The UK Mobile Phone Blog

Nokia 6600 Slide Review: Stylish Slider

October 22, 2008 at 9:29 am by Dan | In Mobile News, Mobile Phones

When the Nokia 6600 Slide arrived on our door step, we couldn’t wait to get it up and running and put it through its paces. Sitting comfortably in Nokia’s portfolio as a fashionable, functional phone, the 6600 Slide definitely has a good target audience! But does it have enough going for it to lure you away from Nokia’s feature packed NSeries mobile phones or those of its competitors? Well that is what we aim to find out so read on for our review of the Nokia 6600 Slide.

For those of you who read the Blog regularly you may think I am slightly obsessed with a mobile phone’s build quality but for me first impressions are everything so a phone needs to impress me even before I switch it on. In this respect the 6600 Slide has won me over before I’ve managed to press a single button. The weight and feel of the phone is perfect. With a smooth rounded construction made from luxurious metals and with a nice rounded screen, the phone fits in your hand comfortably and slides up effortlessly. Though a small phone (in my hands at least), Nokia have still managed to keep the keypad ample enough to use with ease without fear of hitting the wrong button or multiple buttons at a time. On the reverse of the phone we have the camera. To hold in your hand, you’d be forgiven for thinking the 6600 Slide was a member of the ultra exclusive (and expensive) 8800 Arte series.

The 6600 slide features a capable 3.2 Megapixel camera with Auto focus and an LED flash. The images it captures are of satisfactory quality. The 6600 copes well when capturing images with lots of contrasting colours and textures. They look good on the phones sharp TFT display and even better when blown up on a PC screen or print out. The flash is also powerful enough to illuminate low light conditions to an acceptable standard though it can’t really compare to the more powerful xenon flash found on other camera phones. You also get a good zoom and autofocus ensuring you capture the best photo possible. The camera menu layout will be familiar to anyone who has used a Nokia before. The options key allows you to customise things like image size, light sensitivity and shooting mode while the four-way navigation key handles zooming and capturing an image. As the sample image below helps to show, while the 6600 Slide won’t replace your digital camera, thanks to its small size it’s a competent camera phone in its own right.

In terms of multimedia, the 6600 slide supports a wealth of different file formats including MP3, AAC and WMA, and despite the Slide’s meager 18MB of internal memory, expandable memory up to 4GB via a MicroSD slot ensure you’re never short of storage space. The Media player is simple to use with the four way navigation key taking on the main music functions such as play, skip and pause. Music quality is to a good level which nice levels of bass and good rich sound. Again, the thought that springs to mind is that Nokia have managed to cram in such a capable media player in such a small phone.

Elsewhere, the Nokia is a 3G phone supporting download speeds at up to 384 kbps and video calling. The lack of HSDPA support is somewhat of a disappointment but that’s not really what the 6600 Slide is all about. Alongside these connectivity options we also find Bluetooth v2.0 so you can stream your music to a wireless stereo headset, built in hands free for those times that you’re juggling your shopping and your mobile phone and an accelerometer which changes the screen orientation to landscape when the phone is held on its side in certain menus (i.e. the media gallery). While the Nokia 6600 Slide doesn’t have the features to compete with the N96’s, i8510’s and C905’s of this world, to criticize it for this would be missing the point. The 6600 Slide has all the features you’ll need for day to day use in a phone that simply oozes style and class. I can’t stress enough how good this phone looks and feels in the flesh, all I can say is buy one, get your paws all over it and you’ll see exactly where I’m coming from. Sit it next to an Arte and ask someone which one is the more expensive and they won’t have the foggiest! It really looks that good!

The Nokia 6600 Slide is now available on a range of different networks and tariffs. For more details, click here.

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