Nokia X6 16GB Review
The Nokia X6 16GB isn’t the sharpest looking kid on the block; it’s quite thick, making it very noticeable in your pocket. The thickness is forgiven at first glance because it gives the phone the look of a slider with QWERTY keyboard. However, there’s no keyboard here. We’re actually quite puzzled where all the extra girth comes from.
The X6 16GB comes in a variety of colours; ours was Black and didn’t really impress us. However, The Pink on White and Yellow on White models actually pass muster as original-looking, low-end devices.
Nokia finally went with a capacitive touchscreen on the X6 models after sticking with the inferior resistive technology for a little too long. The change, also employed on the X6 16GB, is appreciated but hardly exciting due to its tardy application. Scrolling between menus still lags a little and we were often faced with a jerkiness not found on some of the leading low-end competition.
Loading pages from the menu also tends to take a while, with a little red dot appearing next to the app to indicate that you’ll be waiting a few seconds for satisfaction. Sure, a few seconds doesn’t sound like much but after becoming accustomed to other modern smartphones it’s a lifetime.
The Browser also isn’t great. There’s no multi-touch on the Nokia X6 16GB so it’s annoying zooming in and out on pages. Not to mention that some of the time pages aren’t centred properly after loading. All of this is on top of a generally laggy experience and jerky scrolling mechanics.
The music player is decent at least, offering a simple interface and good sound quality. The phone’s built-in speakers are actually phenomenal, offering some of the best external sound we’ve ever heard on a phone. Unfortunately video capabilities are limited as the phone doesn’t support Xvid or DivX files, so you’ll be converting every video you load on there.
Storage is very impressive, coming in at 16GB stock-standard. This is a huge positive for a low-end multimedia device when phones around this price range usually ring in with around 170MB. It’s just unfortunate that video functionality is limited, hampering your ability to really use the 16GB of storage to its maximum potential. That being said, though, there is a certain, industry-leading phone that only runs videos in its own video format and it still seems to be doing ok. You know the one we mean. So once you get used to transferring your video files it should be smooth sailing.
There’s also a front-facing camera for video calling, once again something not really seen in low-end devices. For us this wasn’t a huge plus as we prefer the streamlined ease of voice-only communication. However, low-end devices with this function are few and far between, so if you love the video-calling then it’s a good idea to keep that little fact in mind.
The Nokia X6 16GB is certainly a step up from its predecessor, the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, but we still feel like it’s not enough. With other low-end phones supporting better web browsers, multi-touch screens and standard video capabilities we can’t really recommend the X6 16GB for anything other than its impressive storage, video call camera and speaker quality.
If you don’t think you’ll mind converting each and every video file to a different format then the Nokia X6 16GB is a good idea. It’s also worth a look at if you’re a huge fan of video-calls. However, if you’re after anything else in a phone, especially web-browsing, we’d suggest considering more options before you settle on the Nokia X6 16GB.