Nokia 6600 slide review: Beautiful to use

Tiny, yet remarkably solid, like a pebble tumbled smooth by the waves, there's something about Nokia 6600 slide that's really hard to resist. By the way, minimalist, extra smooth and exclusive stand equally well for any of the 6600 pair. While flip for gals and slide for lads may not exactly be set in concrete, gender-free demand is more likely for the black 6600 slide.

Of the same build and pricing, both the yesterday's 6600 flip and the today's 6600 fold are a treat to look at and handle. The differences in gear are minor, boiling down to a fair try to fine-tune the supply. The OLED screen and electromagnetic push-to-open in the flip are swapped for a 3-megapixel shooter and USB-on-the-go. Little secrets won't stay in the closet but there's enough disarming charm to go around.

Nokia 6600 slide official photos

Key features:

• Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support, dual-band UMTS
• Accelerometer for tap-for-time and tap-to-mute
• 2.2" 16M-color QVGA display
• 3 megapixel camera, autofocus and LED flash
• VGA video recording at 15fps
• S40 user interface, 5th edition, FP1
• Bluetooth (with A2DP) and USB-on-the-go
• Stereo FM radio with RDS
• microSD card slot (up to 8 GB), 512MB included
• Rich preinstalled application package
• Nokia Maps
• Compact and extra smooth
• Sweet oval shapes and neat slider design
• Large capacity BL-4U battery (Li-Ion 1000 mAh)

Main disadvantages:

• Fingerprint magnet, hard to clean
• Rigid battery cover latch
• Memory card slot under the battery, no hot-swap
• No camera shutter key
• Below par camera quality
• Display easily gets scratched
• No smart dialing
• No multi-tasking
• No office document viewer

Nokia 6600 slide

The sleek and smooth Nokia 6600 slide is taking the soft almost seamless contours of its flip sibling another step up. While the hinge of the 6600 fold is an inevitable abrupt cut, the polished rounded edges of the tiny slider are kept intact. Unfortunately its great strength is also its greatest weaknesses - the ease, with which Nokia 6600 slide catches fingerprints, is terrifying. To make things worse, smudges are not that easy to clean.

Nokia 6600 slide

Signature feature of the 6600 pair, tap commands are adding to the pleasure of handling the 6600 slide. Arguably, tap-for-time seems to make a lot more sense in the flip for adding an element of surprise with the hidden outer OLED screen, but we get it in the 6600 slide too anyway. Tap-to-mute is the second available command, which undoubtedly is a nice little perk to have.

Well, it's more than obvious the 6600 slide stakes quite a lot on exterior, so let's see if it repays. We're back after the jump with handling, looks and feel.