Nokia X6 review

The Nokia X6 is the latest music-friendly handset from Nokia, which adds the Comes With Music service to a more stylish and feature-intensive handset.

Our review handset had a black and glass front, with a blue clear strip along the top and bottom and just three buttons for user interaction. The black looked cheap, as if it didn’t belong to the device, which sadly ensures it does not have the wow-factor of the iPhone, but it still looks good.

It makes up points in the style and practicality stakes thanks to its capacitive, 3.2-inch glass touchscreen. As well as managing to avoid collecting too many smudges and scratches, the device vibrates somewhat when a press is made which is good for user feedback.

It is relatively light at 122g, especially given its dimensions. While hardly a brick, the large screen and 13mm width means it's not going to fit in everyone's pockets.

Aside from the main menu keys on the front under the glass screen, along one side there's also a dedicated volume control, one-touch camera access, and key lock slider. Back on the front, there's also a touchscreen tab above the main screen for easy access to music playlists and more.

The main five megapixel Carl Zeiss camera is fitted to the back. Not only does it feature a powerful dual-LED flash, it has a light – handy for taking snaps in dark locations without whiting out your subject with the flash. There's also a weaker camera on the front, which took pretty grainy shots, especially compared to its stronger sibling on the back.

As both take video, the fixed camera is likely targeted to video conferencing over IM, and is definitely decent enough quality for that. The video also takes advantage of the double-LED lights on the rear, so you can take decent quality clips.

Clips and pictures can be edited right on the phone – add music or text to videos, crop photos, and then upload them straight online. Despite the phone being a bit slow to load some apps, it's quick enough with editing video.

The Nokia X6 is designed for music lovers. It comes with a year's unlimited subscription to Nokia's Comes With Music, so you can download all you like for free, and features a whopping 32GB of built-in memory, so you'll have room for it, too.

If that's not enough tunes for you, it also picks up FM stereo.

Sensibly, the Nokia X6 features a standard headphone jack, so there's no messing around with adaptors, and decently strong external speakers – expect to be annoyed by teenagers blasting tunes out of this handset next time you take the bus. At least it won't be as tinny as other phones' speakers.

It'll even last for the longest bus rides out there, promising 35 hours of playback time.

While music is the Nokia X6's reason to exist, it's also decent on the web browsing front, featuring full Flash and built-in access to social networking sites like Facebook as well as Nokia's Ovi service.

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