Live photos of Nokia 6500 slide
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Table of contents:
- Design and materials
- Keypad
- Display
- Memory
- Battery
- USB, Bluetooth
- Performance
- Camera
- TV-Out
- Themes, applications, games
- Competition
- Impressions
Sales package:
- Handset
- Battery (BP-5M, 900mAh Li-Ion)
- Wired stereo-headset (HS-47)
- MicroSD memory card (256Mb, for select markets only)
- User Guide
- MicroUSB data cable CA-101
- Nokia TV-Out Cable CA-92U
- Charger (AC-4)
- Software CD
At the very end of May, Nokia unleashed two new handsets, ushering in the new 6500-series. However the 6500 Classic and the 6500 Slide are brothers in arms only from the technical point of view – while sharing the index, in reality and in Nokia’s strategy in particular, these are two are totally different products philosophy-wise.
Even though they are set apart by a ton of different aspects, the foremost thing is positioning. For the vendor, the 6500 Classic is a so called “iconic-product”, being one of 2007’s key models. They have great expectations for this phone and even now it is absolutely clear that the Classic is up for the title of one of this year’s best selling models. One of the prerequisites for that will be the magnitude of Nokia brand, since it is the second device in the Finnish manufacturer’s refined portfolio to feature a wafer-thin profile, which is the eye-grabbing factor. The fact that this offering is targeting a broad audience is indicated by its conventional design with no components that could put some conservative prospects off, metal accents and different color schemes.
Perhaps, it would be okay to say that the Nokia 6500 Classic comes to replace the 6300, but that would not entirely correct. The fact of the matter is that the 6300 was and still is just an addition to the company’s current line-up with no revolutionary ideas in it and moreover falling flat on features for a Series 40 flagship. Basically, calling the 6300 a flagship wouldn’t be the right thing either, as many take the 6300 as an iteration of the real flagship, the 6233, and this opinion has been built up only due to the lack of other offerings in this segment.
The effort the company put into the 6300 promotion deserves a credit – a mid-range product is presented as a fashion solution, stylish and beautiful. It’s a pretty tough decision to disagree that the Nokia 6300 is a truly attractive device when it comes to its looks, dimensions, materials used and the tactile feel it delivers. Mixed with an adequate price (all thanks to average functionality), this cocktail sells the model very well, it is successful on the market. Frequently they draw parallels between the 6300 and the 8210, which raised the bar in the basic premium-phone segment back in the days, and also the original 8800 because of stainless steel. That’s what the company is banking on, and this automatically tacks “high-status” tag on the 6300, but in real life, like we already said, it is a mid-tier solution, which is priced accordingly.
Getting back to the article’s topic, let’s say that if the Classic is a so called trend setter, a trailblazer, which will serve as the base for numerous impending offerings with varying suite of features (for example, a music-minded model, the Nokia 5610), then the 6500 Slide is a totally different story.
Design and materials
In order to get consumers familiar with the 6500 series, Nokia launched a special page, designed in contemporary style, where you see two doors of metal elevators, so in order to get to either the Slide or the Classic home page you should choose one of the doors. This idea is something really new and it looks interesting, as it underscores exactly the materials the models are made of – textured metal. Unlike the Classic, the 6500 Slide utilizes stainless steel rather than anodized aluminum, lending the device that solid and long-lasting feel. The battery compartment cover, the front face and even the buttons, saving for the number pad, are made of steel. Metal keys are quite rare guests on handsets, often it turns out to be a mere coating that is exposed to wear and tear, though here it doesn’t seem like suffering from this issue.
| Video, looks (48,1 mb, wmv) |
The steel used in the casing components is by no means thin, there are not just metal covers, but stamped details, everything is very reminiscent of the Nokia 6300’s materials. Glossy black plastic has been used only for a couple of parts, namely the underside, the number pad and the top end. These plastic parts keep low profile, though – the device looks like a solid metal bar, which does justice to it, you come to realize the handset’s aim for the enterprise audience, it is not a fashion-savvy solution like the 6500 Classic. This way, there is only one color scheme available – silver with black, which is a no-nonsense time-proven mix. Other trims won’t be rolled out for the 6500 slide.
Keypad
The phone’s keypad is made of glossy back plastic with pretty big buttons that resemble the Nokia N80 and the 6110 Navigator.
Display
The Nokia 6500 slide utilizes a QVGA display, powered by TFT technology (16 mln colors, which are all bright and vibrant) with a resolution of 240×320 pixels (diagonal of 2,2 inches, 36×48 mm). The manufacturer hasn’t included any type of backlighting adjustment, this makes allows the phone to same some power, but here is a kind of drawback to it: the model comes with the ambient light sensor that deals with the backlighting level of the display and the keypad automatically, and this way, the screen ends up looking darker and lackluster against the backdrop of offerings coming with no ambient light sensor onboard (6131, 6300). The same goes for the Nokia 7390, but basing on feedback, it isn’t much of a problem, in fact it isn’t even one. Nevertheless the user is enabled to choose standby screensaver and backlighting mode (on/off) – in the latter case, if the backlighting will be turned off, the information will remain visible indoors but only at certain angles. Apart from that you can completely switch off the screen, so that it will turn black with no information being displayed on it. In light of the screen having a mirror layer, it doesn’t fade in the sun and ensures that all data will be still readable.
Memory
The user has access to about 20 Mb of storage, which is not much. Nevertheless with the announced support for microSD cards of up to 4 Gb, this shouldn’t be a major pain, especially knowing that these are already on sale. The hot-swappable memory expansion slot sits underneath the battery cover.
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Battery
USB, Bluetooth
USB. Like the Nokia 6500 Classic and the 8600 Luna, the 6500 slide makes use of a microUSB slot placed on the top end. This socket kicks in when you connect data cable, headset or charger. At that, with data cable plugged in, you will have the battery charged, this ability is very coveted in the company’s phones.
The vendor says the handset supports USB 2.0, and it does indeed, in USB Mass Storage mode the connection via USB cable puts up medium data transfer speed which makes up about 500-600 Kb/s. This is slower than the Motorola RAZR2 V8, which also comes installed with microUSB-socket.
On connection you can pick USB Mass Storage, PC Studio or modem mode. Depending on your choice, the handset starts recharging the cell. It has no support for MTP, though, so you will have to upload all your tunes manually. The selection of folders, when music gets identified is limited to a couple of pre-installed directories, and it is unclear whether this is going to hold up in commercial units.
Bluetooth. The 6500 slide comes equipped with EDR-enabled version 2.0. The device sports the following profiles:
- Dial-Up Networking Profile
- Generic Access Profile
- Generic Object Exchange Profile
- Object Push Profile
- Serial Port Profile
- Handsfree Profile
- Headset Profile
- Synchronization Profile
- Basic Image Profile
- File Transfer Profile
- HID (host) Profile
- Stereo Advanced Audio Distribution Profile
- Advanced Audio/Video Remote Conference Profile
- A2DP
The Bluetooth implementation is, as always though, nothing to complain about, we encountered no issues with handling this type of connections, no differences here in relation to the 6300’s interface. The stereo-headset also works fine.
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Performance
The phone is a typical offering for its generation – no revelations here.
Camera
Like we said in the first lines of this review, the camera module here is quite different from that found in the Nokia N73, the converse is false. It’s an open secret that the company builds all the latest and greatest technologies into its Nseries multimedia computers, in this case – camera modules. The Nokia 6500 Slide adopts a relatively cheap lens, and if we take quality as the criterion, then it would somewhere between the 7390 and the N73, meaning that the shots it snaps are more than adequate for an Series 40 powered mid-tier solution. Apparently, if you are after better imaging and video recording experience, you would be better off with Nseries devices on your shortlist, since within its range of feature phones Nokia isn’t going to employ the ultimately best solutions.
On the other hand, among feature phones, the 6500 Slide is an undisputable imaging flagship, which is emphasized in the press-release, as well as advertisements.
The following picture resolutions are supported:
- 1536๕2048;
- 1200๕1600;
- 960×1280;
- 480×640;
- 240×320;
- 120×160.
Three JPEG compression types are supported: basic, normal, high. Speaking of other options, there is shutter sound adjustment (on/off), x8 digital zoom, ability to choose between built-in memory and memory card for saving shots, white balance settings, ISO level, etc. Overlays may be applied to all taken snaps, so whether it’s worth using them before shooting or not – it is all up to you. The following effects are enabled: Greyscale, Sepia, Negative.
For those keen on multi-shot mode, there is an option in the 6500 slide that makes the camera take up to 3 shots in rapid succession, all settings remain identical to the single-shot mode, including resolution. There is also 10-second self-timer available.
The camera interface employs landscape layout, which looks really reminiscent of the Series 40v3 devices, so there is nothing this we can tell – everything is pretty comfortable, however the ergonomics is still a few steps behind Sony Ericsson’s multimedia smartphones.
The Slide’s camera quality is pretty good – on this front the phone stands very close to the previous season’s top solution from Nokia – the Nokia N73. What I want to stress here is that the Slide comes with no extra goodies for photos, meaning that you won’t be able to post your snaps in your blog or elsewhere right from the phone. These features are currently available only with the NSeries.
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TV-Out
The Carl Zeiss lens in a phone running Series 40 is not the only upgrade the 6500 Slide has up its sleeve. Apart from this, there is also a TV-out, which automatically means that you can view your handset’s contents on a big screen via the bundled cable. The way it is implemented here is no different from multimedia smartphones of the company, everything is very straightforward – the cable has standard RCA jacks on one side and plugs into the phone via the 2,5 mm socket on the other one. The handset supports the following standards: PAL, NTSC. In the settings menu you can adjust screen ratio – 16:9 or 4:3. On connection to a telly, the signal is identified automatically, and the picture pops up both on the big screen on the phone’s display. While in this mode you can browse the menus, view photos and watch videos, play games – do whatever you want. But it’s important to realize that this feature has been embedded for the purposes of viewing multimedia files in the first place, and playing game is a somewhat awkward experience due to low picture resolution and numerous artifacts on the TV screen, but viewing high-quality pictures turns out to be quite exciting. Video clips, recorded with the camera look pretty bad on a big screen, and it is not about resolution, frames per second is what really matters. The picture is not smooth and of course not crisp. In this regard, smartphones sporting 30 FPS VGA recording capabilities are still beyond competition, while in the 6500 Slide this functionality has been just tacked on, but it does bring some more fun into the standard suite of features. In future there will be more Series 40 models with this feature onboard coming; the 6500 Slide is only the first go.
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Themes, applications, games
The handset comes equipped with a number of themes that do make the different to the way it looks, on top of that they go well with the phone’s image.
Also onboard are games like: Golf Tour, Highroller Casino, Rally 3D, Snake III, Sudoku, Soccer 3D.
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Competition
It might sound strange, but the model doesn’t have any kind of direct competition on the Russian market in spite of its pretty basic functionality. If we are to count 3 Mpix sliders, then these would be Samsung’s latest offerings, the U600 and the U700. But the choice between these models and the 6500 Slide isn’t so obvious, as they differ in the sense of positioning and design – while the Samsung-branded devices are fashion phones with thinner profiles, more visual appeal, but the materials used are quite another story, no metal there.
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Impressions
The volume of the 72-chord call alert is quite high; the device is very audible in various environments, although, since there is only one polyphonic speaker on the place, that is located on the rear on top of that, you might end up missing a call should you have the 6500 slide in your jeans pocket. The handset does well on the reception front, being a typical representative of the current generation of devices. The silent alert is average strength-wise, but you will still feel it even with the phone in the pocket.
The Nokia 6500 Slide entered the market with a price tag of 370-400 Euro, and currently retails for around 440 Euro in Russia, which is not a really adequate – basically, you pay for the brand, the materials used and the ability to get pretty good images with the inbuilt camera. The Slide is by no means a flagship in imaging, being a mere fashion-savvy offering. On top of that, it doesn’t have any direct competition, which automatically unties Nokia’s hands. Early in 2008, its price is likely to drop down to 360-380 Euro, which will make a tad more interesting, but still won’t get it in line with European retail prices.
Nokia has rolled out a phone that is gratifying to use, feels sturdy, which, however, won’t be a best seller. But its target audience couldn’t be happier with this – the 6500 Slide looks snazzy, sports a known brand on the front plate, what more could we wish for?
The 6500 Slide’s SAR value – 1.10 W/kg
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