Nokia X6

In the world of Nokia it's all about evolution, rather than revolution. So don't expect the specs on the X6 to blow your mind. The handset is the next step for the market leader scrambling to make up for a late start in touch- screens. To be honest, the Symbian S60 touch edition has been struggling to catch up with the standard setters in terms of user experience. And the X6 claims to have the answer: the responsiveness only a capacitive screen can bring.

The Nokia X6 is also the first XpressMusic handset to head straight for the high-end. Midrange is the highest the music Finns have gone so we are interested to see how this change of approach works. Nokia have always had a strong appeal to the masses, but pleasing the selected few is undoubtedly harder.

Key features: Quad-band GSM support Tri-band 3G with HSDPA support 3.2" 16M-color TFT LCD 16:9 capacitive touchscreen (360 x 640 pixels) Symbian S60 5th edition UI ARM 11 434 MHz CPU, 128 MB of RAM memory 5 megapixel autofocus camera with dual-LED flash VGA video recording at 30fps Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, UPnP technology Built-in GPS receiver 32GB built-in storage FM radio with RDS Bluetooth and USB (standard microUSB connector) v2.0 3.5mm standard audio jack Very good audio quality Proximity sensor for screen auto turn-off Accelerometer sensor for automatic UI rotation and motion-based gaming Stereo speakers TV out "Comes with music" edition gives you a year of all-you-can-eat music subscription Landscape on-screen virtual QWERTY keyboard Ovi Maps 3.0 Touch Further Ovi and MySpace service integration (direct image and video uploads) Most regional retail packages include a set of the great Nokia WH-500 headphones

Focusing on the capacitive touchscreen The Nokia X6 centerpiece is, of course, its 3.2" 16M color touchscreen display with a resolution of 360 x 640 pixels. Its size is about average for a pocketable touchscreen device and so is the resolution. We have seen plenty of WVGA displays recently which sport quite a lot more pixels so we can hardly consider it too great of an achievement. Yet with the HVGA still being quite popular we wouldn't go as far as calling outdated either.

Design and construction The Nokia X6 looks pretty nice with its opaque plastic finish. You can't be too imaginative when designing a full-touch handset but a huge display up front always has a positive impact on a handset's look.

Our main concern is the all plastic body. While it might suit nicely an entry or midrange handset, we can't help but wish for some metal both for looks and durability. We've never seen much steel on an XpressMusic phone, but then again, we've never had to pay this much to get one.

Below the display we find the three traditional for the S60 touch devices keys. Those include Call and End buttons as well as a menu knob. They aren't touch-sensitive so the transition between them and the screen might be a bit awkward. On the other hand their size and tactility renders no other usability obstacles.

User interface is the same, despite the new touchscreen As far as touchscreens go, the Nokia X6 is a first for Nokia -it's their first capacitive touchscreen phone. The S60 5th edition hoever hasn't changed at all. So, by now you should have seen plenty touch Symbian OS reviews and nothing here should come as a big surprise.

The first thing to note is kinetic scrolling which, in fact, works quite well and is available almost throughout the user interface - from file browser through gallery to contacts (and even web browser, though with quite spotty implementation). Unfortunately, it won't work in icon menus, like the main menu.

In those icon-centric menus you push the selection to the edge of the screen, which will scroll things in the opposite direction. It's very unintuitive and confusing, since everything else works the other way around. You can use the scroll bar for icon menus, but scrollbars are so 1990s.

Still, the good news is that finger scrolling has been improved everywhere as far as lists of items are concerned. You can scroll with the same ease as with the Apple iPhone - you push it one way and it moves in the oppsite direction as if you are pushing the actual list off the screen.

On the homescreen, the Contacts bar is side-scrollable and thus accommodates a lot more phonebook shortcuts.

Turning the handset landscape in text-input mode automatically brings a full QWERTY keypad up on the screen. Of course, there's still a long way to go. We'd still have to wait for auto-rotation of the homescreen, smart dial and a more elaborate Active Standby - with room for the WLAN scanner plugin, for instance.

Widgets are NSeries stuff so don't expect any of those here. And if you were expecting thumb-scrollable multiple homescreen panes, then you are out of luck as well, despite the fact that the touchscreen competition has had these for a long time.

S60 5th is in essence a direct translation of D-pad and soft-key action into touch. Although it has its benefits, the result is hardly the most fluent and intuitive touchscreen interface there is. Scrolling and accessing items across the interface is nothing like other touch platforms we've tried. On the other hand, soft-keys work just fine and enhance usability compared to other touch phones.

So, the user experience with S60 5th is a mixed bag and what you think of it will entirely depend on your background. If you know your way around S60, you'll be quite at home with the X6 interface. But if you come from an alternative touchscreen platform you'll find yourself climbing a fairly steep learning curve.

Opening an item in any of the listed submenus requires not one, but two presses - one to select, and another one to confirm the action. Now that's something that you don't normally see in other touch phones. You get used to it with time, but the main issue here is that the interface logic is different when you deal with icons instead of lists.When the opened menu uses icons to represent items as opposed to lists, then a single click usually does the job.

The scrolling as described earlier is equally confusing due to the two contradictory approaches. At least kinetic scrolling will make you feel way more comfortable than those first 5800 XpressMusic users. Plus, it does at least show Nokia are serious about polishing the Symbian touch platform.

Homescreen and main menu

The main menu structure leaves no doubt you're on Symbian turf. Icons are set in a 3 x 4 grid or a list and you can freely reorder. Screen orientation can be set to change automatically thanks to the accelerometer.

The homescreen, however, is one spot where auto-rotation is badly missed as the extra screen estate would've made it much more usable. For one, more shortcuts would've been visible on the Contacts bar. It's scrollable anyway - that's true - but if the 5730 XpressMusic can do it, why can't the touchscreen version?

Otherwise, the homescreen layout of the X6 is typical Symbian and looks exactly the same as it did on the Nokia 5530.

A single press on the clock starts the clock application (with an option for setting up an alarm) while tapping on the date opens a drop-down menu where you can either launch the calendar application or change the currently active profile, which does make using the the Power key for that purpose redundant.

You can also access the connectivity menu from here by tapping around the battery status indicator, which is the quickest way to initiate a WLAN search. It is not quite as quick as the 3rd edition plug-in where you only needed a single click for that purpose but it is better than nothing.

The Contacts bar follows right beneath: each contact is represented by the contact photo and their first name - and it's possible to have three contacts displayed at a time but the list is scrollable left or right.

For each contact you can add an RSS feed, so we guess it is a nice trick to add a contact that isn't a person just so that you'll have quick access to your favorite feeds on the homescreen.

Selecting a contact from the Contact bar brings up a screen with info on the contact (different from you get if you select the contact from the Contacts list). It has the contact photo, name and phone number. Underneath are four buttons - call, send message, update feed and settings.

Further down is an area that shows the communication history for that contact - both calls and messages. And finally, at the bottom there are the top two lines from an RSS feed.

Pretty decent phonebook The Nokia X6 phonebook has virtually unlimited capacity and its functionality is certainly among the best out there. Nokia X6 contacts list also has kinetic scrolling enabled that's a welcome enhancement but nowadays all Nokia touch phones have that already.

Contacts can be freely ordered by first or last name and you can also set whether the contacts from the SIM card, the phone memory and the service numbers will get displayed.

Telephony: smart-dial nowhere to be seen Voice quality is good on both ends of calls, the earpiece sound is crisp and there were no reception problems whatsoever.

The only real downside is the still missing smart dialing functionality. Some may argue it's not as essential on a touchscreen phone but most of the competition has it duly covered. Not to mention WinMo devices have a very elaborate smart dial system that even searches in your Calls log for numbers that are not in your contacts list.

Music Store and Comes With Music The Music Store is present in a lot of other Nokia handsets but we haven't paid too much attention to it. But with the Nokia X6 we just can't ignore it - the X6 comes with a year of free subscription to the Nokia Music Store.

The Comes With Music subscription means unlimited free downloads (apart from possible data charges) and you get to keep the songs when the subscription runs out, though the songs are DRM protected.

With 32GB of internal memory, that means you can download a huge music collection. But you can also listen to the songs on your PC and burn a song or album up to ten times on a CD (though that might not be available for all songs).

The Music Store keeps things simple - a banner for a popular performer from your country, a search bar and the option to browse songs and albums by genre or charts from the chosen country. Searching is done by performer or title.

Pretty good audio quality We are now used to seing the XpressMusic handsets deliver excellent audio quality so the Nokia X6 hardly managed to surprise us. It isn't too much better than that of its much more affordable siblings but that is enough to secure it a place quite close to the best in business.

Save for the slightly high intermodulation distortion, Nokia X6 performs excellently in every part of our test. The frequency response is great with the slightly larger number that appears in the table is only due to the extreme heights of the audible range being slightly cut off.