In autumn ‘2008, the company launches the 6600 slide model, which can be easily mistaken for a sequel to 6500 slide because of the model name. In fact, the things go a very different way. 6600 slide is but a pretentiously looking fashion phone with no real improvement in functionality if compared to the predecessor, the difference between the two consists almost exclusively in market positioning and design. 6600 slide is largely meant to cater to a female audience, which is obvious from its measurements, color scheme and peculiar keyboard backlight. This handset is highly priced, yet the functionality isn’t so sky high, rather resorting to an average level. The casing uses some very expensive materials, leaving an impression of mimicking (in a very successful manner) the premium 8600 and 8800 Arte models, ranking a level or two lower.

Nokia 6500 slide and classic will see their actual sequels closer to the end of this year or in the first weeks of the next year: 6260 slide is a new photo flagship basing off the Series 40 platform, clearly identified as a mid-end mass market solution, mainly because of the design and casing materials. Thus, Nokia has deliberately split the target audience of 6500 slide into two parts: the techy, highly functional 6260 slide comes with a good camera but spares the quality of materials. It would never make a fashionable item because of its inexpensive plastic and plain design. The 6600 slide model might be deficient in some non-critical departments, yet definitely can brag about its exquisite looks and high quality of materials. Time will tell how successful this strategy is going to prove.

	Nokia 6600 slide main specifications
Connectivity:	GSM 850/900/1800/1900, UMTS 850/2100
Storage:	18 Mb of user memory, microSD expansion
Screen:	2,2", TFT QVGA (240х320), 16M colors
Connectivity:	USB2.0, Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR, A2DP supported
Camera:	3,2 Mp (up to 1536x1944), AF
Battery:	BL-4U 3.7V 1000 mAh up to 4 hours of talktime up to 340 hours of standby
Measurements:	93х45х14 mm
Weight:	110 g
Guiding price	€275

To make a digression, let’s check that the 3600 slide / 7610 Supernova are positioned as fashion phones but don’t display a peculiarly high quality of materials and assembly. The gradient pattern covering the casing of 3600 stands out as the main design feature of this model; 7610 offers a variety of differently colored replaceable panels. Neither stands up to the miniature, metal-made 6600 slide, though. Moreover, the 7610 Supernova phone is going to be only slightly cheaper than 6600 slide, which severely reduces the former’s likeness of market success.

So in this way, 6600 slide stands out from the whole Nokia product family. It’s a unique addition to the portfolio bearing several remarkable traits to be touched on a bit later in this article. It’s not clearly understood why so little attention is being paid to this model worldwide In fact, this handset is the most original item among the latest additions to the Finnish manufacturer’s portfolio that makes an excellent alternative to 8800, sharing in common a variety of design traits, yet sticking more to the feminine side and elegance.

Design and ergonomics

Unlike the two other models announced at the same time, Nokia 6600 slide is only available in black color. The handset looks pretty good. You get the impression of a full metal build, though in fact the face panel is made of plastic. Nevertheless, its texture and pattern can scarcely be told from the steel back plate, the quality of the plastic is immense. In a very subtle way, this phone resembles 8800 Sirocco. The same use of metal for the back plate, a face panel made from identically looking plastic, the rounded angles and the trademark whip crack sound occurring when you open the slider. Nokia 6600 slide is very close to a premium product (yet not exactly such in essence) as far as the materials and design go. The impression you get from it is totally different from the feel that 6600 fold - a mid-end all-plasticky handset, would give. Even if the former’s design appears to you too unpretentious, just have a hold of it and see for yourself – the real charm of this toy can’t be entirely captured by the eye, you have to feel its touch in order to realize what the thing really is. Because of this unique feature, it’s hard to guess any existing or expected products that could be seen as direct competitors to this one.

Nokia 6600 slide is one of the smallest sliders available from today’s market, if not the smallest. You won’t notice the difference until you open the slider – in its open state, it easily catches the eye with its very compact size. This was achieved largely by minimizing the height of the keypad, though that didn’t tell on the overall comfort: the buttons are wide enough and have good feedback. The handset length reaches 93 mm in a closed state and 117 when unfolded, which is but a bit longer than the majority of the traditional candy bar models. Let’s compare the dimensions of Nokia 6600 slide and some other handsets:

The keypad, as we have already said, is pretty comfortable, though has a short height. The buttons aren’t glossy, more on the rough side, with a bright purple backlight to match the joystick color.

The battery bay cover is made from blue steel, notable for a glossy surface, the fingerprints and grease are pretty well exposed. The coating is resistant to wearing. To remove the cover, you have to unlock the latch on the upper edge, the mechanism being totally identical with Nokia 6500 slide. We haven’t spotted a wobbliness in any part, the quality of assembly is quite high. Beneath the cover you will find a BL-4U battery sporting a capacity of 1000 mAh, the same with Nokia 8800 Arte. The memory card slot is found beneath the battery, no hot swapping is possible.

There are no extra control buttons available, which also makes the 8800 series come to mind. A microUSB slot is located on the upper edge, which is used for synchronization. It’s protected with a flap. Nearby you will find the back panel latch, the 2.5 mm headset slot is shifted to the right edge. The speaker is found at the bottom of the casing, hidden behind a purple-colored mesh. The maximum volume is average, yet it never gave us a problem.

The camera sports a 3.2 Mp resolution, auto-focusing is supported. There’s no dedicated camera launch button available, the focusing is done with the central button. When you release it, a shot is taken. You can shoot while the slider is closed or open alike, just don’t forget to give the cam lens a good rub prior to shooting, for it’s left unprotected and all the time gets dirty.

Screen

The model uses a standard 2.2’’ matrix for a screen, sporting a 16M color palette – the same one is used in Nokia 6500 slide and 5610 XpressMusic. The screen quality is pretty high, there’s almost nothing to reproach. The protective glass adds to the glaring when the screen is exposed to direct sunlight, yet judging on a more general scale we have to say that the screen info remains pretty legible in the sunlight, so no real problems here at all. The luminance sensor and CIF camera lens are located above the top of the screen, to the right of the speaker. Unlike the latest Samsung models, you can’t turn the sensor off.

The screen isn’t sunk into the casing, so it’s pretty easy to clean it. The protective glass is of a generic kind, not made of some rare and specific material, yet it’s pretty resistant to physical damage. Just keep it away from sharp objects, and for lesser threats it care on its own.

Battery

The model uses a BL-4U Ion battery with a standard capacity of 1000 mAh. A standard duty cycle (2-3 hours of talktime, two hours of working with the rest of the functions or so) can last as long as two days before the battery charge reaches zero, that’s a good score. A full recharge cycle takes about an hour and a half.

Model	Nokia 6600 slide	Nokia 5610 XpressMusic
Normal Duty	2,5 days	2,5 days
Multimedia cycle, video (3GP)	3:14	3:03
Multimedia cycle, audio(MP3)	12:20	20:28

Connectivity

The phone supports GSM 850/900/1800/1900 and WCDMA 850/2100 networks. Both GPRS and EDGE are supported. The microUSB slot is found on the upper edge, a data cable coming in the sales package. The USB standard is 2.0, the Mass Storage connection mode is supported. On connecting the phone to your PC you are prompted to select a connection type from Mass Storage, PC Suite and Media&Print. The cable data transfer rate is quite good in the Mass Storage mode, reaching 650-700 Kb per second. Simultaneously, the battery recharges.

The support for the A2DP profile allows for a wireless headset to be used along with the device. The technology worked just fine for us, we weren’t able to spot a problem.

• Dial Up Networking Profile
• File Transfer Profile
• Generic Access Profile
• Service Discovery Application Profile
• Headset Profile
• Handsfree (Car Kit) Profile
• Generic Object Exchange Profile (OBEX)
• Object Push Profile
• File Transfer Profile
• Basic Printing Profile
• Audio Video Remote Control Profile
• Advanced Audio Distribution Profile
• Enhanced Data Rate
• Dual Profile Bluetooth (Voice & Data)
• vNote

The Bluetooth visibility period is adjustable in the options, ranging from 1 minute to 1 hour.

Functionality

Nokia 6600 slide is equipped with an accelerometer which improves some basic functions in a number of ways. For instance, on receiving a call you can muffle the ringtone by putting the phone face down on the table. The sensor also activates a clock screensaver after tapping the on face surface twice. The interface doesn’t switch alignment when you rotate the handset in the space. The accelerometer can be turned off in the menu.

The new gadget has its onboard memory limited to a mere 18 Mb, though a microSD card can be used to expand the storage (hot swapping is not supported, as we have mentioned earlier). Bundled with the model, a 512 Mb card is found in the sales package; the gadget supports card up to 4 Gb in size.

A good 3.2 Mp cam with a flash and auto-focusing feature; a neat-looking player interface; high audio quality; a good large screen (as compared to the size of the handset itself); a relatively high performance; a rich variety of software – all of this makes Nokia 6600 slide a typical specimen of the latest Nokia phones. There’s nothing extraordinary in it (save probably for the availability of a preinstalled copy of the Nokia Maps application – a simplified counterpart of its namesake found on S60 handsets), everything is pretty well balanced. There’s no sense in designing overly functional devices for this market segment, the target audience is primarily concerned with the looks, the quality of materials and the availability of a basic functionality coming in second and third places.

Software implementation

Nokia 6600 slide is based off the Series 40 5th Edition software platform while the latest sixth revision of this platform is so far attested only in one announced device, Nokia 7510 Supernova. Most hi- and mid- ranking future models will be built using the latest revision of the platform, the current generation and future low-end models taking mostly utilizing the fifth version. Nevertheless, there’s absolutely nothing bad in using not the latest version, for the only major change in S40v6 is an extended use of animations in the menus and the availability of a preinstalled copy of Nokia Maps. The rest of the changes can hardly be spotted and don’t play a critical part.

Nevertheless, Nokia Maps is found on several models based off the fifth revision of the platform like 6300i, 6600 fold, 6600 slide. The application looks almost identical to the first version of the S60 version of the application, yet the options come in a smaller number. No one is after a full parity between S40 and S60 in this aspect, though. S60 devices are originally meant and designed to offer a higher functionality and more software options.

The interfaces enjoys good graphics. Search can be done with extra criteria like tagged locations and points of interest. A variety of options including voice hints are available while composing up your routes. All in all, the S40 version of Nokia Maps goes on par with Sony Ericsson’s Wayfinder Navigator, but only makes sense as long as there’s an onboard GPS receiver available. By the end of this year, we will see some S450 models with onboard GPS. Until then, you can hardly make a good use of the Maps. People looking for good GPS capabilities will inevitably prefer picking a smartphone, and the rest is more likely to stick with Google Maps which is absolutely free and can be installed on almost any kind of phone. So you can take the current appearances of Nokia Maps on S40 devices for a kind of demonstration of power, a promotion of features which will only reach a full blossom in the later models. We could hardly imagine a girl using her Nokia 6600 slide or 7510 Supernova for calculating routes.

The rest of the features are pretty evident, a full description of the basic functionality provided by Series 40 5th platform is available on the site. One fancy-colored and three standard interface themes are available. A lack of customization options is sharply felt, akin to SE handsets, - probably the only bad thing on this front. The majority of phones come with preinstalled flash themes which allows to rearrange the icons in the main menu and play with their appearance. There’s no such feature in Series 40 phones, so the users have to go along with the standard icons which don’t change from theme to theme.

Preinstalled software and games

The host of miscellaneous application includes a variety of games (Backgammon, Rally 3D, Highroller Casion, Golf Tour, Snake III, Soccer 3D, Sudoku) All of them are full versions, not just demos. A very limited number of phones come with such a plenty of software goodness, the tendency is mostly observable with the latest Nokia handsets, the Supernovas included.

The exclusive content like designer interface themes, ringtones and such like things commonly found with premium products from the 8800 series are not to be found on this phone, the set is completely standard for the platform. A copy of Opera Mini, a clothing size converter, a download manager offering applications for web purchase – that’s the basic things you get. The integrated Flickr support allows to upload your photos to the web just in a few clicks; Yahoo! Go! is what you will want to use for quick and comfortable web searches, also providing special support for Yahoo mail and other similar Yahoo features. The Messenger, World Clock and a few even less significant things crown the list.

Multimedia features

The interface of the music player is of the same standard type that you will found in the rest of the latest Nokia solutions, it looks pretty cosy and beautiful. The player can be used with different skins, independent from the menu and standby mode themes. As compared to the interface seen in FP2v3 solutions (which is identical or all such devices regardless of positioning), you stumble upon a thought that such a personalization feature will be universally liked among all audiences. This kind of customizability is currently exclusively found in Nokia phones only. The appearance of the player is very changeable, from the color scheme to the arrangement of elements. Depending on the selected theme, the album art picture is shown either in the center of the screen or to the side of the track title and performer’s name. The following screenshots illustrate the quality of visualization:

The following audio formats are supported: AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, MP3, MP4, (SP)MIDI, (WB-)AMR, WMA, XMF. A five-band equalizer is available, coming with two user presets. Just like the player interface elements, the player enjoys some really good graphics and animated effects. An enhanced stereo mode is available, residing in the Multimedia menu, yet it doesn’t bring on any perceptible improvement in the audio quality.

A variety of options are available: sorting by performer, album, genre and so on, looped and random playback. The controls haven’t changed: the joystick button is used for switching the tracks. The player submits a sort of stats to the screen during standby and can be running in the background. One Java application can be running simultaneously with the player. The video player uses an identical interface and supports a full screen mode.

The quality of sound is comparable with the rest of recent Nokia phones: 6600 fold, Supernova and so on. The sound is on a quite good level, slightly lower than the specialty music phones by that manufacturer. The actual difference in quality isn’t that big, by the way. Nokia 6600 slide makes a good music solution, though this can’t be seen as a primary function. Continuous playback cycle can be running for as long as 12 hours, that’s an average score.

Camera

Nokia 6600 slide employs an auto-focusing 3.2 Mp camera. The cam is fully analogous to the one used in models like 5610 XpressMusic, 7610 Supernova and is slightly worse than its counterpart in 6500 slide, the difference in quality is perceptible yet not critical. Nevertheless, you get a nice chance of snapping some very good shots provided that the environmental lighting is sufficient – the colors turn natural and the overall sharpness of the shot is quite fine. There’s no dedicated button for launching the cam application or shooting, the focusing is tweaked with the central button, the transfocator is operated by pressing the joystick up and down, while left or right switches between photo and video shooting modes, a corresponding icon is shown in the viewfinder window.

The camera application uses a landscape orientation, though a portrait mode is optionally available. A number of status indicators are shown in the viewfinder windows: the current resolution for photos or videos, the selected storage folder, zoom ratio, timer, the remaining number of shots, flash activation status and so on.

On pressing the left software button we get into the settings menu, comprising the following items:

The options are rather scarce. The available effects are quite few, yet the device isn’t positioned as a photo solution – everything’s quite okay for its native segment.

A few photo samples obtained with Nokia 6600 slide:

The customizability of the content storage folder is something we liked the most.

A few photo samples obtained with Nokia 6600 slide:

A photo can be instantly attached to a message, transferred via Bluetooth, or sent for printing… as well as set as a wallpaper, logo, a call picture for a single contact record or a whole user group. The photos can be scaled, rotated and be given different levels of contrast.

A simple graphics editor is available, where you can do a number of tweaks and changes to any selected photo:

That’s just as much as you get – a very basic functionality to fulfill the simplest of needs, but little than that.

Things are even simpler for the video. The editing capabilities are unavailable, save for an option that will entirely delete the sound from a clip. The maximum length of a video clip is only limited to the remaining amount of memory. Three quality settings are available: high, normal and basic. The resolution is selectable from 640x480, 352x288, 176x144 and 128x96. The video quality is pretty good, - provided that you’ve set the resolution to maximum, - so you can even comfortly watch them on a PC screen.

SMAPE’s opinion

Nokia 6600 slide is a truly unique fashion phone tailored for the mass market – a combination which doesn’t occur on too many occasions. There’s little justice in making comparisons between it and the members of the 8800 model family, the premium status of the 8800 handsets isn’t supported by the design only – the ideology and positioning also play a huge part here (mind the upcoming 8800 Arte Carbon, for instance, which is a very picturesque example). In the case of 6600 slide we just get a handful of similar design traits and the overall feel, yet that simply is not enough to grant it the status of a premium product. Its price is also a bit too low for a premium handset, yet in its native class 6600 will hardly find a fit competitor.

The compact measurements and use of pretentiously shaped details makes 6600 slide a typical female handset, the number of male buyers is going to be minimal. 6600 slide is the most feminine model in the whole model line, sporting even a stronger feminine aura than 6600 fold, even despite the latter’s clamshell form factor. Let me repeat the idea once again – 6600 slide easily beats Nokia 7610 Supernova, sporting a much better quality. The functionality of 6600 is higher as well (accelerometer, better screen, 3G support), let alone a smaller size. The price difference is a mere 50 euros, which can be seen as negligible. Hence 6600 slide and 6600 fold make a wonderful duo of fashion phones in which a great deal of attention is paid to the quality of materials, assembly and design. The Supernova series seems to have less elegancy, allegedly compensated by a slightly lower price and the availability of replaceable panels, yet the competition between 6600 slide / 7610 Supernova and 6600 fold / 7510 Supernova is apparently lost by either of the two Supernova gadgets.

Nokia 6600 slide is going to enter the mass market at the beginning of September at a guiding price of 340 euros. No serious price reductions are expected for this model. A small price cut may happen before Christmas, but hardly anything serious – there are no plans to make 6600 slide as much of a mass product as possible. On the contrary, this strategy is more likely to be applied to the Supernova series, which will sell in large numbers due to the aggressive promotion and substantial price reductions.

+ Compact measurements
+ High quality of materials and assembly
+ Accelerometer
+ High capacity battery
+ A large variety of preinstalled games and software
- Lack of extra control buttons
- No memory card hot swapping

Author: Anton Spiridonov, playdead1@gmail.com

SMAPE.com

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