12 Nov 09 Nokia 6260 Slide Mobile Phone Review - The No-Nonsense Mid-Range With Full Features

Hot on the heels of the Nokia 6600 comes the Nokia 6260 Slider. This is a very up-market little phone with similar features to the Nokia N95.

The Nokia look is very evident - typical black, trimmed with silver and blue highlighted number pad - a no-nonsense easy to use handset.

The 6260 Slide will work on both 2G and 3G networks - on the standard four GSM 850/ 900 / 1800 / 1900 and on HSDPA 900 / 1900 and 2100.

Released on April 2009, this compact handset weighs in at a mere 114g, and measures a shade under 100 x 47 x 16mm. With a TFT 16M colour display and downloadable themes, it is sure to please the pickiest when it comes to front screen appearance. The screen is bright enough to be read in daylight.

The phonebook will store up to 2000 contacts, including photocall, and will record up to 30 dialled, 30 received and 30 missed calls, thanks to it's adequate 200MB internal memory. Additional memory can be slotted in - up to 8GB in total, by using the MicroSD (TransFlash) card slot.

Data handling takes place by means of class 10 GPRS (32-48 KBPS) and Edge at 236.8 kbps, and the phone supports HSCSD. On 3G HSDPA, it works at 10.2 Mbps, and HSUPA at 2 Mbps. WLAN is by means of WiFi 802.11 b/g. It also has Bluetooth and USB, although not an infra-red port.

Nokia's open source browser is installed in the phone - the Series 40 6th Edition - giving full look and feel web browsing. Unlike the Apple 3GS, the Nokia 6260 Slide comes complete with Flash Lite 3.0, allowing you to be deluged by mobile ads and other flash web content. Location based applications can also be developed, thanks to the Java-based location application programming interface.

The Nokia 6260 Slide has as its primary camera a 5 megapixel unit, photos are a max of 2592 x 1944 pixels, and with Carl Zeiss optics, autofocus, and LED flash, quality pictures are (almost) assured. The video works as VGA at 15fps and there is a secondary VGA videocall camera.

Other features including SMS, MMS and Email messaging services, a WAP 2.0/xHTML and HTML browser, FM Radio with RDS and (MIDP 2.0) Java Games with the facility to download more.

The Nokia 6260 Slide supports GPS alongside Nokia Maps, possibly even rendering your TomTom obsolete, and ensuring you will be able to get wherever you are going.

For the music lover - there is MP3, M4A, AAC, eAAC and the handset has WMA player installed.

Voice command has arrived, which includes voice dial - a most useful feature for drivers who like to talk at the same time and still be legal.

For the texting fan - this phone also has T9. Irritating when you first encounter it, T9 is a boon for speeding up texting once you know how the phone thinks and are conversant with the in house dictionary or have educated it to your level.

Nokia always manages to produce a phone for reasonable cost with fine features which also lasts well on the battery supplied. This handset is no different. The Nokia 6260 Slide has a standard 950mAp (BL-5F) Li-Ion battery.

Talk time on 2G is up to 6 hours, on 3G this comes down to 3 hours. Standby time is fairly impressive at 400h on 2G and 288 when using 3G. Music play back time is max 20 hours - more than enough for most people.

We felt that more themes and downloadable programmes could have been made available for use with this phone, but Nokia provides the browser as open source - perhaps 3rd party development of additional apps and themes will not take long.

We did like the speed of the software used by this handset, it is a very practical and economically priced phone with all the features we felt we required. The graphics are superb, as is the camera.