Nokia C6 review: A playful character

Introduction

Yesterday’s high-end is the new midrange we like to say. The Nokia C6 has almost exactly the same features as the Nokia N97 mini but hangs a big Sale sign. Time to shop for high-end features off high street.

The C-series are trying to distill the Nokia knowledge and experience into a lineup of simple and affordable phones. There’s a bit of everything there: from cheap entry-level handsets to smartphones that border on the Eseries and Nseries.

Nokia C6 official photos

And Nokia is in no mood to relax it seems. The C-series went from one to six in almost no time, and a C7 may as well be on the way. Now, technically there is no number four –but that’s one number Nokia isn’t really fond of. Anyway, if there ever was to be a C4 we just know it would’ve been dynamite.

Being a C-series phone, you can expect the C6 to be a decent all-rounder. And it is. There’re no mind-blowing features but there’s nothing major missing either. And what isn’t there (e.g. document editing) can be easily fixed with the right app.

Key features

• 3.2" 16M-color resistive touchscreen of 640 x 360 pixel resolution
• Symbian OS 9.4 with S60 5th edition UI
• Slide-out four-row full QWERTY keyboard
• ARM 11 434MHz CPU
• Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE
• Tri-band 3G with 3.6Mbps HSDPA support
• 5 megapixel autofocus camera with LED flash and VGA@30fps video recording
• Wi-Fi and stereo Bluetooth v2.1
• GPS with A-GPS and free lifetime voice-guided navigation license
• microSD card (16 GB supported, 2GB included)
• Built-in accelerometer for display auto-rotation, turn-to-mute
• 3.5 mm audio jack
• Smart dialing
• Stereo FM Radio with RDS
• microUSB port
• Web browser has Flash support
• Good audio quality
• Office document viewer

Main disadvantages

• Display performs poorly under direct sunlight
• The S60 touch UI is clunky
• Doesn’t charge off USB
• Average loudspeaker performance
• No DivX or XviD video support out-of-the-box
• No office document editing (without a paid upgrade)
• No camera lens protection

These days, communication over text-based channels is bigger than ever – SMS, email, Twitter, Facebook, IM to name but a few. And they have a certain advantage over voice calling. They’re cheap, or absolutely free, even when you’re reaching someone on another continent.

Nokia C6 pays us a visit

Text-based messaging is important. But as good as touchscreen input methods are getting (especially with clever tricks such as Swype), there’s just no match for a good hardware QWERTY keyboard.

There isn’t as much pressure on the Nokia C6 as there was on the N97 duo. The C6 is not a top-tier device – it’s a high volume device instead. You know, the one most people end up buying after deciding that the dream device costs too much.

So, how close exactly is the Nokia C6 to the N97 mini? Jump to the next page to find out how the hardware of both stacks up.