Symbian smartphone with great GPS features

Nov 22, 2007 13:50 GMT  ·  By

Nokia 6110 Navigator was released right at the peak of the period when the leading handset producer considered GPS to be the feature with the highest potential for mixing with handsets. The company's interest faded in time, making it a good guess to say that 6110 Navigator itself was the one to make Nokia see GPS packed in many of its future devices. The phone was unveiled in February, this year, and hit the market at the beginning of the summer with a price tag of about USD 580, depending on the market and stores.

The producer found this handset to be worthy of a major publicity stunt that asked for some great resources from Nokia. The company got two celebrities, Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman to start a journey from Scotland to Africa, called the "Long Way Down". The two men drove on their motorcycles to Cape Town in an experience where they relied only on the Nokia 6110 Navigator for directions. Moreover, they posted stories and pictures shot with the phone's camera on blogs using only this device and nothing more. BBC went along with the two celebrities on their journey and created a six part TV series on account of their road trip experiences. All this attention could have come only for a top device, which introduces the Nokia 6110 Navigator as being the top of the producer's offer.

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Design

Measuring exactly 101 x 49 x 20 mm, Nokia 6110 Navigator is nowhere near what a tiny mobile phone should look and feel like. Surprisingly, it's not bulky and feels pretty comfortable in the user's hand. Nokia did a great job with this phone's design. Although it follows the pattern of older models, it still looks fresh, with a slight accent towards a modern and youthful look instead of an elegant, but more sober one. It highly resembles Nokia E65, although it traded the spongy, but smooth texture on the case with a glossier one that is prone to scratches and smudges.

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The phone looks and feels as if targeted towards a young audience that has little interest in classic elegance. It comes in a combination of metal-looking plastic and jet-black, as well as a less appealing white that is absent from Nokia's promoting pictures, as if the producer were not all that proud of it.

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There are several appealing elements in the phone's design, enough to make it special and stand out from many others. The slide mechanism feels smooth and natural, with no side wiggling or any discomfort whatsoever. Another interesting feature is the GPS dedicated button, right below the main navigation pad.

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When slid open, the handset reveals some tiny buttons made of the same plastic as the phone's entire case. They prove to be pretty uncomfortable when writing long text messages, as they can hardly be felt when pressed.

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Turning Nokia 6110 Navigator on the other side, some huge speakers can be guessed from behind the punctured case. There is also a protection cover for the camera, which looks both practical and stylish. It's rather strange to see that Nokia has managed to make a fresh looking design by making the least compromises with its classic slider form pattern.

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Display and Camera

The 2.2-inch screen certainly feels larger than it really is. The size, combined with a 240 x 320 pixel resolution and support for more than 16 million colors, proves to be the perfect combination for perfect color display, with absolutely no granulation. This makes the maps in GPS mode look great, almost like real pictures and turn navigation into something really enjoyable. The same goes for internet browsing, as pages look great on the display, very much close to a desktop's clarity. Still, the small screen might be seen as a major drawback when comparing the device with dedicated GPS devices, which usually have a large display of about 3.5 inches.

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Nokia 6110 Navigator is not a camera phone, which makes the moody capture quality feel pretty understandable. The 2-megapixel camera will take great quality shots in some circumstances, but terribly disappoint in others. There is also a secondary, VGA one, meant for use only when placing video calls. One great feature about this handset is the lens cover that naturally slides open and automatically turns on the main camera.

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There is no auto-focus and the camera feels pretty average, overall. The maximum resolution is that of 1600 x 1200 pixels for pictures and 352 x 288 pixels in video mode.

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There are several settings to be made when taking a capture with this phone, such as night mode, setting the White color balance or even going the artistic way, by selecting Sepia, Black&White, or Negative modes.

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With or without these flicks, the handset's camera still proves to be right at the average line, ranging between a "not bad" and a "not great" impression.

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Menu and Software

Nokia 6110 Navigator runs the latest Symbian 9.2 version OS and includes Feature Pack 1. The 3.1 interface proves to be very stable on the 6110 model and is the most user-friendly. The Feature Pack 1 provides 3D graphics hardware support, over-the-air (OTA) firmware support, Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR support, Flash Lite 2.0, as well as a better organization of the file cache. I have noticed the same changes that have been made in Nokia's 6290 model and regards the location of different applications and functions. Don't expect to find Office category anymore, because all related stuff (Calculator, Converter, Quickoffice, Clock, PDF reader) has been moved to Applications/Utilities area. Furthermore, File manager has also been moved in Settings/Data manager area instead of the missing Office category.

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One of the best things that we should've talked about would've been the included maps that are coming with the Route 66. Route 66 is the application that comes with the integrated GPS and is meant to be used for directions and related stuff. I was unpleasantly surprised by the fact that Nokia didn't include any kind of map with the application. If you want to travel and use the GPS feature of the device, you should purchase the maps you need. Seriously now, but this simply transforms what should've been a positive feature into a bad one.

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Hopefully, it ends here and you can enjoy other good features offered by the slider, like the integrated web browser. This time Nokia exceeded any expectations and added cool features to the Internet browser that makes it a real joy when surfing. First of all you'll be able to fit any page on the screen, no matter how big it is. Don't be afraid that you won't see anything, because you'll be able to zoom in any part of the page. The pages' loading time is very short and everything works very smoothly. The browser features Java script, Flash support or Landscape mode, so the result is one of the best browsers that you can find in a mobile phone these days.

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Communication

Top-notch phones are usually stuffed with only the best technologies that you can find and in large numbers. Well, Nokia 6110 Navigator is "top-notch" as it features HDPA 3.6 Mbps, EDGE and GPRS, both class 32, miniUSB 2.0 and Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR, not to mention that it also includes a GPS receiver. Unfortunately, we were unable to test the HSDPA connectivity as the signal was too low, but the EDGE data transfer speeds were rather mediocre reaching no more than 95 Kbit/s download and 36 Kbit/s upload. On the other hand, Bluetooth transfer speeds were out of the charts (124 KB/s). Messaging capabilities are almost unlimited: SMS, MMS, EMS and Email. The phone is fully compatible with POP3 and IMAP protocols.

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Nokia decided to change the GPS receiver that was used with N95 model and that caused many problems. This time a better GPS receiver has been embedded, which seems to work much better, supposedly you try to calibrate it outdoors. Depending on the time of the latest communication with the satellites and the latest location, the localization could take even 5 minutes. You should know that the GPS chipset supports regular GPS, as well as a new technology known as A-GPS. The latter comes from Assisted GPS and it is supposed to shorten the time required to lock into satellites by downloading small files from the Internet that contain location information. Bear in mind that this will cost you money if you want it to work as you must have an Internet-accessible GPRS/EDGE/HSDPA protocol. The Navigator software has pre-defined Nokia servers to download its A-GPS information from.

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The application used for localization, Route 66 is a third party application built in the firmware's software and has been a good choice for Nokia, which usually included only its own applications. Anyway, if you're not happy with it you can always install Nokia Maps, which also works very well with the device.

The quad-band phone has worldwide coverage (GSM900 / GSM1800 / GSM1900 / GSM850 / HSDPA network compatible), but signal reception on the UMTS band is a little bit lower than expected. In-call sound is very clear and pretty loud, so don't expect any problems.

Processor and Memory

It was expected that Nokia would add a powerful processor onto this phone, or else its functionality would've been lowered considerably. That's why Nokia 6110 Navigator can pride itself with an ARM11 family CPU running at speeds up to 378 MHz. The phone is fast and after 1 week of testing it still didn't freeze or reset.

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There's only 40 MB internal memory available for the user, but that could be easily expanded through the microSD slot card up to 2 GB. Furthermore, users will be happy to find a 512 MB microSD card in the sales package. The memory card slot is hot-swappable, so you won't need to pull out the battery or power off the phone if you want to insert any memory card.

Multimedia

Despite the fact that Nokia 6110 Navigator is mostly a navigation tool, the handset features lots of multimedia goodies. Even if it doesn't blow your ears away, you will still have a good time using the phone for listening to the music every now and then. The standard music player can easily recognize and play MP3, AAC, eAAC, AAC+ format files. There's also a basic Equalizer with 4 predefined modes, but you can choose to make your own style.

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Nokia HS-42 stereo headset won't make a good impression to a music lover, so you'd better change these if you're looking for more quality. The 2 stereo external speakers sound pretty well when listening to a moderate volume level. That will radically change the moment you maximize the volume and you'll experience serious distortions. I don't recommend using the speakers with full volume. The slider also includes an FM radio which can memorize up to 50 base stations.

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While Nokia 6110 Navigator doesn't produce the best vibes, at least you get some unexpected features from a business target phone.

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Battery

Nokia 6110 Navigator features a 900 mAh Li-Polymer battery, but the official numbers for this battery are pretty low: up to 265 hours standby and up to 3 hours and 3 minutes talk time. I haven't been able to keep the phone in standby mode more than 3 days, while talking or using the GPS has required charges once at 2 days. This might be a good battery, but the fact that this phone features HSDPA and GPS would've required a much better one.

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Impressions

When it comes to GPS, Nokia 6110 Navigator certainly looks like it knows what it's doing. What Nokia managed to successfully do here is to build a device with a great deal of personality. Seeing the 6110 Navigator go "The Long Way Down" with two celebrities and placing a lot of stress on the GPS feature, this phone has built a history of its own through an appropriate promotion strategy. Nothing more to say only that it speaks for itself the moment you are able to feel it in your hand.

The Good

It looks fresh, has a smooth, perfect slider and also packs HSDPA and GPS to open the door for a great number of possibilities to the user. Internet browsing feels natural and very close to what PCs have to offer, especially due to the fast data transfer speeds.

The Bad

This is the right place for photo quality, as captures shot with Nokia 6110 Navigator are nothing more than ordinary and go down to terribly poor lighting conditions. Another drawback can be seen in the shiny plastic used in the handset's case, which gets filled with fingerprints almost instantly. The slider form factor also makes it impossible to avoid covering the case with smudges and then having to clean it over and over again. The lack of Wi-Fi can also be listed as a drawback, but I wonder how fast the battery would've been drained with all these technologies that it has been packed with.

Sales package Contents

Nokia 6110 Navigator handset Nokia BP-5M lithium-polymer battery Nokia AC-4 travel charger Nokia HS-42 stereo headset 512MB microSD memory card DKE-2 USB data-cable CD-rom with Nokia PC Suite software DVD-rom with Route 66 navigation software/maps User guide and other written material

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Photo: Tudor Raiciu for Softpedia.com