Pictured above Nokia X6 at left and Nokia 5800 XpressMusic at right.

As much as I would like to write a thorough review on the Nokia X6 courtesy of Nokia Malaysia, I am afraid that I could not find time to do so, not even snapping a picture. Here’s my quick verdict on Nokia X6:

Pros:

• Good camera 5MP and dual LED flash
• 32GB internal memory
• Capacitive touchscreen
• Bundled with impressive headset

Cons:

• Slow accelerometer
• Slow processor, ARM 11 434 MHz processor
• aGPS only
• Buggy Symbian S60v5
• Insufficient memory
• Bad industrial design (thick, too many buttons, not user friendly)

The cons may also be applicable to Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. It’s either Nokia 5800 XpressMusic users were too comfortable with their mobile phone, or they have very little demand over smartphones. I personally own a Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. The hardware specs of Nokia X6 are almost similar to Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. Nokia X6 is only different with its 32GB internal memory, better camera and capacitive touchscreen. I don’t know why Nokia don’t learn from their mistakes in some design flaws in Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. Instead of improving a product, they just literally copied the phone from Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, including the flaws too!

Verdict

I actually vow not to buy anymore mobile phones from phone makers like Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Motorola and LG. One major problem in their business is that they fail to show the love in phone making. They are trend followers, they don’t have the passion to create new technology anymore, they spend too much time on marketing poor phones than building good phones (recent Samsung’s mobile phone campaign focus was about changing the phone covers. Get a life and grow up, Samsung!), they depend too much on third-party operating system…

Look at iPhone, Blackberry, they don’t build 8 mobile phones every year. Instead, they spend more time on R&D and engineering design for some specific phones they have in mind. Launching less than 3 mobile phones a year may seem little, but each phone launched is usually a great phone and head-turner, or at least they come with effort of new technology.

Here’s my advice to Nokia on mobile phone making, in engineering, business, and consumer point of view:

1. Design your own mobile phone operating system. Symbian is killing you with its software.
2. Produce less phones, say 1-2 mobile phones a year. This allows you to focus more on engineering than sales target.
3. Concentrate more on engineering design, create neck-breaking technology. Don’t follow trend, set your trend. Capacitive touchscreen and haptic feedback maybe good, but what are the other options? Say gel-based touchscreen, or something more advance?
4. Improve your software flow charts. There are too many dead-ends in your and Symbian software.
5. Improve your industrial design. Stop creating dinosaurs.
6. Improve user interface. Symbian is to blame. See point 1.
7. Have a more effective marketing plan. I’d seen you marketing  two phones with exact similar features, but just different form factors. A professional form factor costs few hundred bucks more than another amateur form factor, but both offering same specs and features. Stop fooling your consumers, they are more calculative than you are.
8. Hire different level of phone testers and gather more feedbacks before even releasing design for production. This includes people with and without knowledge about mobile phones.

That’s all I can think of now. Forgive me for being harsh. I will still use the new Nokia X6, after all, it has 32GB memory and a cool headset for my passion in music.

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