Nokia's X6 is one of just a handful of handsets from the company to have a touchscreen, and it is the first to have a capacitive touchscreen. This means it is more responsive than its resistive predecessors, but that's not going to be enough to get it to the top of the handset sales lists.

If you are a big fan of multitouch then it is worth noting that you won't find it here, and to counterbalance the use of capacitive technology, the X6 runs S50 5th Edition, a slightly souped up, touch-friendly version of the operating system that runs in other high-end Nokia smartphones, but not an OS actually designed for touch from the bottom up.

You are as likely to be drawn to the X6 by the full year of all-you-can-eat Comes With Music as the touchscreen capability of the phone, to be frank. Its built-in memory is just waiting for you to fill it with tracks. But once that is full you'll have to start deleting, because there is no flash memory card slot for adding further storage.

For a music-centric phone like this we are disappointed that Nokia provides a one-piece headset. The connector is 3.5mm, so you could use your own favourite earphones, but you'll lose the hands-free calling option which on two-piece headsets sits behind a 3.5mm connector.

Physically this is a small and neat handset. It measures 111 x 51 x 13.8mm and weighs just 122g. The tall, thin format means its screen is a little compromised in comparison to, say, the wider iPhone. The screen measures 3.2 inches across diagonal corners and delivers 640 x 360 pixels. We noticed the somewhat letterbox dimensions most when Web browsing. In this mode the screen flips to wide format and a menu bar occupies around a fifth of the screen space, squeezing Web pages into a relatively small area. We couldn't shut the menu bar off, which was a real irritation.

The thinness of the screen also means that in tall mode there is only room for a phone style numeric tappable keypad. This isn't really an issue. Flip the phone in your hand and in wide mode there is a full QWERTY keypad that is nicely responsive to finger taps.

Nokia has limited the number of side buttons on this handset. The main power button sits on the top, there is a volume rocker, lock button and camera button on the right-hand side, and that is it. Call, End and menu buttons sit on the front beneath the screen.

The 5-megapixel camera benefits from a dual-LED light and the Carl Zeiss optics ensure that image quality is relatively good. There is a front camera for two-way video calling, something that you don't always find on 3G handsets. Wi-Fi is present, there is an FM tuner and A-GPS is here too.

Verdict
If you must have Comes With Music then the X6 year-long bundle may appeal, but if that's not a ‘must have' then, despite the plentiful feature set, we can't help feeling that the X6 is expensive for what you get.

Company: Nokia

Contact: 0800 331 6021

Tags: nokia iphone touchscreen operating system qwerty handset meego windows phone 7