Nokia 6700 classic review: Sirocco Lite

Gallery is still the same

The S40 gallery has never been our favorite and even in the 6th edition, things have remained largely the same. The problem is that it is a lot better as a file manager than it is as a dedicated image gallery with fancy transitions and effects.

We understand that adding such effects would probably have slowed down the file manager considerably - so splitting the two would be something for Nokia to bear in mind for the 7th edition (and multitasking, obviously).

There are three different views for the gallery: list with details, list and grid. Once you pick a picture you can zoom in on it to see more detail. Zooming is a little faster than on previous devices, but it's still quite limited - it can only zoom in twice in large steps, so it is practically of no use.

Gallery hasn't changed one bit

Pictures can also be viewed full screen and can be edited with the built-in picture editor. The latter offers a very limited number of options (in contrast to almost every Samsung phone with their suite of editing features), so Nokia 6700 classic users are highly unlikely to take up photo editing on the handset.

Looking at a single picture in normal and landscape mode • zooming isn't really a treat

The final extras of the gallery include the available sideshow (called "Open in sequence", which gives you an idea of how feature rich it is) and Search option, which is quite convenient for finding a specific file in overflowing folders.

Music player rocks

Without doubt, the music player is among the nicest applications on the Nokia 6700 classic. It has decent looks and all-round functionality, including album art, and a fair number of formats are supported. The theme can be set to match that of the rest of the phone, integrating it very well with the rest of the interface.

The Nokia 6700 classic music player with the applied theme • built-in theme • on the standby screen

The music player is controlled with the D-pad. Besides all the typical functions, the music player of the Nokia 6700 also sorts songs by artist, album and genre. The player works with AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, MP3, MP4, WMA, AMR-NB and naturally the A2DP profile is supported, allowing the use of stereo Bluetooth earphones.

There is only one default theme available for the music player if you don't count the five preinstalled themes for the UI. They change the color scheme and background.

The sonic experience is enhanced by equalizer presets. There are 5 equalizer presets on Nokia 6700 but you can easily create new ones thanks to the two user defined slots available.

The equalizer preset with two user-defined sets

As usual, the artist and title of the currently playing song are shown on the homescreen. They appear in the Radio and music area on the homescreen so they need to be active for the info to be displayed.

FM radio has RDS but without loudspeaker

An alternative to the preloaded content on Nokia 6700 classic is the FM radio. It resembles the audio player interface and covers most of the basic functions.

Much like the music player, the FM radio also has the standard theme and the 'Set by Themes' option, which uses the currently selected UI theme. RDS support is available. RDS info and frequency appear on the homescreen, much like with the music player.

Strangely, there's no option to output the radio through the loudspeaker. You can play songs from your music collection through the loudspeaker, so why not the radio? We have no idea.

FM radio player interface - RDS is onboard

Video player is kinda limited

The video player of Nokia 6700 classic is compatible with 3GP and MP4 formats. Videos can be played in fullscreen mode, as well as fast-forwarded or rewound. The option to hide soft key captions to make better use of the full screen mode also improves the viewing experience. The player works in the background appearing on the active standby tab.

Unfortunately as we managed to find out, the Nokia 6700 classic is only capable of playing WMV files encoded with WMV3 codec. All other WMV files failed playback. Not to mention that competing feature phones by Samsung and LG already offer XviD and DivX video playback.

Video player in portrait and landscape mode