Nokia 6110 Navigator review

The S60-powered Symbian Nokia 6110 Navigator is one of a new batch of smartphones from Nokia that puts SatNav functions in the limelight. SatNav software and a GPS receiver make this phone useful for getting from A to B.

Included is turn-by-turn voice and onscreen navigation as well as route planning. Thanks to the Nokia 6110's 3G, speedy HSDPA, quicker downloading ensures your music and video takes less time to get, also. Rounding things off is an as onboard music player and 2.0-megapixel camera. In a change from previous GPS-enabled Nokias, the 6110 uses the the Route 66 memory card-based mobile Sat Nav package, instead of Nokia Maps.

This software allows you to download maps and other useful information when travelling, hopefully making your journey a lot easier, but also more fulfilling and faster. They aren't free, however, and only certain countries are supported.

The Route 66 software can be accessed from the front of the phone, with its slider closed. Press a largecNavigator key and the Sat Nav software quickly comes into play. Locking onto GPS satellites to get a location can take mere seconds, particularly in wide open spaces; in cities, it can take longer to get a fix, a few minutes sometimes. This device uses Assisted GPS (AGPS) technology that uses mobile network referencing combined with GPS to increase the speed and accuracy of positioning, Once you're getting GPS reception, the system is a beauty to use and stays connected tenaciously.

The Route 66 software enables you to look up places you want directions to in various ways - using a text search facility, or by inputting parts of addresses, postcodes or locations. You can also search for nearby points of interests – shops, stations, restaurants, banks, entertainment venues, attractions and so on – under a variety of category headings.

The joy of having this phone-based on a memory card rather than internet based is the speed of searches; it's extremely fast, plus you don't have to be in good mobile network coverage for it to work. You can also bookmark your own favourite locations or routes. A really useful feature is the ability to send screen shots of maps to other mobile users as regular MMS messages, emails or via Bluetooth.

Trialing the Sat Nav system around remote countryside and in town we were very impressed overall. It was extremely useful for navigating around small country lanes which would otherwise have left us dazed, confused - and very lost. Naturally, the major roads were a breeze too. Voice directions were clear and precise, and loud - the rear panel stereo speakers are loud enough to cut through car noise.

The phone's display is a 2.2-inch QVGA (320x240 pixels) 16-million colour screen that’s bright and detailed - so shows up the 3D or 2D directions nice and clearly. Not as clearly as a dedicated in-car Sat Nav system with 4-inch display, of course, but the 6110 Navigator does ft in your pocket better... One caveat that users should note is that GPS gobbles up battery life, so if using in your motor, an in-car charger would be recommended (you should also check that the Sat Nav app is properly exited when you're done - it can easily be left running in the background).

The Nokia 6110's Sat Nav software also features a pedestrian mode, which will encourage users to use the navigation feature when wandering around. The phone itself is not the smallest handset around, comparable in size to the N95 at 101(h) x 49(w) x 20(d) mm and weighing 125g. It's not such a striking design as the N95, but its rounded body feels comfortable in the hand, if a tad bulky in the pocket.

One of the features on the casing is a raised sliding lens cover on the back. This acts as protection and a fast access switch on the phone's camera in landscape mode. This model's 2.0-megapixel shooter can produce decent printable pictures, particularly in good lighting conditions. It has a flash onboard too. There are a selection of adjustments you can implement, plus post-shot editing options in the camera. It does lack autofocus and macro modes, however, which limits the quality of closer shots. You can see examples of images taken with the Nokia 6110 Navigator here.

Video shooting is available in 320x240 pixels resolution, which is better than average for a mobile phone. Footage is pretty good for a cameraphone. Nokia supplies the 6110 with Adobe Photoshop Album 3.0 software on a CD-ROM for more advanced photo editing on a PC.

A secondary lower quality camera above the display is used for 3G video calling. 3G with HSDPA enables high speed downloads and streaming of video and audio tracks, at up to 3.6Mbps. Downloaded video playback on the 6110 is excellent, with RealPlayer software pre-loaded. The onboard music player is an able performer, too, as good as the Nokia N95's (albeit without the N95's dedicated music controls). The headphones supplied are typically so-so, but can be upgraded for significant quality improvement if you use a 2.5mm-to-3.5mm adapter with standard headphones. Bluetooth stereo headphones are another upgrade option.

The Nokia Browser can browse pages written in XHTML, HTML and WML, giving a decent full web browsing experience; zooming options and the cursor style page navigation are well integrated to help surfing on a mobile screen, while Nokia's browser Mini map gives you a page overview to help negotiate pages with lots of info. RSS feeds can be bookmarked too for regular headline updates from your favourite sites.

As with any Symbian S60 3rd Edition smartphone from Nokia, there are extensive organiser functions (calendar, notes, calculator, convertor, etc.) and other applications to try out. There's Push Email support, and QuickOffice document reader software, plus an Adobe PDF reader, so you can check out attachments from emails or documents copied over to the phone's memory. Nokia PC Suite syncing software is supplied, which enables you to synchronise contacts and calendars with Microsoft Outlook and Lotus Notes on a PC via a USB cable (there's no Mac sync option though). Files can be dragged and droped over to the phone's memory too.

Overall, the Nokia 6110 Navigator presents a compelling package for anyone keen on having Sat Nav on their mobile phone. The joy of the 6110 option is everything you need is squeezed into one relatively compact device. And the performance of the Nokia 6110's integrated Sat Nav solution is much better than Nokia's first GPS phone, the N95, delivering faster lock-ons and location processing and better overall GPS reception.

There are battery power issues inherent in this one-gadget solution; leaving GPS on really hits battery usage. But with the flexibility of the Nokia 6110 Navigator and all-round performance, this is hugely impressive device.