Photo gallery: Nokia X6Some people, perhaps our colleagues in the UK, may have thought we were a tad generous when we reviewed the 5800 XpressMusic, Nokia's first touchscreen for 2009. There was a lot to like, but definitely room for improvement, and early indications suggest Nokia is taking the lessons from 5800 to make the newly announced X6 a much better phone.
Upside
Scanning the specs pages, there are no backwards steps here. If a spec listed for the X6 is different from the 5800 then it's better. The first point that catches our attention is the shift from using resistive touchscreen technology to the more responsive capacitive screen type. This means the X6 should respond immediately to input from your fingers, rather than having an attached stylus.
Nokia also seems to have learnt that you can't have a rocking music player without storage, so the X6 gets a whopping upgrade from the 5800's paltry 81MB of storage to 32GB. If this is insufficient then users can purchase a microSD card separately and increase the storage to a possible 48GB in total.
While the X6 looks significantly different on the outside, the hardware inside is roughly the same. The X6 shares the same processor and memory configuration and matching connectivity options, including Wi-Fi and GPS. Expect the X6 to include the Ovi suite of apps, including Nokia Maps 3, and don't forget that it is a Comes with Music handset which adds a year-long music subscription to sweeten the deal.
Downsides
The excitement of a capacitive touchscreen could soon turn to bitter disappointment if Nokia's Series 60 operating system isn't made entirely finger friendly. The 5800 came bundled with a stylus and in our experience the stylus was well used. The Series 60 software had better be up to speed this time around or we might not find ourselves feeling so generous this time around.
Outlook
The X6 should be in stores before Christmas 2009, and if we can estimate pricing based on the 5800 then we should expect to see it on $0 upfront contracts at around the $50 per month price mark. If the X6 offers more to the user experience than an incremental upgrade, then Nokia could be on a winner; however, if the platform is still less responsive than the competition then the X6 could struggle.
(Credit: CNET Asia)
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