Nokia 6700 Classic review

Nokia's 6700 Classic is a handset designed to take over the mantle of the hugely popular Nokia 6300, and the Finns have been busy sprucing up the design and wedging in more features than you can shake a mobile stick at.

We now are offered a 5MP camera with flash, blindingly fast 10.2Mbps HSDPA connectivity, a QVGA 2.2-inch screen and all encased in a very shiny chrome body.

It fits in the hand very nicely, with the slim build still wide enough to give access to all the flush keys when you need to.

The raised directional pad with enter key in the centre is easy to get to, as are the call/terminate buttons and both the softkeys. You could make the case that the heavily styled number pad is hard to press and that it would be nice to have some definition between the keys horizontally, but you'd probably be clutching at straws.

The rest of the phone has clearly gone for style over substance, but not in a negative way. It just means that we're only treated to a camera shutter and some well-hidden up/down keys, with the charging hole and microUSB connector at the bottom. Why Nokia persists with both ports when both could be achieved with the USB option, we don't know.

As you might imagine, there's no 3.5mm headphone port in sight, so you'll have to use the bundled microUSB adaptor. In something of an oversight from Nokia, you still can't use your own cans with this little gizmo, so we'd advise you fire up the internet and have a look for another one that will do the job.

The screen is lively and bright, and looks long on the design, which means it'll trot out a spot of video without problem (and Nokia has clearly thought of that by adding a link to YouTube Mobile).

As you can imagine with a phone this shiny the whole thing sucks in fingerprints like a thirsty schoolchild with a milkshake. Within minutes the whole thing was covered in so many marks it looked like a Christmas present to a CSI team, and polishing them off on a t-shirt or trouser leg wasn't easy.

There are a few nice tweaks under the hood though – turning the phone over or double tapping it will silence calls or the alarm, and you can bash the back with a digit twice whenever you please to show the camera.

While the 6700 Classic is far from a smartphone, these little tweaks certainly help make it seem like a more slick experience.

There's no front facing camera so video calling is out of the question, but given the take up of said option we wouldn't be surprised if that feature was phased out of all standard phones and taken exclusively into the domain of the smartphone.

It's hard to find a lot wrong with the design of the Nokia 6700 Classic – it certainly looks the business (albeit a little like Iron Man's suppository) and if this is the kind of phone you're after, then you're not going to find a lot to dislike.