Review of Nokia C6

C6 is Nokia's latest offering in the mid range smartphones.

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Specifications:

GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 HSDPA 850 / 900 / 1900 / 2100

Size and weight : 113 x 53 x 16.8 mm, 80 cc, 150 g
3.2" TFT resistive touchscreen display, 16M colors 360 x 640 pixels
QWERTY keyboard, Proximity, Accelerometer sensor

3.5 mm audio jack
240 MB internal memory
microSD, up to 16GB
HSDPA 3.6 Mbps, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g
Bluetooth v2.0 with A2DP, v2.0 microUSB
5 MP Camera, autofocus, LED flash, QVGA secondary
Symbian OS v9.4, Series 60 rel. 5
ARM 11 434 MHz processor
SMS, MMS, Email, Push Email, IM
Browser: WAP 2.0/xHTML, HTML, RSS feeds
Stereo FM radio with RDS
GPS with A-GPS support
JAVA, MIDP 2.1
Standard battery, Li-Ion 1200 mAh (BL-4J)
Up to 384 h (2G) / Up to 384 h (3G) Up to 7 h (2G) / Up to 5 h (3G)

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Build:

This phone feels and looks like a modified N97 as it houses same 434 MHz processor, same 3.2" resistive touchscreen and same software. However, it is stripped of Carl Zeiss optics for the camera, does not tilt and offers a four line slide out QWERTY keypad. This phone is a bit thick and heavy as compared to other smart phones in this segment.

Build quality is average and gaps in joints can be clearly seen. The battery cover doesn't quite sit neatly which is noticeable. Phone is made using matte plastic, and feels comfortable in your hand but at the front, shiny coating is prone to fingerprints.

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Display and Interface:

C6 has a 640 x 360 pixels resistive touchscreen supporting 16M colors which is capable of rendering clear, readable text, even at small sizes. Colors are bright and look natural but still it is no match for AMOLED display and performs poorly under direct sunlight.

C6 is packed with ARM 11 434 MHz processor with 128MB of RAM and runs Symbian series 60 OS v9.4. Phone feels sluggish at times due to low RAM and laggy OS and response time is as high as 4 to 5 seconds while running multimedia applications. Symbian OS feels outdated and doesn't offer features like multi-touch and pinch and zoom like IOS, Android and BADA. Phone comes preloaded with applications like Facebook, Youtube, PDF reader and MySpace. One can download from many applications available from Ovi store. Web browser works well and supports Flash lite.

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Camera and Multimedia:

C6 features a 5MP camera which can record VGA quality videos at 30 frames per second. There are a number of modes like Close-up (macro), Portrait, Landscape, Sport, Night, Night Portrait. It also features Geo tagging but lacks face detection and smile detection. Image quality is decent but video quality is a bit disappointing.

Music quality is decent, but not exceptional. There's plenty of depth in music with the supplied headphones, but bass feels shallow. Audio quality of the FM radio is quite good given you are getting good signals for obvious reasons. Music library is automatically sorted by artist, album, genre and or composer and searching tracks by gradual typing is available.

Video player does not support DivX/XviD so one has to use Nokia PC suite to video files to the format and resolution this phone supports which makes video quality rather bad.

Conectivity:

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C6 features a number of connectivity options that is expected from a smartphone. These include Wi-Fi B/G, HSDPA 3.6 MBPS, Bluetooth, microUSB and A-GPS. It comes with Ovi Maps 3.3 Touch preinstalled with free lifetime voice-guided navigation. GPS is fast and locks on easily but navigation is not the most user friendly.

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Verdict:

Although Nokia C6 is a decent QWERTY smartphone, but it doesn't offer anything exiting. It is almost similar specifications of N97 mini with a cheaper price tag of SG $450, MYR 880 and INR 14000. Symbian OS is outdated and abandoned by most of the manufacturers so there is no reason why Nokia should still stick to it. Unless you are a die hard Nokia fan, it is highly recommended to take a look at HTC Wildfire and similarly priced phones from Samsung running Android.