At around the end of May nokia announced two new phones, the 6500 and the 6500 slide. I received the press release and deleted it after skimming over it quickly, I just thought meh another s40 phone without anything substantial. However when the first previews on the phone appeared on the internet I started to get more intrigued by this phone. It was the first nokia slide phone that actually looked good. Don’t get me wrong, the N95 is nice but the slide looks nicer in brushed aluminum. The two main things that appealed to me with the slide were the 3.2 megapixel camera with flash and the new version of s40, v5. I spent a lot of time looking at reviews, previews, video and pictures of this handset before I finally bit the bullet and ordered one from o2 online.

Initial impressions
When my phone finally arrived from o2, I grabbed my camera and thought lets have a go at reviewing the phone. It was clear from the moment I opened the box that this handset was going to be good. It looked perfect sitting there with the aluminum finish.

Design and build quality
As previously stated, the phone is a slider with a semi aluminum exterior. It was a light sensor and a small camera situated on the front next to the earpiece, with the main camera and flash module on the rear. The speaker is also located at the rear, towards the bottom of the handset. Upon first viewing the handset it seems kind of chunky but its only when you hold it that you realize that it’s the perfect size. It seems heavy at first but it’s the perfect weight for a phone, it feels sturdy enough without feeling like a brick. It’s not too big and it’s not too small. In my opinion the phone is similar to the 6233 in size, and also a successor to that phone as it has a bigger screen, better camera plus S40v5.

The phone can also be compared in size to the N95, it feels like a baby N95 in my opinion. [Please excuse the lack of battery cover on the N95, I lost it somewhere]

It looks large when compared to the nokia 6300 or the Samsung u600 but those are both “slim” phones designed mainly to look good.

The charger socket is situated on the top, not the bottom, along with the micro usb and headphone sockets. This seems like a strange idea as it will make it awkward for nokia to make a suitable car holder or desktop charger for the phone.

The keypad is roughly the same size as the N95’s although they are flat on the slide and raised on the N95.

The camera button and volume buttons are situated on the right hand side.

The slide mechanism itself is solid, with no unwanted movement to the sides. However the sound of the click when the phone is slide up or down is not as nice as the N95 or the 8800 I used to own.

The battery cover is opened by pushing down on a button situated between the charger and usb sockets. The memory and sim cards are stored above each other.

Screen
The slide has a 2.2” QVGA screen with a resolution of 240x320 and supports 16.7 million colors. This was a step up for me from my 6300 which has a 2 inch screen although the resolution is still the same. In my opinion the display on the slide is not as bright as the 6300, but it still is more than adequate. The increase in screen size is handy for web browsing.

Camera
One of the main features of this phone is a 3.2 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics. The camera also comes with a powerful double flash. There are also the usual options of white balance, effects, self timer, night mode and image sequence.

To test out the camera I decided to take a few shots with it, as well as my n95 and my 6300 so I could use them as a benchmark. The N95 is the flagship nokia phone and has a 5 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics and flash, whereas the 6300 had a normal 2 megapixel camera with no flash.

The picture comparisons are shown below. All shots were taken on the highest settings and then resized to 640x480 for this review. In my opinion the phone slots in perfectly between the 6300 and the N95. The camera is good but not as detailed as the n95, which was to be expected. Overall the camera on the slide is ideal for taking snapshots but like most phones it cannot match the quality of a standalone camera.

Slide	N95

Video
I have not had a chance to test the video function but will update this review once I've found something interesting to film

OS
The 6500 slide is one of the first nokia phones to come with S40v5. The differences between this and previous versions of the S40 operating system are minimal. The main differences that I have noticed from this and my 6300 are that the message editor now has an extra bar at the bottom. This allows you to insert pictures, videos, contacts etc directly into the message. The media player has been changed with better support for playlists, along with new skins and now when you receive a message the picture of the sender will also show if you have a picture saved for the contact. Overall it’s pretty much the same old S40 interface which we all know [and some of us love]

Reception [RF]
The reception quality for me has been ok on standard gsm mode, 3g has been a bit of a hit and miss as I tried to make a video call and I couldn’t get full 3g signal where I live. This is the first time that I’ve tried using 3g mode for video calls, I will be retesting it later on whilst out and about to see if I can get a good signal

Battery Life
Battery life seems on par with my 6300. I personally think with a full charge the phone would last for at least 2 days before it would need to be recharged. That’s with around an hour of talk time plus 20-30 texts a day, along with some music and camera use.

Pros