Nokia X6
Nokia X6 official photos
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
Main disadvantages:
- X6 is still quite pricey (around 500 euro at the time of writing)
- UI is still immature with somewhat inconsistent user experience
- Touch web browser not quite polished and with dodgy Flash support
- No voice-guided navigation license
- No office document viewer preinstalled
- Doesn't charge off microUSB
- Very poor sunlight legibility
- Slow image gallery
- No DivX/XviD support for the video player
- No microSD card slot (as a connectivity solution)
As you can see in the two lists above there is almost nothing new in the software package, so it all falls on the hardware to justify the high asking price. The well-stuffed retail package is a great place to start but does the capacitive screen improve usability enough to be worth the extra money over, say, the 5800 XpressMusic? And the difference in price is by no means trivial.
Nokia X6 at ours
In the increasingly competitive touchscreen market manufacturers don't have much room for error. The unpolished S60 UI is enough of a burden already, so Nokia X6 has to be near perfect in every other respect. A tall task indeed
The camera has its ups and downs
Nokia X6 has a 5 MP camera with a maximum image resolution of 2592x1944 pixels. Carl Zeiss optics promise nice photos with a lot of detail.
The camera UI is similar to the one found in 5800 XpressMusic and a carbon copy of the one in N97 and N97 mini - the few changes made are not really for the better.
All the settings are squeezed in a common menu, except for the flash, which has its own dedicated shortcut. We understand that a tabular layout isn't the easiest of things on this kind of device but some of the more important features could have had their own shortcuts too.
The camera UI
At least the range of settings that the Nokia X6 offers is extensive enough: from manual white balance and ISO to exposure compensation, sharpness and contrast. Various effects are also at hand, labeled as Color Tones.
The geo-tagging option is available out of the box.
Nokia X6 lacks all the modern features that the other competing manufacturers are using such as face detection, smile detection and even blink prevention.
The viewfinder on the Nokia X6 doesn't occupy the whole screen - a bar on the right is reserved for the touch controls. You have a settings button that launches a semi-transparent overlay of all available shooting options, a dedicated Flash button, an on-screen shutter key and finally, the Options menu key.
The on-screen shutter key seems absolutely redundant - it doesn't have a half press/full press action to properly handle auto focus. It would've been way better to have a Quick Settings button instead.
Image quality
The picture quality is pretty decent by our books. First of all the picture detail is enough to qualify the photos as very nice. The next thing is that the noise reduction algorithm is mature enough and finds a good balance between noise levels and detail. There is no purple fringing and the white balance and auto ISO settings worked just fine. Photos have good contrast and accurate colors.
The typical-for-Nokia slight yellowish tint is present in the Nokia X6 camera too, but it's not too obtrusive and most consumers prefer photos with warmer colors.
And there go some photo samples from the X6 camera.
Nokia X6 camera samples
Synthetic resolution
We also snapped our resolution chart with the Nokia X6. You can check out what that test is all about here.
Nokia X6 resolution chart photo • 100% crops
Nokia N97 mini resolution chart photo • 100% crops
Video recording
The camcorder interface doesn't differ from the still camera much. The camera can capture video in either VGA or the screen resolution (640 x 352 px) resolution, in both cases at 30 frames per second.
The camcorder UI
The X6 video capture quality is OK. Colors and white balance turn out just fine, but the compression seems too aggressive in most of the clips and produces noticeable video artifacts. Anyway, VGA@30fps seems to be the best that Nokia can offer right now.
Here are two samples from the Nokia X6:
Sample 1, VGA@30fps
Sample 2, 640x352@30fps
Final words
A first capacitive screen for Nokia and a first truly high-end device in the XpressMusic lineup, the X6 is a phone that requires attention. It's good that Nokia do try and improve their touchscreens and respond to users' demands.
Yet we don't think the screen sensitivity is the main problem of the Nokia touch phones. Resistive screens have strengths of their own (better accuracy, stylus use and handwriting, etc.) over capacitive ones, so it's more about picking your priorities rather than ranking the two technologies.
Don't get us wrong - we are pleased with Nokia for giving their users a choice. It's great that they are creating handsets for different customers, rather than relying on the one-size-fit-all approach. However, there are other issues that need more urgent attention and we believe Nokia should focus their efforts there.
That focus should be the software on their smartphones, of course. The S60 UI is neither user-friendly nor attractive enough to rival the best in class. The core functionality is all there but when we are talking about that much money, only covering the basics just doesn't cut it.
The Nokia X6 is an expensive device all right (around 500 euro), even if we discount the Comes With Music license and the great headphones. And at this price point the flaws are not easily forgiven. Competition in this segment is tough to start with, and the fact that there's too many affordable alternatives with comparable feature sets doesn't help either.
The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, 5530 XpressMusic and the 5230 might be placed in a much lower segment but they do match most of the X6 functionality and cost a lot less. If you are willing to sacrifice some screen estate and GPS (5530) or Wi-Fi (5230) and a couple of megapixels of image resolution (5230) you can save yourself more than half the money and get the same software package, even with the Comes with music goodies (5235).
Nokia 5800 XpressMusic • Nokia 5800 XpressMusic • Nokia 5230
The HTC Hero and Acer Liquid are the two Android alternatives that give you great performance, a much more fluid UI and solid multimedia capabilities. They don't offer the same in-box headphones or all-you-can-eat music downloads but cost less and you can use the money you save on either of those. And all other things equal, the Nokia loses on points despite the 32GB built-in storage.
HTC Hero • Acer Liquid
All those alternatives listed above pinpoint the main weakness of Nokia X6: its low bang-for-buck ratio. The capacitive display is nice but when the performance necessary to back it up is missing, there is little benefit for the user. And real audiophiles are likely to already own a top-notch headset, so another major selling point is moot.
There is always a chance that the market will see to it that the X6 price is adequately adjusted, which will improve the phone's prospects. At this stage, the handset is not really a smart buy in the way that the 5800 XpressMusic is. But maybe smart buys belong in the midrange, premium phones are a different story.
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