Nokia 6500 classic review: Slim inside out

People you know

The phonebook on Nokia 6500 classic offers space for up to 2000 contacts, as well as various configuration options. Each contact can be assigned a variety of fields but the phone numbers are limited to 5. First names are separated from last names eliminating problems which may occur with synchronization. Ringtones can be assigned to each contact. Naturally, you can also assign personal pictures or videos that will run on an incoming call. The picture displayed is different for incoming and outgoing calls, as it fills the screen when you are on the receiving end of a call, and appears much smaller when you are calling one of your contacts.

There are three available view modes for your contacts list: List-of-Names, Name-and-Number and Name-and-Picture. It can display the SIM card contacts, the phone memory contacts or both at the same time. The phonebook font size can also be enlarged, should the user find that necessary, and it's an option that will surely be widely appreciated. Searching is done by gradual typing of the name of the corresponding contact. And that's not all: contacts can also be organized in groups and these can consequently be used as call filters. Another application worth our compliments is voice dial; no pre-recording of voice labels is necessary. There is also a training application that helps for better results when using voice commands and/or dialing.

The phonebook looks are familiar to everyone who has ever used a Series 40 phone • Contact customization allows a large number of fields to be added

The Call Log in Nokia 6500 classic won't surprise anyone who has ever held a Series 40 device in their hands. It can display Dialed, Received and Missed calls separately, as well as all of them together. Every submenu can hold up to 20 call records with their date, time and duration.

Call log offers 20 records for each sub menu - dialed, received and missed calls • It also keeps track of your total call duration and data transfers, as well as messages and synchronization

Messaging

The message menu has not undergone any modifications either. It is organized almost perfectly. Besides standard text messages, Nokia 6500 is capable of receiving and sending multimedia messages, sound and flash messages via MMS, and emails. The SMS and MMS use one and the same editor and all you need to do in order to turn a regular SMS into an MMS is insert a picture or any other multimedia content. As soon as you activate the editor, it displays a field for entering the number of the recipient, which you can insert through standard typing, select it from the phonebook, from the caller groups, or from the list with the most recent addressees in the call register. There is even the very handy option to select a favorite message contact in case you have frequent correspondence with one and the same person. Everything in the editor is intuitive and is organized in a practical time-saving manner. Once you have inserted the relevant number, a single click will shift to the message body where you can start typing. It goes without saying that the phone also offers a rich T9 dictionary.

The message editor is truly elaborate • Converting an SMS into an MMS is done by simply inserting an image or other multimedia content • Contacts can be tagged Favorite for faster selection

Message length is limited to 1000 characters with both the count of typed characters and the number of parts the message will be divided into constantly visible. All messages use the shared memory, regardless of their type.

A photo, a contact card, or an event from the calendar can be sent via MMS. MMS size limit for both send and receive is 300 KB. A handy feature is that the phone will automatically scale down pictures for sending via MMS.

The email client is luckily no longer a built-in Java application but the fully functional email client instead, that we have come to know from most Nokia smartphones. That makes it much faster and generally better than the one used in Nokia 6300 for example. It works with POP3, SMTP, and IMAP4 protocols and supports multiple email boxes. When a message is to be sent, it finds the email address of the corresponding recipient in the phonebook. Sent attachments are not limited in size. Both message headers only and entire messages can be downloaded, depending on your choice.

XpressMusic player becomes standard equipment

The music player is almost identical to the one used in the Nokia 5300 XpressMusic phone and the Nokia 7500 Prism. It is a great player originally reserved for music-oriented Nokia phones and is obviously becoming the standard player for all recent Series 40 devices. Besides managing all the typical functions of a music player, it also sorts songs by artist, album and genre. The player works with MP3, MIDI, AAC, AAC+, and WMA formats. The supported A2DP profile allows listening on Bluetooth wireless earphones. The player is highly customizable through a number of themes that are at your disposal. These were all quite eye pleasing.

The music player offers a whole bunch of customizable options

In the retail package you will find a Nokia HS-82 headset. There is very little chance that you will fall in love with it. If you use your player rather rarely however, and do not expect wonders from your headset, it may just do the job. The handset features a microUSB jack for connecting the headset, so using another set of headphones may just turn out impossible, unless you manage to somehow find a suitable adapter. We unfortunately couldn't, and that is the reason we were unable to perform our audio quality test on this device. But moving back to the player, we have to say that it offers a large number of configurable options. The sonic experience is enhanced by an equalizer and a stereo expansion function. The equalizers do deserve attention, as they perform very well and have nice graphic visualization. As with Nokia 7500 Prism, the selected equalizer has an almost instant effect without the usual couple-of-seconds lag. Nokia 6500 classic has only one loudspeaker located on its rear cover, right next to the camera. We did already mention that it is among the loudest we tried, though. Surprisingly enough, it does not get muffled at all when the phone body is placed on its back on an even surface such as a desk.

The equalizers instantly change the way Nokia 6500 classic sounds

Unfortunately there is no FM radio on Nokia 6500 classic, so if you get bored with the music player all you can do is turn the video on. The video player is compatible with 3GP and MP4 formats. Videos can be played in fullscreen mode, as well as fast-forwarded or rewound. The possibility to remove the soft key captions to make better use of the full screen view mode is nice and improves video watching experience greatly.

Videos can be watched in fullscreen with the very nice video player