Nokia C6-01 review: Clear as black

Final words

Nokia C6-01 feature pack and capabilities are almost the same as the previous Symbian^3-powered C7. The thing that makes C6-01 special is its elegant and unique look plus it’s compact form factor. We guess the lower price will be a factor too.

This time Nokia has bet on a smaller AMOLED screen in order to give us a more pocket friendly phone. Of course, shrinking the phone has made an impact on the thickness, but most users won’t have problems with that additional 3mm.

At the time being Nokia C6-01 can be yours for around 300 euro, which is close to the price announced initially by Nokia. As things stand right now, the Nokia C6-01 is too close to C7. The only differences are in the slightly bigger screen and the FM transmitter.

Nokia C7

For a few more bucks you could get the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10, which has just got its long awaited update to Android 2.1 or the Motorola MILESTONE XT720, which runs Eclair as well. Both of them pack 8MP snappers with autofocus and 720p HD video recording.

Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 • Motorola MILESTONE XT720

In case you’re into the Bada thing or want to bet on another relatively new OS, you should definitely check the two Waves. The Bada pioneer Samsung S8500 Wave offers 3.3-inches of Super AMOLED screen, Hummingbird processor and 5 megapixel camera with HD video recording. It costs 50 euro less than Nokia C6-01.

The recently unveiled Samsung S8530 Wave II should start selling later this month for about the same price as Nokia C6-01. It is also based on Samsung’s Bada (v1.2) platform but this time around, you get a 3.7” LCD display instead of a 3.3” Super AMOLED.

Samsung S8500 Wave • Samsung S8530 Wave II

As it happened with the Nokia C7, the C6-01 sees a real threat only within its own family. If you have decided on Symbian, then your choice is between C6-01, C7 or the seriously more expensive N8.

Nokia C6-01 is the company’s first smartphone for quite some time that has managed to impress us with its design. If you can forgive the uninspiring camera performance and the few Symbian faults, then C6-01 is a friendly little chap that deserves attention. The one thing we really hope is Nokia fix some of the things we noted throughout the review with the future firmware updates. That would make it a bestseller.