Nokia 6120 - A Slim Line, 3.5G Phone To Wow The Crowd With

 
Some phones are meant to be used – the E90 “microlaptop” is one of those. Some are meant to be seen – the Motorola RAZR or Nokia Prism are examples of these. It’s a very rate blend of phone that manages to get a full feature set into a stylish package. The Nokia 6120 tries hard to do this, and mostly succeeds. Best of all, it’s something that’s cheap enough that you can give it to your teenager and not cringe every time they throw their knapsack on the floor. (Be sure to get an unlimited data plan for them first, though!)

The Nokia 6120 is a small, trim, and lightweight phone, and it’s fully aware of the fact that mobile phones are fashion accessories. It’s a slim candy-bar format phone, with a bright screen, and a well laid out keypad, that’s clearly meant for use with SMS text messaging. Very nice to see is that the connector at the bottom is the bog standard mini-USB port for connecting the phone to your PC for synchronization and recharging. It’s got full MP3 and AAC capabilities and comes with a 2.1 megapixel camera built in. We found the camera to be the least impressive part of the package, mostly due to limitations on the optics, though the ability to stitch photos together in panorama mode somewhat makes up for that. The 2.5 mm headphone jack is the major hardware gripe on an otherwise excellent design.

 
 
The hallmark of the 6120 is the thought put into its ease of use. Nothing here is groundbreaking or earth - shattering, but with the exception of the headphone jack, everything is well designed and placed – we particularly like the placement of the loudspeaker on the side of the phone rather than the back.

It uses the Symbian platform, and comes with applications that will let you read Word documents and the PDF reader is slick; using the phone as a data platform is comfortable; it rests easily in the palm and the screen is bright enough and high enough resolution to let you surf the web comfortably. Because of its HSPDA connectivity, data connections are quite speedy. For data storage, there’s a mcroSD slot in the bottom of the phone that will let you plug in a 2 gigabyte chip and store a lot of songs, photos and other applications. An added benefit, it also supports Bluetooth connectivity, including Bluetooth stereo headphones.

Our take is that this might be the first 3.5G/3G phone to be a “conventional” phone, as opposed to a toy for tech lovers. It doesn’t pack the full range of 3G features into the phone that a full on smartphone does, but it does pack the high features most phone users will want, without being cumbersomely large, or too complex for mere mortals to use.

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