterations we’ve seen. The homescreen is clear and easy to use, the 3 mobile version we used offering direct widget access to Facebook, Skype, Windows Live Messenger and email.

That said, we would have liked the music player icon to sit up front as well. However, once you crank up a tune, the player does appear on the homepage, letting you pause, rewind and flick forward through tunes with no bother. Nokia is still one of the best when it comes to mobile music, trouncing the hackneyed music software on Android and coming only second to Apple’s iPod efforts.

On top of the music mad stylings, there’s also full Ovi access, letting you load up the phone with apps from the Ovi store and sync up Ovi accounts in the cloud. If you’ve not used Ovi yet we recommend you give it a whirl, it really is one of Nokia’s unsung success stories.

7/10

Ease of use

The Nokia X6’s touchscreen is undoubtedly the best we’ve used on a Nokia phone. It’s capacitive, so responds well to swipes and prods and makes the resistive number on the Sony Ericsson Vivaz look dated by comparison. However, it does have certain kinks, with the cramped on screen keyboard being our main gripe.

It also takes some time to get used to its QWERTY version and we can safely say that if mailing on the move is your thing, then you’d best avoid the X6. However, for scooching around menus, tapping out texts on the T9 version of the keypad and zooming in with the camera, it’s hard to find a better touchscreen at this price point.

7/10

Specifications

• 3.2-inch
• 360x640 capacitive touchscreen
• 3.5mm audio jack
• Symbian S60 OS
• 111x51x13.8mm
• 122g
• 16GB onboard storage
• Wi-Fi
• HSDPA

Overall Mark: 8/10

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