Review: Nokia C6: part 4 - The real world and some final thoughts

Author: Nokia

Social Networking is one of the big draws on a phone nowadays, with mainstream media advertising promoting “Facebook and Twitter connectivity" in the marketing. Nokia's Social Networking application is the starting point for these networks (although I wonder how many people will end up using the browser instead) and it's a nice starting point. Heavy duty users are going to find another solution with more options and flexibility, but for the casual user, Nokia's Web Runtime-based solution does the job adequately. If I had one complaint, it's that it relies on you having signed up for an Ovi account.

 

While it makes sense that Nokia do their best to capture names and registrations for the global service, I'm not that happy at the implication that there's a Nokia database that holds my login to Facebook and Twitter. This must have been a conscious decision at the design stage to route the logins through their servers. At the very least, OAuth should have been implemented.

I do like that the Social Networks app is joined up, in software terms, to the Contacts application. This has had a spruce up with a more accessible view of your contacts information, along with a link to “social networks”. Tap here and the contact card information is used to search through Facebook and Twitter and match up your contact with their online activity. Subsequent taps will take you to their individual pages in the Social Network application. It's a nice step, and possibly the first one to a unified contacts application that links up different sites, pulling in information, and displaying it for the user. There's no data pipe to bring info back all the way back to the Contacts app, but this is a nice extension to the already impressive Contacts application.

Ovi also rears its head with Ovi Maps. Since turning Maps into a totally free service, it's become one of the most attractive features of Nokia's handsets. Handing you, in essence, a fully functional sat nav system on every single phone, no matter the price, Ovi Maps has been slowly extended to include services such as sharing your location on Facebook, finding out about the local area with Lonely Planet, booking travel through Expedia, and being an extensible system that has more icons added (to the 'More' section) as they become available.

As long as a handset reaches certain basic requirements, then Ovi Maps is going to be there with GPS and the ability to load maps from your computer or over the air on demand, and the C6-01 comfortably meets the minimum. It's still magical to see a red dot on a map saying “you are here” but Ovi Maps is mature, works very well, and should certainly impact on your purchase decision.

The C6, just as with the N8 and C7, comes with USB on the Go, allowing the C6 to be connected to a number of devices, including USB memory sticks, external keyboards, mice, hard drive caddies, and whatever else you can throw at it. All you need to do is find the connecting cable. Unlike the N8, it's not in the C6 retail box, so you'll need to go hunting. Is it worth it? I'm not sure. It is 'neat' and with a bit of thinking you'd have a rather attractive laptop replacement (TV Out cable - no HDMI port on the C6, a USB mouse and Bluetooth keyboard?), but for day to day use it's not going to be missed.

 
Watching movies over USB... worth waiting for.

So how to keep all of this going? Yes it's onto the battery life question. By shipping a relatively small battery with the C6 (the BL-5CT) which has just 1050mAh, there is a worry that the operating time of the handset is going to be “not that impressive”. Let's scotch that idea right away. In regular use I don't feel that the C6 is eating the battery, and it's got about the same life as the Nokia N8 – in other words, it gets comfortably through a day of work, into the night and onto the first half of the next day before it starts to throw up worrying signs of “why not switch to power save mode”.

I suspect that the smaller AMOLED screen has resulted in a reduced power drain when compared to the N8. It's worth reiterating that these screens will eat up power (up to 15 times more) when displaying a white screen next to a black screen. If you're looking to maximise life, keep to the black themes pre-installed on the phone.

My one personal concern about switching away from a white theme was using the C6 at night as a torch – a concern that is now covered by the handy built in torch function for the twin LEDs in the flash unit. Hold down the keylock while on the home screen, and the LEDs switch on. It's the same operation to switch them off again. A mighty handy function, even if it does mean that the 100 “torch” apps that could have been uploaded to the Ovi Store by hobby developers are no longer needed.

 
Shining a (torch) light on the complexities of Symbian

While the functionality of the Ovi Store hasn't changed, the polish to the UI (when compared to the S60 5th Edition versions) for this Symbian^3 version does make the client a fair bit nicer to navigate through. That, coupled with the greater volume of software available (than say, when the Nokia 5800 was launched) means that the user doesn't have to really think about where to find third party software. It's just a shame that novelty applications like “fingerprint sensor” still pop up in the first few screens when navigating the store defaults.

Even though third-party applications are a big draw to users, there's a lot to like about the built in software in the C6. As part of the overhaul to Symbian^3 (now of course just called Symbian), many of the built in applications have been given a facelift or a minor reworking. Look carefully and a lot has changed (for example, recording video in H.264, support for a wider range of video codecs for playback, Bluetooth 3.0 support, etc) but the initial impression is of a slight update to the mid range maestro, the 5800.

Unfortunately, the one application that has had little change is the web browser. While Nokia are at pains to stress this will be updated in the next firmware, there isn't a note to that effect in the box. To all intents and purposes, the new user is left looking at the web browser (rightly regarded as one of the key applications in a smartphone) and thinking “it's a bit slow”.

I bring the browser up again because, out of the box, I think this is the biggest flaw in the whole C6. I know that people are going to point to the Symbian UI as the major flaw, but frankly I think they're wrong. The process of doing things on the C6 is identical to that of the iOS and Android platforms, there is a consistency in the interface layout, and the capacitive screen is not only as responsive as other devices but looks fantastic even in strong sunlight. Where exactly is the flaw in that, apart from “one of these phones is not exactly like the other?”

Given that we've seen an updated firmware for the 5800 this week (more than two years after the device was launched) there's every chance that the C6 is going to be supported for a long, long time. Out of the factory, the C6 packs an impressive amount of hardware and software, with a lot of capability.

And the C6 just looks damn sexy. For a mid-range phone, that's a very important criteria when it's fighting for mindshare on a store shelf. Add in the gorgeous screen and a bunch of functionality and all I can see is a winning combination that's going to stay relevant and functional for a long time. Would I be happy toting the C6 as my regular phone over my current favourite (the X6) and the attractive N8? Over the last four parts of the review, I think I've answered that, but just to reiterate it in short form... yes.

-- Ewan Spence, Nov 2010.

See also:

Nokia C6: part 1 - First Impressions
Nokia C6: part 2 - Is this the software you were hoping for? 
Nokia C6: part 3 - Creating and Consuming Media 

Reviewed by Ewan Spence at 0:21 UTC, November 26th 2010