Nokia 6600 slide review: Beautiful to use

A superb phonebook

The phonebook of Nokia 6600 slide stores up to 2000 contacts and that sounds more than enough. Each contact can be assigned a variety of fields but the phone numbers are limited to 6, including a video-call number. 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. Caller image is different for incoming and outgoing calls. 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.

The Nokia 6600 slide phonebook is searched by gradual typing

There are three available view modes for your contact list: Normal Name List, Name-and-Number and Name-and-Image. It can display the SIM card contacts, the phone memory contacts or both at the same time. Contacts can be ordered by either first or last name.

Some of the available fields when editing a contact

The phonebook font size can also be modified, should this be necessary, and it's an option that will surely be widely appreciated. And lastly, the well-known grouping is also present. This means that contacts can also be organized in groups and these can subsequently be used as call filters.

Another application to mention here is the voice dial: no pre-recording of voice labels is necessary. There is also a Voice aid application.

A nice extra is the Find-on-Map option which locates the contact's address on the new Nokia Maps for S40 application if it is entered correctly.

The Find-on-Map option

The Call Log in Nokia 6600 slide is the well-known S40 application. It can display Dialed, Received and Missed calls separately, as well as all of them in bulk. Every submenu can hold up to 20 call records with their date, time and duration.

Telephony

Signal reception and in-call sound are no concerns with Nokia 6600 slide. The handset is pitched for the so-called Background Noise Cancellation. One thing Nokia forgot to say though is that almost all current S40 midrange phones also feature this feature called Voice Clarity. Anyway, sound is loud and clear on both ends and you will have zero trouble with your calls. Vibration strength in the 6600 slide is very good too.

Nokia 3600 slide in a call

It's about time though Nokia introduced some sort of smart dialing in their feature phones, as most competing manufacturers have already done. It's quite convenient and might save the extra clicks to get to the phonebook.

We carried out our traditional loudspeaker test to find out Nokia 6600 slide is bellow-average performer. You can't count on getting just everything in noisier environments, and calm and subdued ringtones surely won't do. You can find more details about our test, as well as the results of all other tested handsets here.

Messaging

The messaging department is quite up to the task. Nokia 6600 slide is capable of handling all the common message types including SMS, MMS and email, as well as flash and audio messages.

The messaging department • Message formats

SMS and MMS use one and the same editor and all you need to do to turn a regular SMS into MMS is insert some kind of multimedia content. As soon as you activate the editor, it displays a field for entering the number of the recipient, which you can fill by simple 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 define a favorite message contact.

Typing a SMS/MMS message is a nice experience with the Nokia 6600 slide • The add recipient option's choice is a convenient extra

Everything in the editor is intuitive and 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. The T9 dictionary and the handy delivery reports go without saying.

Message length is limited to 1000 characters with both the count of typed characters and the number of parts the message will break down into displayed on the screen. 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.

Audio messages have a separate editor, which can either record the message on the fly or use a previously recorded sound clip.

The email client is doing pretty well to meet most user needs. It works with POP3, SMTP, and IMAP4 protocols and supports multiple email accounts. The email client supports SSL, which enables it to handle a Gmail account for example.

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. Either message headers only or entire messages can be downloaded by default, depending on your choice.

The native email client is more than good • A variety of files can be mailed as attachments, including the onboard themes