Nokia’s latest smartphone is the C6, a reasonable priced, good-looking smartphone stuffed full of features. But while it looks good on paper, there’s nothing new here.

Style and handling on the Nokia C6

The C6 is a great looking phone with a vivid 3.2-inch screen in a stylish matte black or chrome body. Beneath the screen sit three keys for call, call end and menu. Pressing on the side of the phone and the QWERTY keyboard slides straight out rather than the tilting action seen in previous Nokia smartphones. The keyboard spacious and feels good to use, with subtle backlighting that moves with your fingers. This is a nice touch that employs the phones ambient light sensor, although it is a little slow at times.

On the back of the phone sits the five-megapixel camera and flash, and on the side is the lock-screen switch which we’ve enjoyed on other Nokia touch-screen phones. On the top sits a 3.5mm audio port so you can plug in your own headphones; always a bonus.

Inside the phone are Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and an FM radio as well as the excellent Ovi Maps service. But while it sounds great on paper, the C6 is... well, uninspiring. It’s a great price and stuffed full of features but there’s just nothing new here.

Touch-screen on the Nokia C6

The touch-screen on the C6 is the pressure-sensitive resistive kind, which flounders next to the plethora of far superior capacitive screens out there. And although it just makes the phone seem cheap rather than low-priced, Nokia is better at resistive screens than any other manufacturer. And with a resistive screen, you can use gloves or a stylus to operate the phone, and don’t need to be as exact as you do with a capacitive screen – but you do miss out on the sharp resolution. One problem with most resistive screens, the C6’s included, is that if you don’t press quite hard enough you need to input your command again, which gets frustrating when it happens enough.

Of course, with a resistive screen you also miss out on the multi-touch capacity that allows for things like the iPhone’s pinch-to-zoom. There is also no alternative like the N900’s Maemo feature. You can double-tap but the text won’t reformat for you.

OS on the Nokia C6

This lack of effective zoom is just one of the pitfall of the outdated Symbian OS, which was once one of the best but is now unresponsive and slow in comparison to other operating systems. At least Nokia is working on a new OS but the C6 is stuck with Symbian.

Apart from Nokia’s prowess with touch-screen phones, it is also adept at producing pleasantly chunky phones that make a real change from the flat, wide handsets that make up the majority of phones.

The main screen is well designed, with customisable icons and shortcuts to the calendar, camera and Ovi Maps among others. The call quality is superb, and the camera pretty decent, albeit with shutter lag.

The Ovi Store has more available applications by the week, but its range of essential apps pales in comparison to Android Market or Apple Store. Battery life is good enough to last a day or two. There realley is a lot going for the C6 but the plain fact is there are better smartphones available.

The verdict on the Nokia C6

Well priced, good looking and stuffed with features, the C6 certainly appears to be a good buy. But it’s underwhelming, with a slow and outdated OS and an unresponsive screen. There are better phones to chose from out there.