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To the delight slim-phone fans, Nokia has just released the Nokia 6500 classic. This latest addition to the Nokia Series 40 line is slim and attractive, but is it just another pretty face, or is there something substantial under the hood? Lets look and see. |
Things I liked
- Very slim
- 16M color QVGA display
- 3G network support
- 1 GB of memory
- Bluetooth with A2DP support
Big disappointments
- No microSD card slot
- No video calls
- Very poor camera
- Poorly designed keypad
Nokia fans everywhere we excited by the appearance of the Nokia 6300, the successor to the Nokia 6230. However, over time the market caught up and an increasing number of competitors crowded the hardworking little phone. Wit 1 GB of internal memory, the Nokia 6500 classic sure grabs your attention.
Beautiful to behold
The Nokia 6500 classics display is not going to shock you in the size department. The display is just 2 inches, a bit small for the price point. However, in typical Nokia fashion, the image quality is incredible. While the QVGA resolution is nothing to jump for joy over, the end result is truly incredible.
For some reason, you are unable to configure neither the back-lighting nor the contrast. You can make an animated screen saver that shows the time, date and will notify you of missed calls and such. With the awesome video display, it is legible in practically any light conditions. One option is a sleep mode, that blanks the screen entirely.
It is a Phone!
As you come to expect from Nokia, the sound and reception is everything you want it to be. However, I was disappointed with the lack of video call capability.After all, since the phone has 3G capability, it could have been added with very little trouble. The vibrator is surprisingly weak, but the loudspeaker is, well, loud. There is some distortion at the highest levels, but it is always easy to hear, despite the noise around you.
The Nokia 6500 has a standard, unsurprising interface, identical to every other Series 40 5th edition interface. Navigation and control are virtually the same as the previous UI edition and is the exact same as the Nokia 7500. Despite this, the phone does have a wide arrange of configurable options, but the menu structure suffers for it.
In stand-by mode, the display shows the standard signal strength bar, battery status and time, as well as the selected wallpaper. The bottom bar shows the functions assigned to the center of the navigation key and the two context keys. The center of the navigation keys opens the menu, while the context keys can be assigned functions of your choice. The display font is user configurable, as is the standby mode. One neat feature is the ability to add a note to active standby. This is not even available on Nokia's smart-phones.
You have the ability to view the main menu of the Nokia 6500 four different ways; there is a grid of icons (with or without captions), a list of items or tabs. There are pros and cons for each, but my favorite is the grid view with captions. The icons are all familiar to Nokia veterans. When you select an icon, it becomes animated.
The menu is fast and quick, with no noticeable lagging. It is truly everything you would expect from a Series 40 phone.
Lots of Themes
Looks have always been a selling point for Nokia, and the 6500 is no exception to that rule. The 6500 has 7 themes pre-installed and all blend well with he handsets great looks. Of course, more themes are available for download if you wish.
The 6500 has 6 predefined ring profile, which should be enough for practically anyone. There is the expected flight mode, which will close all transceivers on your phone, which could come in handy also if you decide to use the phone as an MP3 player. One other neat thing is that, unlike several notable phones, you can use flight mode without the SIM card installed.
Stay in touch with your contacts
The Nokia 6500 has room for 1000 contacts, with various options for configuration. There are numerous fields for each contact, but room for only 5 phone numbers. First and last names are in separate fields, which helps with synching it to your PC. Of course, you can assign different ring-tones to each contact.
To view the list of your contacts, there are three available options; List of names, Name and Number and Name and Picture. You can see either the Sim card contacts, the phone contacts or both at the same time. Searching is done by gradual typing and voice dial is available.
The call log for the Nokia 6500 is typical of the Series 40 line. It will display dialed, received and missed calls either separately or together. Every sub-menu will hold up to 20 records with date, duration and time.
Texting
Again, there are no surprises with the message menu, but that is not a bad thing; it is designed almost perfectly.In addition to standard SMS, you can also send and receive MMS and email. SMS and MMS use the same editor. Everything in the editor is intuitive and is organized in a practical time-saving manner, and of course, there is a rich and useful T9 dictionary.
Messages are limited to 1000 characters (a character count is displayed) and all messages use shared memory, no matter their type.
The email client is now an actual client instead of the clunky java application, following the trend we have seen with the Nokia Smart-phones. This is vastly superior to emailing with the Nokia 6300. You can use pop3, SMTP or IMAP4 protocols and have multiple email boxes. Email addresses are found in the phone-book, and there is no limit in attachment size. You can download messages or just headers, your choice.
XpressMusic player
This is the same player from the Nokia 7500 Prism and the Nokia 5300 XpressMusic phone. Apparently, this will no longer be reserved for music oriented phones and will become standard on all Series 40 phones. Sorting is typical; artist, album and genre. The player supports MP3, MIDI, AAC, AAC+, and WMA formats. The A2DP profile will support wireless Bluetooth headphones and there are many themes to play with.
The player is highly configurable, with many options. There is an equalizer and stereo expansion function, the equalizer in particular being worthy of note due to its performance. As seen with the Nokia 7500 Prism, there is almost no lag after activating the equalizer, instead of the expected couple of seconds lag.
The video player supports both 3GP and MP4 formats, and is displayed in full-screen mode. You can remove the soft key captions, greatly improving your viewing experience.
Gallery Disappointment
There were also no big changes in the gallery, but that is a disappointment. The Series 40 gallery has always struck me as clunky, but since it is also the file manager, it sort of makes sense. The Gallery relies on your putting the right type of files in the right folder.
The gallery offers three views: list with details, simple list and grid. Again, there are pros and cons for each. The zoom feature for photos is so slow as to be near useless. Speaking of useless, the built in photo-editor is so lacking in features, you have to wonder why they bothered.
The gallery includes slide-show and search options. While search does help find the file you are looking for, a better, more intuitive layout would be a huge leap forward for Nokia. We can only hope.
A camera, barely
Any serious discussion of multimedia is going to mention the camera. The Nokia 6500 has a 2 megapixel camera, with up to 1600 x 1200 resolution.
There is no nice way to say it: this camera is not impressive at all. It actually is below average level. The faults:
- No lense cover
- barely recessed lens
- no dedicated camera shutter button
- Poor photo quality
- No autofocus
- Very slow camera speed.
Connectivity
Connectivity for the Nokia 6500 is adequate, but you really do expect more. The USB connectivity does work very well. It is near seamless. You can use the phone's memory as mass storage, accessing it from your computer, and the Bluetooth is 2.0 so you can have stereo wireless connection.
Web browser
The WAP browser is adequate, with no significant changes over the one used in the Nokia 6300, but it does leave you wishing for a larger screen.
Get organized
The organizer is about what you expect. Month, week, and day views are available for the calendar. There are five types of events: reminder, meeting, call, birthday and memo.Each type of event has its own specific fields such as start and end time, type of alert, daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly repetition.
The to-do manager lets you categorize tasks in three priority levels. Tasks are easily synced with the calendar application. The alarm clock can be set to go off on any weekday, as an option, and works even when the phone is off. There is a customizable snooze length.
Also available are a voice recorder with a 60-minute length limit, stopwatch, countdown timer and a calculator. They are all easily operable and attractive looking. The calculator is stripped down from the one in the Nokia 6300, but the basics are covered.
If looks are all you want
Here is the problem; the phone looks terrific. The reason it is a problem is because if it did not, there is no way I could recommend this phone. The functions are not enough to justify the very steep asking price. For the same money, you could get 2 Nokia 6300s and get some extra memory too. Right now, if you ignore the looks, I see very little to justify the purchase of the Nokia 6500 classic.
  
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