Packaging
Unfortunately, I couldn’t do a full unboxing ritual because my camcorder had bailed on me. But I still have a couple of pictures if you are interested.
The X6 came in a pretty standard Nokia blue packaging. The front had a picture of the device while the back had a quick spec sheet in different languages.
Opening the box revealed the phone, with the charger, the headset, data cable, manual, the Ovi Suite and warranty card tucked underneath.
It was sad that Nokia decided to bundle the WH-701 headset instead of the WH-500 which you get with the X6 32GB.
Hardware
The X6 has a plastic body which is available in different shades, though the unit I got was black and gray. The phone is entirely done in plastic, with the front, top and bottom having a glossy finish while the sides and the back have a matte black touch. The weight and volume of the phone feels okay in the hand though it could have been a bit thinner. The plastic build doesn’t feel all that cheap as well, though the design looks more like a Sony Ericsson XPERIA than Nokia.
The front of the phone has an earpiece on the top center along with an ambient light sensor, proximity sensor, and the front camera to the right side. Below it, is the large glass screen with a touch sensitive quick access button for all the media applications just above the screen. Right below the screen are what I consider to be three redundant buttons for Accept, Menu and Reject. There isn’t a need for the accept/reject duo since these actions are also available on the touchscreen.
The left side of the phone has the SIM card slot protected by a plastic cover and a couple of speakers above and below it for the left and right channel respectively. What’s rather strange is that you still have to remove the back cover and battery to insert or eject a SIM.
The right side has a volume rocker on the top, a screen-lock slider in the middle and the two-stage camera shutter button at the bottom.
Speaking of the bottom, the underside of the X6 only has a microphone and a loophole – which again you can only access by removing the back cover first.
The top side of the phone is pretty crammed. From left to right, there is the MicroUSB port, the 3.5mm jack, the charger port, and the power button. I find the charger jack and the power button redundant here. First, I’m disappointed that the phone doesn’t charge off the MicroUSB port since a lot of higher and lower end Nokia devices do that now, and it was supposed to be an industry standard to which Nokia also agreed. Second, the power button could have been merged with the reject button – I’m just not comfortable with having them both.
The backside has the 5MP Auto-Focus camera with a Carl-Zeiss Tessar lens and Dual LED flash. The model number Nokia X6-00 is printed on the lower edge of the phone.
You can pull open the back cover through an indentation at the bottom. The cover is made of very thin plastic and makes the phone look kinda cheap. You can see the SIM card slot below the large 1320 mAH battery and the only way to remove it is to push it out through the slot. There isn’t a microSD slot anywhere but the phone’s 16GB of built-in memory sort of makes it up for it.
In terms of processing power, Nokia still leaves a lot to be desired. They are packing the device with a disappointing 434MHz ARM11 processor and a 128MB of RAM. There aren’t any dedicated GPUs or SPUs on board as well. This posses a major problem for the software that’s going to run on top. The RAM specially proved to be a major issue since it had to store all the applications in memory and the GUI data as well for a high resolution screen. This seriously impaired the multitasking experience (more on that later). Nokia really needs to get its head out of its ass and put together a good hardware platform, something with a modern CPU like the N900 and a large RAM.
Now for the the main feature of the phone – the touchscreen. The scratch resistant glass on the 3.2” capacitive screen is very good. Though it wasn’t oleophobic, it still gathered very few fingerprints. As for the responsiveness, the screen was very sensitive to my input. In fact I would say it was a bit too sensitive than something I’d prefer because sometimes just holding the phone triggered accidental touches along the sides. Maybe Nokia should also include a warning about how to hold the phone (pun intended).
As for the display quality, the phone had pretty accurate color gamut and brightness under normal lighting but direct sunlight seems to kill the display. I was barely able to make out a word on the screen while walking at a moderate pace under direct sunlight. This is one area where Nokia has taken a step backwards for no obvious reason at all.
I also wasn’t quite satisfied with the size of the display with respect to its resolution. Maybe that’s just me being spoilt after using larger screens like the Nexus One or the HTC HD2 – and my large thumbs. But the 360x640 (nHD) resolution on a 3.2” screen can be really tough to use specially if the touchscreen is a bit too sensitive and the UI has small features.
Another hardware related issue I had was with the sensor array. While the ambient light sensor worked okay most of the time, the proximity sensor gave me a lot of trouble. Nokia had moved the sensors into the ear piece which may have affected the sensitivity a bit. Most of the time during the phone call, my face would automatically press on a button on screen when the screen is supposed to be locked. It got really annoying to the point that I had to start taking calls through the headset.
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