Nokia C6-01 Unlocked GSM Phone with 8 MP Camera, 720p Video Recording, and Ovi Maps Navigation--U.S. Version with Warranty (Black)

If I could rate this phone based on performance compared to my expectations, I'd give it five and a half stars. Let's get the "needs improvement" out of the way:* CPU is a little slow. In power-saving mode, when multitasking, one application jitters for a fraction of a second while another application does its thing. For example, when listening to streaming audio while surfing the Web, page loads cause the music player to cut out briefly.* There are some user interface quirks:** The display stays on during a call if you lay the phone face-up on a surface.** When using the on-screen keypad while in a call (for example, when going through automated phone menus), there's a "call" button but no "hangup" button. To hangup, you have to select "Back" to get to the main call screen first.** Some applications seem to prefer the last network I used them on even if it's no longer available. It would be nice if the phone just selected Wifi first, carrier next, and then other.** Using the GPS while downloading satellite maps over AT&T drains the battery quickly.** The phone is definitely on the small side. Good for slipping into pockets, not so good for watching videos, reading lots of text in web pages or trying to tap on tiny links with my fingertips.** It would be nice if the shell supported more gestures than simply swipe-left and swipe-right. For example, on Nokias with D-pads, pressing Down brings up the address book. On this phone, doing a swipe-down would be easier for me than trying to tap on the small address book icon.There are some other minor little usability issues but nothing I didn't get used to in short order.Now for the good: this is an amazing little phone, and more amazing when you consider how inexpensive it is. First, the build quality is just terrific---it looks and feels solid. It has a nice, cold, metallic, satisfying heft to it. The battery cover slides off in a no-nonsense way, and there's nothing flimsy or plastic to worry about flexing to the point of breaking.In addition to feeling solid in the hand, the phone is actually quite sleek and elegant in appearance. I find the pictures online to not do it justice.The display is GORGEOUS. Colors are rich and super-bright, and it's easy to see even in bright light (though I wouldn't want to try to read lots of small text in bright sunlight).The battery charges quickly. I can charge from 20% to 70% in the car during my 45-minute commute, and to 100% in about an hour if plugged into an AC outlet. I keep the phone in power-save mode and don't use the GPS much, so I only have to recharge it every 2-3 days.The flash camera is good and Nokia has included some fancy image-processing tools like sepia, B&W, enhancement, color editing, etc. However, I don't know how it compares to other phones' 8MP cameras, so I don't know if it's anything special.Getting to the SIM and Micro SD cards is easy: pop off the battery cover and you have access to the SD card. Remove the battery and there's the SIM card. Done. You can replace all three in 30 seconds.Call quality is excellent, 10 out of 10. Speakerphone is excellent, 10 out of 10. Sound quality on the cheapo earbuds (included) is excellent. The speakerphone is remarkably good. On other handsets I've used, the speakerphone might have a hollow, buzzing sound. This phone sounds solid. My only quibble is that the sound gets a little muffled when I lay it down face-up (the speaker is on the back). Also, and maybe it's that AT&T has upped their game, but lately I have been getting terrific call quality and coverage everywhere I go (Boston, DC, suburban Maryland).Apps: there is a wide variety of Symbian apps out there but still can't compare to the iPhone ecosystem. On the other hand, this phone comes with almost everything I wanted out of the box. I downloaded only a couple of games, Opera, YouTube downloader, a new UI shell, RPN calculator and Kayak. Even without downloading anything, the phone is an instant on-the-go survival kit, with GPS, turn-by-turn SPOKEN navigation, maps, traffic, browser, email, weather, streaming audio player, video player, calendar, clock with multiple alarms, QuickOffice, FM radio, music player, 720p HDTV output, and, of course, it's a pentaband world phone.Maps: Ovi Maps is excellent and, like Google maps, offers map view, satellite view and "terrain view" (essentially map view at an angle, as if you're floating hundreds of feet above the map). Also comes with GPS and turn-by-turn spoken navigation, as I said above. Better than the "navigation" you get with Bing maps on other devices like the Pre, which basically map out your route and tell you how to get there up front. That's great until you go astray. This phone gives you turn-by-turn directions and live route recalculation like a real GPS navigation unit.One other thing, and I don't know if this is limited to Nokia or Symbian, but you can set an alarm and then turn the phone off. Why not save juice at night, right? At the selected time the phone turns on enough to play the alarm tune. My Nokias have done this going back to 2002. Apparently this is something my Android-toting colleagues can't do with their whiz-bang Droids and Galaxies. Go figure.

I have had the phone for about a year now and this is a slight update over my previous two reviews after a week, and six months--which were basically on target. I am a long time computer user and international traveler and was hoping to use the phone as a portable all in one device. I have used cell phones of increasing intelligence for about 15 years, but this is my first "smart" phone.I read most of the other reviews before purchasing the phone, most of which seem accurate, both pro and con--although I had no mysterious reboots or failures.The phone is well built, sleek and slick, pretty easy to see even in bright light, battery use varies with applications, if wi-fi is used extensively, you'll need to recharge at the end of the day. If not, the phone--as telephone--works for many days without recharging. The sound from the phone is very clear, the clearest that I can remember among my 7 or 8 phones. Texting is also easy (in horizontal mode) although the small keys seem to register my touches a bit differently than I expect. (It helps to aim for the top of the keys instead of the middle.) The hard buttons for answering, hanging up, and canceling out of apps, are extremely helpful, and getting be rare. It allows you to answer or reject a phone call, with one hand, instantly--very useful.The music play back (through relatively expensive Sennheiser headphones) is also very clear and better than the very good Sony MP3 player that I have been using. The camera is easy to use and seems to take very good pictures, excellent in day light, although not quite as good as a very good camera.For many tasks, working with the phone attached to a computer is the best solution, as with entering phone numbers, downloading apps, music, and so forth. I often plug it into a laptop in the morning to charge, sync files, do a bit of texting (see below), and use it as my "office" phone.In the past year, I had the opportunity to use a mid-level Samsung smart phone for a month and played with several I-phones and talked with experienced users. Neither had software equivalent to the Nokia Suite, which has turned out to be extremely useful. First, it syncs the phone calendar easily with MS outlook, which allows calendar entries to be entered on a pc, where I am a much faster typist and screen negotiator. Second, it allows text messages to be composed and sent on a pc or laptop. This may seem a bit silly, but text communications have largely become the norm among persons on the go, and unless one is a speed "thumb typer" one can do this a lot faster and more accurately from a laptop keyboard. Third, it provides very convenient notices of the availability of upgrades. Fourth, it allows photos to be previewed, before porting them over to what every system you use to keep track of and edit them. (I am old-fashioned here and do this on a laptop or two.)The sync feature, is to my surprise not included with most other smart phones, although apps of evidently lesser ability can be purchased. My previous dumber phones and the mid-level Samsung smart phone I used over the summer lacked this feature.) To get a very good sync package for free, makes the phone an even greater value than I had appreciated. It means that one can keep MS outlook consistent across several computers (I use three different computers routinely, and used to do this manually by carrying a flash memory with backups of my appointment schedule and contacts. The C6-01 does this automatically via the OVI/Nokia Suite software with a cable or via bluetooth.The phone, which I is typical for smart phone families, takes some learning and a lot of downloading, more or less like setting up a new computer--which of course it really is. (The operating system has been upgraded three times in the past year, with each one being a bit better than the previous one.)One problem that I constantly run into is that Nokia's intuition about how to do things is not the same as mine. Finding the message and phone logs initially takes several strokes and some good guesses. Sending a message requires guessing the meaning of two similar looking icons. Importing sim card phone numbers is especially round about, rather than automatic, but possible. On such things, the phone's software is no worse than MS word or word perfect, but it is still annoying to have to spend a few minutes puzzling out some rather routine tasks. Nokia's online help for the phone provides answers to most mysteries that I could not puzzle out myself. (With practice, one "gets" Nokia's logic and it becomes a bit easier to find things and turn on and off various features.)I ran into a variety of minor problems that I thought were the phone's, but turned out to be ATT problems--eg they had not unlocked my sim card so that it could be used in an unlocked phone. ATT had previously provided info to unlock my last phone from them for use in Europe, so I thought that the sim too would have been unlocked.Recent revisions seem to have improved the GPS. The maps are excellent and the phone does a good job of locating you on the map, although it is not quite as accurate as a true GPS would be. The turn-by-turn advice, however, more than occasionally gets confused if there are lots of streets in the same area, but the maps are good enough that one can take a quick look at them and figure out which way to go, when the voice (of which there are many to choose from) fails.The GPS seems to have been improved in the various upgrades over the past year, and its locating ability and maps are very useful.It is an excellent phone and MP3 player, those parts are very user friendly; a very good camera, decent internet device, and much improved GPS system, good although not yet for foolproof turn by turn advice. All this for the price of a decent camera or GPS device.Overall I give the C6-01 very high marks. Its a convenient pocketable size, smaller than most small cameras and much smaller than most smart phones.One can be hot or cold about the phone according to what one is looking for and how much of a premium one puts on size and universal apps. The text is smaller on this phone than on phones with larger screens, and there are fewer apps, which is sometimes, although not often a problem.I rather like its small size for most day-to-day purposes. Its suite of software is terrific and more unusual that I had appreciated before my experience with a mid level Samsung, I-phone, and low level LG phone last summer. It is definitely a major improvement over my last phone, and its international portability is a major plus as well.