Nokia X6 review

Will Nokia's much-hyped new music phone live up to expectations?

Nokia X6 review
The Nokia X6 is the latest Symbian-based music phone

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nokia x6

The Nokia X6 looks better on paper than it is in real life. The capacitive screen and 32GB of internal memory should ensure that it's great for multimedia, while the flexible Symbian operating system allows plenty of flexibility.

It's undeniably nicely made, and certain crucial features, such as typing messages, work better on this device than they have on any other Nokia touchscreen phone. However, we encountered performance issues every day we used the X6.

Sometimes they appeared where no performance issues had existed before and vanished just as fast - an unpredictability just as frustrating as the sluggish speed.

We liked:

The screen is superb, and the internet browser, which allows you to view desktop pages as their designers intended, works well. Typing messages - finally - works well on the screen, and frequent texters will have no problems reaching supersonic speeds.

The keyboard is excellent. It's a good media phone as well. There's masses of storage, which is handy for those who have a lengthy commute and want something to keep them entertained, and features such as the Playlist DJ, while flawed, are enjoyable additions.

We disliked:

Our chief problem with the X6 is its performance. We were often left guessing whether our key press had been recognised, and sometimes tapping a button again resulted in unpredictable behaviour.

We experienced performance slowdowns in most areas, but particularly when viewing large web pages, loading a stuffed contacts book, and watching videos.

The extra second or so occasionally encountered between tapping an icon and anything happening is frustrating. The way the interface occasionally requires a double tap can also be annoying, at least while you're still learning the ropes.

The screen, although bright and sharp, feels a little tight at times. Widescreen videos, for instance, often feel like they could use an extra half inch vertically.

And while we like the on-screen keyboard, broadly speaking, there's no denying that the keys feel a little on the small side, while the built-in dictionary is often not quite clever enough considering the slightly higher error rate on a virtual keyboard.

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Dave is a professional photographer whose work has appeared everywhere from National Geographic to the Guardian. Along the way he’s been commissioned to shoot zoo animals, luxury tech, the occasional car, countless headshots and the Northern Lights. As a videographer he’s filmed gorillas, talking heads, corporate events and the occasional penguin. He loves a good gadget but his favourite bit of kit (at the moment) is a Canon EOS T80 35mm film camera he picked up on eBay for £18.