Nokia 6700 classic review: Sirocco Lite

Mid-range retail package

The Nokia 6700 classic comes with a retail package that suits its price tag well. Along with the handset itself, inside you will find a 1GB SD card and that tiny microUSB cable that measures about 5cm.

Of course you also get a charger and a microUSB handsfree, which unfortunately is one-piece. This means that if you are to replace it, you will have to find either a microUSB-to-some-other-standard adapter or a pair of headphones with that connector.

The retail package contents

Finally you get a bunch of paperwork and a voucher for free music worth 10 euro that you can cash in at the online Nokia music store.

As you can see there's hardly anything missing in the box, but then again, there are no nice surprises either.

Nokia 6700 classic 360-degree spin

Undoubtedly one of the best parts about Nokia 6700 classic is its compact size. The dimensions of 109.8 x 45 x 11.2 mm add up to volume of mere 46.5 cc, which is even more compact than its 6500 classic predecessor (47 cc). Even hardened geeks like us that are used to seeing their phones big and functional couldn't help but fall in love with the tiny fella.

What really sold it for us was that despite being small, the Nokia 6700 class is quite heavy (113 grams), which gives it a really solid feel. Rarely has a handset felt as good in our hands as the 6700 classic does.

Design and construction

The design of the Nokia 6700 classic brings to mind an old saying: perfection is not when there's no more to add, but when there's nothing more to take away. In fact, there is hardly anything that we'd remove from the 6700 classic's shiny panels. Well, okay we'd get rid of the LED flash aperture at the back as it is useless, but everything else we like.

We also especially appreciate the fact that the entire body of the Nokia 6700 classic is made of fine stainless steel that is really smudge-resistant. Also if you do happen to get the handset greasy, cleaning it is a piece of cake as any cloth (or your shirt) will do.

We start our tour with the 2.2" display mounted on the upper half of Nokia 6700 classic front panel. The TFT LCD unit supports QVGA resolution and can display up to 16 million colors, as is customary on the S40 handsets recently.

The 2.2" 16M-color QVGA display

The numbers alone indicate that this isn't what you might call a top-notch display. Still the image quality is pretty decent with good brightness and fine contrast (although nothing like the Samsung S7220 Ultra b AMOLED display). On the other hand the sunlight legibility of the Nokia 6700 classic is flawless with the screen remaining perfectly legible in any weather conditions.

Our main problem with the Nokia 6700 display is its size. It might be just us getting older and pickier, but 2.2" just doesn't cut it anymore. We're perfectly aware of the fact that a larger screen would mean a larger body and thus a loss of a part of the handset's appeal; still we cannot help but wish for at least a 2.4" display.

Below the display we find four keys - two either side of the traditional D-pad found on the Finnish featurephones. Those include the two soft buttons with functionality changing according to the active menu as well as the Call and End keys. Decently sized and with nice tactile feedback, we never really have anything to complain about them.

The controls below the display are pretty nice

The D-pad itself has pretty thin direction keys, yet it's still possible to use even with our oversized hands. The fact that there is some much free space around it also helps so is the size is no obstacle to usability really. And the large confirmation center button works like a charm.

Below those controls sits the 12-key alphanumeric keypad. The thin lines provide some bordering between the different rows and the keys are pretty big so you can type fairly comfortably.

The solid, even feedback is also greatly appreciated and if there was some kind of border between keys on the same row it would have been perfect. Well, considering that looks were high on the priority list when the Nokia 6700 classic was designed we should be perfectly happy with this one too.

The keypad is really comfortable

The only two remaining functional elements on the front panel are the ambient light sensor and the loudspeaker grill at the top.

The ambient light sensor is next to the earpiece