Nokia 6120 classic review: Down-to-earth Symbian

Shipshape and on-the-dot

There are several applications in the Organizer, calendar the key one, of course. It hasn't changed, which is to say, it's the good old performer. It offers a month, week, and a day view. Four event types are available: meeting, memo, anniversary, and to-do. Meetings can repeat daily, weekly, biweekly, monthly, or annually. Tasks can be displayed separately and, once accomplished, can be marked as done.

Items withinn the "Organizer" • month, week, and day view of the calendar

   
To-do settings and an overview of all tasks • memo details

Besides the calendar, here you will also find simple text notes, a unit converter and a calculator, which is too basic for a smartphone. There's also a clock application with several repeated alarm-clocks, and a world time function. The voice recorder has been notably enhanced since the last Nokia smartphone: recordings can now be as long as 60 minutes, which should satisfy 99% of all users.

   

The practical organizing applications are now in the standard Symbian equipment

The phone features the Quickoffice application for viewing Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents; browsing is fast. Text can be zoomed-in and out, as well as searched. However, the basic version of Quickoffice does not include an editing option. A 15-Euro special upgrade will give you editing capability. Nokia 6120 offers an Adobe PDF viewer.

Fun & music: classics are always appreciated

Music performance is excellent. The music player in Nokia 6120 classic departs a bit from the players integrated in the N Series. It plays an enormous amount of formats (AAC, AAC+. eAAC+, MP3, MP4, M4A, WMA, RealAudio 7, 8, 10, True tones, WAV). Album covers can be visualized too. The name of the current track appears beneath the album's image. Songs can be organized in playlists by various criteria. Audio performance can be modified, adjusted to user's preferences thanks to a 4-band equalizer. Bass settings, extended stereo and echo effect are available too.

   
A modified Symbian music player

Many will hail the presence of an FM radio receiver. It lacks RDS, but features Visual Radio on the other hand. The radio offers a total of 50 slots for saving stations. Both the music player and the radio player can be minimized.

 
Two more players for more fun - one for flash animations and a RealPlayer. The phone plays all videos in the following formats: 3GPP (H263), H264/AVC, MPEG-4, and RealVideo 7, 8, 9, 10. Videos can be viewed in full-screen mode.

Nokia 6120 classic offers three games: the well-known Marble, the Tetris-look-alike City Bloxx and the HighRoller Casino, which is basically a combination of five very popular card games. All three games are sufficiently entertaining and we highly recommend them. In our case Vodafone had added other 5 game demo versions: Sims 2, Tetris, Asphalt III 3D, Midnight Pool 3D, and Midnight Bowling 3D.

  
Two of the games: Marble and City Bloxx

In line with the Online

Let's start with the slowest type of connections. CSD is not worth mentioning, but HSCSD is available, because there might still be users who use it. The multi-slot Class 32 EDGE/GPRS deserves attention. UMTS/HSDPA support makes things even sweeter with data transfer rate soaring to potentially 3.6 Mb/s.

Wi-Fi is the only connection Nokia 6120 classic misses. Pity indeed. Bluetooth 2.0 supports A2DP and AVRCP for using third party wireless stereo headsets. When the phone is connected via a miniUSB cable, Mass storage is available and the content stored on the memory card appears as a separate storage device. The menu also offers a special mode for working with the Nokia PC Suite and Windows Media Player over an MTP protocol.

Standard File Manager

Nokia 6120 classic sports one of the most sophisticated Internet browsers to ever come in a phone. It changes font size and displays pages in landscape mode. In addition, it browses the pages saved in the History folder by displaying previews only. Images and flash animation can be deactivated to bring down the transferred data count. The Internet browser has an RSS-feed reader.

Camera not up to scratch

No, it's not. Its 2-megapixel resolution fails to impress. While 2 megapixel could still pass, the lack of auto focus and lens cover is a shame. In the same time, the LED flash is worth a compliment. It only gets activated when shooting and cannot be used as a flashlight at night. It does work great in shooting close-ups, though.

   
 


Lighting was not ideal, true. All the same, photos taken with Nokia 6120 are just poor. Other Nokia handsets take much better pictures. The last image was shot in landscape mode

The absence of autofocus is especially obvious in macro shots

The handset is held horizontally when taking pictures. The user interface is quite straightforward. Editing options and effects are not available in the camera application. They can be used in the Gallery, once the picture has been taken. Among them is a panorama mode, combining two shots (the only interesting option, in fact). Twilight and sequence modes are available too.

  

The camera interface is where the difference between "Classic"and N series is most obvious

 
Pictures can be edited from within the Gallery. Several effects are available: sepia, black & white, negative, rotation, sharpness, red-eye reduction, brightness, contrast, crops, cartoonize, etc.

Nokia 6120 records video in QVGA resolution of 320 x 240 pixels at 15 fps. Zooming (only digital though) can be applied during filming too.

Brilliantly conceived

Nokia 6120 classic is an accomplished phone. Offering great performance at rather moderate price, it will stand up to any competitor. Its conservative but very elegant looks will not appeal to teenage users, but will surely enjoy great demand in other market segments. Taking aside the few disappointments like the camera, Nokia 6120 offers a near complete range of up to date features: a superb display, nearly all existing mobile communication capabilities, and super fast interface. Looking for a new phone and not into putting on shows? Then Nokia 6120 Classic should be on your shortlist. At around 250 euros it's definitely worth it.