Nokia 6270 review: A bulky slider

It's been some time now that the Nokia 6270 has been on the market. This stylish slider is anything but slim and yet it managed to find its fans. The 2 megapixel camera along with the wide connectivity options, the large display and the great 3D stereo sound make it a prefered choice for a lot of… our guess is, die-hard Nokia fans. Our opinion is that there are better rival phones at the same price and functionality price range.

Nokia 6270 official images

Key features

• 2 megapixel camera with LED flash
• miniSD memory card slot (hot-swap)
• Aluminum body
• EDGE and GPRS support
• QVGA (240 x 320 pixels) display resolution
• Stereo speakers with 3D effects
• MP3 player and stereo FM radio
• Bluetooth & Infrared

Main disadvantages

• No 3G support
• Large dimensions and weight
• Video capturing in the outdated QCIF (176 x 144 pixels) resolution

For a long time Nokia made handsets with small CSTN color displays that were out of fashion. In a way, the manufacturer is a large gigantic dinosaur which needs a lot of time in order to turn to another direction. Now the giant has already turned its back on the old-fashioned displays and has started producing great bright TFT screens that easily catch anybody's eye.

The same thing is happening now with the large size of the phones - almost all manufacturers have a slim series in their product line while Nokia is again slow to react to the change in trends and keeps manufacturing large, chunky handsets.

Now we have in our hands another representative of the usual "massive" product line of Nokia which might not fit in everybody's pocket. The dimensions of the phone are 104 x 50 x 23 mm and it weighs 125 g without the memory card.

Nokia 6270 held in hand

The Nokia 6270 is a large slider and easily reminds of Nokia 6280 which we already reviewed a while ago. Both sliders have a nice, masculine design. The 6280, however, has UMTS support with video calls, smaller dimensions and weight, and shoots VGA (640x480 pixels) resolution video clips.

Nokia 6270's interface is identical to the interface used in several other recent Nokia phones - the user interface is the last generation of the Series 40 platform. That is why we are going to use several paragraphs from other reviews.

As regards the retail package, the box should include a stereo headset HS-23, a USB cable CA-53, and a 128MB miniSD card, but as we have always said - the contents of the retail package are market and country dependant.

Conservative all over

The slider features a rather conservative design with straight lines and angles all over. The phone has anodized aluminum surface al over although it doesn't feel metallic at all. The sliding mechanism boasts a rather strong spring which opens the phone to full extent with minimal effort from the thumb. The shiny metallic insert (like the one on Nokia N80) between the front and the back panel and the similar one surrounding the display actually provide a lot for the general expensive looks of the phone. Although large and bulky, it still looks as a finely crafted piece of technology.

Nokia 6270 opened: front, back, top and bottom view

When closed, the front panel incorporates only the central navigation D-pad along with two soft keys and green and red receiver keys. When the slider is opened, the large numeric keypad is revealed. The keys are unusually large, well spaced and the central column of keys is separated from the rest by a thin metallic insert - much like the Nokia 6280 slider.

The keypad itself is great for typing - the keys have a very good response and even for a first-time user it allows great typing speed. A great thing is that you can do almost anything with the phone (even talk) without having to open it. If you still need to open it, closing it back down would make the phone prompt you shortly to lock the keypad. In that case the key lock is activated through the central OK key of the D-pad. But once the phone is fully opened, locking the keypad is done the usual way by pressing menu plus asterisk on the keypad or using the Switch Off/Profiles button and the famous context menu.

Nokia 6270 closed • Nokia 6270 keypad

The left side of the phone features only the Push-to-Talk shortcut key and the memory card slot cover. Now Nokia should really do something about that fixed PTT key since the Push-To-Talk service is not available in all countries. The Nokia people should really make that user-configurable.

Nokia 6270 left side view

The right side incorporates the swing volume button and the camera shortcut keys. The Voice Dial and Voice Commands are entered after a longer press of the DOWN volume key. On both sides of the phone you can easily see the apertures for the stereo speakers - we must admit that they really make a difference to the sound quality. Once Stereo widening is turned on, the stereo effect of the sound of the phone is truly remarkable.

Nokia 6270 right side view

Turning the phone around we see the camera lens cover surrounded by classy, shiny silvery frame. When looking at the back panel horizontally, the lash LED is positioned above the lens cover - much like it's done on an ordinary digital camera. The wonderfully designed back side of the phone can be easily mistaken for a real digital camera.

The battery cover is removed with a slide. The battery used here is the Li-Ion Nokia BL-5C with a capacity of 970 mAh. According to the manufacturer, the battery should provide up to 2.5-5 hours of talk time and up to 160-240 hours of stand-by time.

Unfortunately, we couldn't test the phone's battery life since we used the phone heavily during our tests and thus the battery life we experienced has not indicated the real-life performance of the phone. The SIM card bed has a hinged cover which holds the card in place. We must admit that it's a very comfortable solution.

Nokia 6270 lens cover • Battery cover removed

The keypad backlighting is white and subtle, but strong enough. The phone has a wonderful 2.2" 262K color TFT display with a resolution of 240 x 320 pixels. The vivid screen is perfectly legible even under direct sunlight and has a wide viewing angle from all sides - Nokia deserve compliments for the great job.

Nokia 6270 display and keypad in the dark