Nokia C6 in pictures

Boring!

The keyboard looks excellent. This is a little off-topic, but I often miss Symbian, having switched to Maemo a few months ago. As for Android: Don't believe the hype, I say. I have the HTC Desire and I find it a bit underwhelming.

I guess it's still a little difficult to recommend this device with Symbian3/4 on the way, but I can see a market for it.

@Marxian, I dont believe you. Even low end android is better user experience that Symbian 1. I know I got an LG540 for £99 and its sublime and better usability than my 5800. Nokias hardware is leaps and bounds above its peers though. Solid hardware plus Symbian 3 will keep nokia on top. I am typing this on an N900, brill hardware but clunky and cranky UI. Typical ;)

Well, I am a programmer, so probably not a typical smartphone user. I use my device as a pocket computer, so I prefer a real computing OS. Android to me feels like 'My First Phone'. I do like the hardware of the Desire, aside from the poor loudspeaker and lack of hardware qwerty.

@marxian

I have been a Nokia user since the 2110 and have used ALL the communicators until the N97 which I have dumped for an Android phone and will not look back.

Android is powerful and extremely customisable for us techies and not a "my first phone" as you so claim. That award falls on the iphone.

I will only reconsider another Nokia phone if and when they get Symbian up to par with Android.

Well.... I'm a developer myself, and have owned piles of Nokia Symbian as well as some Android devices. I prefer Android for nearly everything -- except for satnav -- because they're more developer-friendly; SDK is multi-platform, better and cleaner API, etc.

And Symbian's certificate requirements seriously undermine non-commercial devs (like hobbyists).

This is a very nice device to hold, seen it in carphone warehouse the other day. Maybe a little overpriced, but Nokia have advanced the Symbian^1 a fair bit and if you add SPB Mobile Shell on top it is a very powerful system but with the odd oddity.

I am sick of coming to a site about Symbian and seeing all the Android and Iphone fans bashing it, if you's don't like it, why bother discussing it?

Yes it would have been better with Symbian^3, and combine this with Mobile Shell and there's one hell of an OS, no matter what way you look at it.

Everyone knows what the problems with Symbian^1 are and they are being addressed. Get over it and move on!

Imagine a 5800xm with the Widgets, Camera etc from the N97 mini and a qwerty keyboard. The C6 is effectively a N97 mini in a cheaper housing. I would expect a price point of £199 or below for this - an I'm sure this is where it will settle after release.

As for the Android discussions above, I have a desire and I too am left wondering what all the fuss is about. Android is just ordinary, and even with the SenseUI enhancements there is no huge advance over even Symbian touch. I expect that ^3 and ^4 versions of Symbian should be able to leapfrog Android quite easily, because it wouldn't take much. If that doesn't happen then somebody at Symbian is still asleep.

Although it has to be said, I may have been so disappointed with Android because the high expectations set by BSers on forums like this, and because I also own an iPhone, the iPhone has absolutely nothing to fear from Android in the UI department.

What EXACTLY is good about Android? Somebody please explain? I appreciate why phone makers might like it, it suits them very well. No great shakes for consumers.

Anyway, back to the topic C6, I can't see a reason to buy an N97 anything if they remain priced above the C6.

No it doesn't. Because as a "hobbyist" myself I know that these requirements are very easily bypassed on hardware, and there are no certificate requirements for tinkering on the emuator. You should also know that if you are a developer.

I asked the exact same question some months ago after playing with a mates htc legend for about a week and watching countless youtube videos. I am sorry but the shear level of functionality in Symbian is going to be hard to beat and it is forever improving. Cant say for certain but isn't Symbian pushing for major new releases every 6-12 months?

And as for Meego, it just looks so damn cool on both tablets and phones (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INVlmjJKXjk), Nokia are in a very good position moving forward and roll on the 1st Meego handset and tablet.

Hmm... I take it none of the 'developers' here have used Qt then? Not sure how that's more difficult to use than a VM layer.

Anyway, moving on...

The C6 feels like a backward step for Nokia. It's effectively a rebadged N97 mini or a 5800 with a keyboard and a such is an anachronism.

isn't that what the C Series is all about? Nokia moving their previous high end homescreen etc to the mid range in anticipation of moving highend devices to Meego.

The C6 actualy looks realy good,especialy in Black,looks very sleek and professional,a shame it runs Symbian^1 as i felt it realy limited my 5800, it just felt so incomplete.
As for Android, its not everyones cup of tea. What makes it better? Well the openess and the quality of apps and games which destroy symbian. Even little things like 3rd party apps being able to access hardware, e.g. the MailDroid app,ive set it to make the LED flash Blue when i get new Emails, little things like that just make it much better to use, IMO.

when I get a new email/sms etc on the Vivaz a blue light flashes too so it's not limited to Android.

I mean that with 3rd party apps i have control of what colour it will be and the flash frequency,i can control that little piece of hardware. I know LEDs are nothing new.

Openness and quality of apps and games, eh?

Well, Symbian is now fully open source and the Qt SDK makes it very easy to develop software for the platform.

But those are recent developments. There is a long line of quality software for Symbian platforms. I'm thinking of software like Ovi Maps, Handy Safe Pro, Gravity, Joiku Spot*, Quick Office, etc. etc.

You'll notice that I haven't listed any 'apps' that are merely bookmarks to websites. Go to any 'app' store; Apple, Ovi, Android Market and you'll find that the percentage of quality software is actually quite low.

* if JS isn't a 3rd party application that controls hardware, I don't know what is.

Perhaps what you really mean is that Android looks more polished as an interface? It certainly does, especially with HTC Sense on top.

Symbians ^1 and S60 3rd do look dated. But as far as I'm concerned, so what? It does exactly what I need it to and tons more. Symbian^3 will bring the slick front end, Symbian^4 even moreso. As for Meego - that looks pretty good already.

Back on topic: I like the look of the C6. Especially the inclusion of a D-pad and the keyboard layout. The camera looks a little disappointing, but still a sweet phone for £250.

Ovi Maps certainly is decent,il give you that,although having my X10 and 5800 side by side it seems the Android is more accurate,more aware of my surroundings, and locks to GPS a lot faster.
What do you mean merely bookmarks? RockPlayer, TweetCaster, MailDroid, System Panel, jet-VD, PSx4Droid, OfficeSuite, Kindle, Astro etc...are certainly not mere bookmarks and theres tons of apps like them in the Market, and they beat the hell out of similar apps in Symbian. :)
Im looking forward to seeing what apps come out for S3,i hope all this Qt blabbering actualy amounts to some great apps with a good developer community,and not flop like S1.

Well that's not really much of a case for Android, and it that's the best to offer then you have proven my point. There is nothing special about Android. Hardly destroys Symbian at all.

5800 did the LED flashing notification thing in the centre of the middle button years ago in its V11 firmware. That's Symbian doing that, not a third party app. Symbian has quality apps for everything that I need. I acknowledge that the lack of graphics acceleration on a lot of Nokia devices has hindered game development, but that's a hardware problem, not Symbian.

Have people not realised that having thousands of crap apps available does not make things better. I've lost count of the number of shite things I've downloaded from Apple App store and Android market and then immediately deleted. I've given up bothering these days.

I regret buying a Desire, Android really is a poor effort.

LOL having a 5800 and Google navigation platform like the Desire side by side I frequently can't see the maps on the Google. There is no contest there, I wouldn't trust Android nav.

Yes I concur I have an app for everything I need as well, even testing a nice native foursquare client that has quite a few features missing currently however.

The quality of alot of the symbian apps is fantastic and things will only get better.

QT is cross platform and the developers I have spoke to love it and say it makes developing for Symbian alot easier and they expect a big developer craze around it over the next year.

X10 getting a quicker gps lock, maybe it has a bigger gps aerial? would that not account for it? My Vivaz gets a gps lock in about 20 secs and it's a tiny phone so the aerial must be small too.

The adoption of Qt has been a big pull factor in my decision to concentrate my future development efforts on Maemo/Meego/Symbian. Fingers crossed that the 'write once, deploy everywhere' promise matches the reality. Having used Qt to write desktop applications, I am quite impressed with it. I was originally intending to focus more on the Android platform, but my experience with the Desire has dulled my enthusiasm, and I am in this for love, not money. Using Android reminds me of KDE: a widget for everything, when it makes more sense to acess the function from an easily accessible menu. The need to download 'apps' to get functions that are standard on Maemo and Symbian is also annoying. Lastly, how do you close an application in Android? Answer: you can't. Enjoy your shiny toy phones, gentlemen.

Android great YouTube and gmail clients, but the attraction ends there for me.

As for the GPS-thing: The 5800 (and maybe all of Nokias phones coming from this platform) has a very very very very poor GPS-chip. I can only hope that we do not need to see such a *****-gps-chip again.
But thats Nokias poor hardwarechoice (which made a lot of cool apps unusable on my 5800), not Symbian.

I would like to just congradulate you for completely missing the point and not reading my post after that,well done,next time read over and over again until you understand.
Reading through here its clear many of you dont understand or have used Android. We have BOTH a widget for everything and a great menu. The point of a widget is to get quick access to your Music player or simply browse news or statuses without having to launch the whole app. I have both a FB and Tweetcaster widget in my right side homescreen,if im waiting to board a plane, waiting at a docs room i can quickly just scroll through some statuses or quickly post one,without booting the entire app. I also have a weather widget,it updates 8times a day,and has an image as well as info of the weather,so i can give it a quick glimpse without launching an app and waiting for a web page to load etc... this is what widgets are for,not a replacement or fix for anything,just a nice additional option to improve the user experience,exactly why even Symbians got them as well,just not as well implemented.

Wow. To close an app you get this app called a Taskmanager, im shocked you dont know what it is as this is one of those must haves in Symbian. I use System Panel,its a real time CPU,RAM and ROM monitor/manager, it tells me exactly what frequency my phone is running at, how much RAM is being used,how much ROM and what apps are running. It lets me close apps and choose which ones i want to exclude when i hit the End All button and widget,so i can even end all running apps at one time from my homescreen.
What standard features in symbian did you have to add to your Desire?? all i had to add was a file manager of my choice,the rest was there, didnt feel like i was missing anything at all. Sounds to me like you had no clue of what you were doing on that Desire,hope you got rid of it before totaly messing it up. :)

The new phones with QT enabled should have widgets in home screen, according to my testing with N8. More widgets are coming available as well.