Nokia C6 Hands-on and Impressions

I had a chance to get my hands-on the Nokia C6 recently which was released last July 2010 in the Philippines with a suggested retail price of 15,000 pesos. It is Nokia’s new touchscreen phone with a slide-out keyboard and could be compared to the Nokia N97 mini but cheaper. It has a 3.2 resistive touch-screen display (360x640), 5-megapixel camera with LED flash + front-facing camera, ARM 11 434 Mhz processor, all powered by the Symbian OS v9.4.

As always, the build quality of the C6 is top-notch. Sliding out the keyboard was seamless. The physical QWERTY keyboard had good tactile feel and enough finger space to provide a comfortable typing experience. The display conveniently slides out straight (not tilted like n97) so typing could be a little easier.  I just wished they’d made the touchscreen capacitive instead of resistive. I was quite please with the overall construction and hardware components of this phone for the price.

With regards to the software running this thing. I think Nokia should really consider releasing Android or Windows models for their Symbian ones. I mean, not totally dump Symbian like what Samsung and Sony-Ericsson did, but provide choice to users and see what they want. The Symbian OS 5 does not make the cut in terms of user-interface, features and the most important factor. Apps.

Nevertheless, this current Symbian version running on the C6 seems to be doing the job. There is some lag here and there but if this is your first touch-screen phone, then this should be good. If you have used an iPod Touch or iPhone before then you’d have to lower your expectations in terms of smoothness and screen response time.

You can read the Nokia C6 specifications after the jump. Click on the photos to see a larger image.

  
  

Specifications:

Form Factor Sliding - QWERTY keyboard

Display - 3.2 inch resistive touch screen

Dimensions - 113.4mm x 53.0mm x 16.8mm

Weight - 150 g with battery

Connectors - Micro USB 2.0 and standard 3.5mm audio jack

Wireless - Bluetooth, WLAN

Memory - 240MB internal, 2GB micro SD card included, expandable up to 16GB

Software - Symbian OS v9.4, S60 5th ed.

Apps - Facebook, Hi5, Myspace, Ovi Contacts, Clock, Calculator, Calendar, Converter, Notes, Voice recorder, To-do list, Ovi Store, Ovi Suite

Email - Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, Ovi Mail, Mail for Exchange

Internet - Flash supported web browser

Navigation - A-GPS with free voice-guided pedestrain and drive navigation lifetime licence from Ovi Maps

Camera 1 - 5.0 megapixels with 4x digital zoom, autofocus, geo-tagging and LED flash for photography or video capture.

Camera 2 - Secondary camera for video calling

Music/video - FM radio and Media Player supporting all major audio file foramts and Flash, WMV 9 and MPEG4 video formats

 http://europe.nokia.com/find-products/devices/nokia-c6

Nokia C6 @ testfreaks.com