Introduction, packaging

I don’t know how they do it. This is like the twentieth Series 40 Nokia handset I’ve been testing in the last one-year period, and I still don’t feel the urge to throw it away with boredom. They can do it somehow. We have seen handsets with similar features, the price didn’t change, but we still have the “wow” feeling when we take the new 6600 Slide in our hands. As it’s made of metal, it’s small and heavy. We have really seen something similar, but this is still new.

The phone is again from XXL GSM, thanks for it. This is the third 6600 in a row, we had a simple edition back in 2003, than the magnetic wonder called Fold a couple of weeks ago, and now we have the slider edition, nice. No, this time I would not like to discuss why I don’t agree with the Finnish manufacturer’s naming conventions, so let’s say the new one has nothing to do with the others that have the same model number – or at least not much.

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Small...

The box is appropriately small or at least compared to the fact that it has a handset inside with nice features – and an appropriate price tag. The list of accessories is the usual, we get a charger, a microUSB cable, a 1 GB microSD card and a headset made of two parts: the lengthener is AD-83, the headset itself is called HS-83, but the first one doesn’t accept only this headset, but anyone that has a 3.5 mm jack connector. If we’d like to use anything else, that is.

Exterior

As you could have seen on the picture on the previous picture the new handset is very small. Its exact size is 93 x 45 x 14 mm and its weight is 110 grams, so it’s quite heavy, mostly compared to its size. There reason for this is of course the materials used, as the Finnish designers were using plenty of metal, the whole back is made of it, but I think there is some used on the front too. The plastic parts are also high-quality, there is no problem with assembly either, we won’t find any joint problems. It’s really astonishing. We can see the blue speaker on top, the camera used for video calls is placed near it, while below them there is the QVGA TFT display with a diagonal of 2.2”: there is no problem with image quality. The main controls are on the bottom, which includes the two softkeys, the call accept/deny keys and the 5-way d-pad. The first ones are a bit small, which might not be too good for those who have small fingers, but the latter one is perfect, it has a brushed surface, a bluish color and a great pressure point.

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So the back is made of metal, a nice, shiny type. According to this it’s a real fingerprint-magnet and that’s the least to say. If we touch it dirt sticks to it automatically and it even has a strange color, as if it would be an oil patch, it looks quite ugly. On the bottom of the back side there is a blue stripe, this is the handsfree speaker, while on the top there is the 3.2 megapixel autofocus camera and its LED flash.

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There is nothing on the left and the bottom, while on the right there is the charger connector, while on the top there is the peg for taking off the back cover and the covered microUSB connector. This is where we have to plug the headset’s lengthener, thus it’s no big deal that there’s no standard jack output on the phone. Still, the lack of volume control keys is a great fault, it’s very usual not to have these in this price category.

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The sliding mechanism looks perfect at first, sliding is smooth, silent and gapless, we might even be happy with it. But we’re not happy, as after sliding the phone open, there is a large (1-2 mm) gap below the navigation controls, as you can see on the picture. No matter the metal case, it is bent when pressing the d-pad and if we keep this part in our hands when closing the phone we firmly scratch the whole numeric keypad. I really don’t know what the guys at Nokia thought to ruin an otherwise great case with such a puny stupidity. It’s really disappointing.

The handset won’t get much larger when opened, as the numeric part is quite small and moreover there’s no empty part under or over it. This is even a bit annoying when pressing the top and bottom rows, but the situation isn’t bad, the keypad is basically fine. The center of mass is at about the center when the phone is opened, so it won’t fall out of our hands when typing.

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Menu, software

The software might be the toughest part to write about in case of a Series 40 handset, but I’ll try it again anyway. I’d immediately like to attract the attention of our newer readers that we have published a dedicated article about Nokia’s system, so those who would like to get a deeper insight should click here, for example. To tell the truth 6600 has nothing new in this part, not as if anyone would expect it, as S40 is already a mature and reliable platform. There is basically no problem with speed, moving around the menus is gapless, but the phone slows down sometimes for a brief moment, but this is nothing serious.

The basic programs are of course included on Slide. The organizer functions are all right, the calendar is transparent, there is an alarm clock that works when the phone is turned off, there is a to-do list, a notepad, world clock, calculator, sound recorder, unit- and currency-converter, stopwatch and countdown timer. Thanks to Java support we can of course further expand this list, applications can be copied to the 18 MB of internal memory or on the microSD card – the slot by the way is under the battery, but this isn’t that annoying, since the phone can work in Mass Storage mode.

As an interesting matter, both Messenger and Opera Mini are missing from the list of extra apps, but we have WidSets and Yahoo! Go. On the bottom of the main menu we can see Nokia Maps too, but we can use it with an external GPS receiver at most, since there is none built-in. There are six games on the phone: Golf Tour, Highroller Casino, Rally 3D, Snake III, Soccer 3D and Sudoku.

Phone calls, data transfer

Unfortunately I can’t say much positive about voice quality, as the phone is not loud enough, as a matter of fact it’s darn quiet, I could have barely hear the person on the other end and even they have been complaining about this, so probably the microphone is no big deal either. When turning on voice clarity the situation gets even worse. It’s nice, however, that incoming calls can be first muted than denied by touching (or nudging) the phone. Snooze can be activated in the same way, which, I think, is not that good, as it takes a wrong move when half-asleep and we are already 10 minutes late.

Software related to phone calls bring nothing new, but they are still good. The contact list can store 2000 contacts; there are lots of extra fields. Messaging is also okay, chain SMS messages, multimedia messages and e-mails are all supported – in the latter case the client supports authenticated IMAP servers as well. There is a web browser too, it’s no Opera Mini, but one can play around with it, although this is not the phone of choice for longtime web surfing.

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The GSM-module is quad-band (850/900/1800/1900 MHz), there is 3G support, but no HSDPA. This means that maximum data transfer speed is 384 kbps and if there’s no coverage we can use GPRS and EDGE. There is no WiFi, but we have Bluetooth, it is version 2.0, just like the microUSB port, it supports stereo sound transfer (A2DP profile).

Multimedia

The main camera is a 3.2 megapixel one, it has autofocus and there is a (theoretically) double-LED to help in darkness. Or at least it tries to help, as I think it doesn’t give too much light. We can take pictures with the center of the d-pad as there’s no dedicated exposure key. We have to keep it depressed to focus and release it to shoot. The shortest exposure range is just a couple of centimeters, so the handset can be used for taking macro images, which doesn’t even have to be activated manually. The settings are the usual: white balance, JPEG compression, exposure correction, self-timer, effects and night mode.

The photos (2048 x 1536 pixels at most) are quite good. The colors are not very vivid, but they aren’t pale either, noise level is medium, and there are some traces of noise filtering, but the images are still rich in details and even edge sharpness is good. Dark noise, however, is quite powerful, this is mostly visible on pictures taken in poor lighting conditions (at night for example). We can record videos at 640 x 480 pixels at most, speed is 15 fps and we have to count with a focal length of about 50-70 mm, so it’s as if they were zoomed in. Test video here.

The music player that runs in the background is still great. It can sort tracks on the memory card by artist, album and genre, it supports playlists, displays album covers, it can seek, and it has a five-band equalizer which even supports custom presets. The headset is an earpiece type, we get three plates of different size with it and its sound quality is exceptional. The Slide has medium sound quality in handsfree. There is an FM radio that supports RDS and it worked perfectly.

Battery, summary

The BL-4U battery under the hood has a capacity of 1000 mAh. If not used too much it can keep the phone online for three days, but if we listen to music and use the multimedia features it’s not sure to take it for 2 days. According to manufacturer specs 6600 has a talk time of 4 hours.

The back gets dirty easily

Summary: this is a Nokia as well. If someone is a bit of an expert with phones, this sentence means something and fanatics are probably getting ready for some flaming. I mean by this short statement that 6600 Slide is a nice, high-quality, well-assembled piece of hardware, which is great in hardware terms as well. It really looks great, lots of people will be looking at it, I just don’t know why they had to make a feminine handset (based on its size) in black/blue colors, the ladies probably would have been happier with some red colors. To tell the truth I have three serious problems with the new phone besides its positive aspects: the loose cover is inexcusable, the lack of volume control keys is also annoying and as a bonus we have the back that looks great when clean, but it can get very dirty. The price of the handset is about €240 EUR and considering the premium materials this is neither much, nor little. It’s not enough for the Recommended award, though, so the high-quality, but loose 6600 Slide is just a:

Nokia 6600 Slide

Bocha

Translated by Szaszati

Nokia 6600 Slide has been provided by XXL GSM. The handset can be purchased at:
Budapest VI. Jókai tér 6.
Budapest VI. Teréz körút 18.
On-line at www.xxlgsm.hu.

Specifications

Nokia 6600 Slide
	General
	Technology	GSM, UMTS
	Size	93 x 45 x 14 mm
	Weight	110 grams
	Available colors	Black + blue combo
	Display
	Display diagonal	2.2”
	Display resolution	240 x 320 pixels
	Display type	TFT
	Number of colors	16 million
	Memory
	Phonebook capacity	2000 entries
	SMS memory / max. MMS size	na / 300 KB
	Internal memory	18 MB
	Memory expandability	microSD (included: 1 GB)
	Data transfer
	Frequency bands	850/900/1800/1900 MHz
	GPRS / EDGE	Class 32 (88 kbps) / Class 32 (296 kbps)
	UMTS / HSDPA	present (384 kbps) / none
	IrDA / Bluetooth	none / 2.0 (A2DP too)
	WiFi	none
	USB	2.0 (microUSB)
	Push-to-talk / RSS	present / none
	GPS receiver	none
	Basic functions
	Profiles	present
	Vibra function	present
	Built-in handsfree	present
	Voice dialing / voice commands	present / present
	Sound recorder	present - 1 hour
	Alarm clock	present, also when turned off
	Predictive text entry	T9
	Software
	Platform	Series40 5th edition
	WAP / HTML browser	2.0 / present
	E-mail client	present (POP3, IMAP4, authenticated)
	Java	present, MIDP 2.0
	Games	6
	Currency converter	present
	Extra software	WidSets, Yahoo! Go
	Multimedia
	Main camera	3.2 megapixels, autofocus, flash
	Secondary camera	present
	Video recording	present (VGA resolution, 15 fps)
	Music player	present, can run in background
	Equalizer	present
	FM radio	present - RDS
	Battery
	Main battery	1000 mAh Li-Ion
	Standby time	340 hours
	Talk time	240 minutes
	Other
	Accelerometer for muting/denying incoming calls