Nokia threw us a couple of 3G beauties last year: the handsome 6680 and its more souped-up and swanky compadre, the N70. These Symbian-powered candybar handsets managed to expertly combine the virtues of a smartphone with 3G technologies to great effect. Both proved very popular with the punters and it’s going to take an elevated handset to top them.
However, the Finnish company does have some tasty 3G numbers in its 2006 locker, namely the business-orientated Eseries range, the next wave of the elite Nseries handsets (the N80 particularly caught our eye) not to mention the recently announced compact-looking 6233 candybar. But while we wait for these to hit our shores we’re going to have to make do with its next immediate 3G instalment, the less flamboyant, Series 40 run 6280.
Well, we say less flamboyant because at first glance, the 6280 fails to set the loins on fire. This slider appears quite sober in appearance but while it divided opinion in 3G.co.uk, the majority seem to favour its clean lines and minimalist demeanour. When you compare the 6280 to other sliders on the street, its box-like chassis seems quite formal. Handsets like the Samsung D600 employ subtle curves for seduction, something the 6280 lacks, while in terms of size, the Nokia is more elongated (no doubt to house its 3G trickery) but almost identical in other dimensions. The extra bit of length and its rigid edges do, however, give the impression that the handset is quite cumbersome when in reality it’s easily pocketable for a 3G phone.
But whatever your take on the 6280’s design, spend some time in its company and you’ll find an incredibly capable phone. Its first noticeable decent attribute is the slide action. Back in April, 3G had a sneaky glimpse of the 6280 in operation and while we saw a pre-production sample, the slider mechanism was stuttering and far from fluid. Thankfully, Nokia has remedied this fault and the 6280now opens very smoothly indeed. This fluent action matches up to some of the best in the business like the Samsung D500 and D600.
Four seriously king-sized keys adorn the front fascia. These soft and call buttons have a very generous footprint and make handling the phone so immediate. Equally, the square five-way navigation pad that dissects these keys is malleable and highly responsive. Integrated into the key quartet is a slider grip for a good purchase when propelling the façade open and shut while just above, and stealing the show, is the stunning 2.2-inch, QVGA-quality display. To realise 3G’s video potential, viewing your snaps a top-notch screen is important, and Nokia has certainly obliged with the 6280. The colours are vivid with rich detail and dazzling luminosity.
However, when it comes to its 3G performance the 6280 starts to wobble. It’s nothing too serious, and could well be attributed to the vanilla sample we half-inched from 3, but the worst culprit was video calling. A VGA lens is embedded discreetly in the top left corner at the front and we made a two-way call to a Sharp 903 handset with disappointing results. The 6280 didn’t seem to handle the reception adeptly, with the portrait images frequently freezing. It also suffered considerably from digital noise and pixelation.
On video streaming, the 6280 fared better but occasionally struggled with fast moving footage. More relaxed videos like news reports, film trailers and soap opera round-ups were presented efficiently but when it came to sports footage like Premiership goals, the images became peppered with digital blocking. You could still easily make out proceedings but it wasn’t as coherent as top 3G artists like the Sharp 903, Motorola V3x and Sony Ericsson W900i.
When testing its built-in music player we were limited to one method because of the phone being an early production model. Normally with this handset you can use the PC software to transfer your digital music files onto the phone but we relied solely on 3’s full-track download service. Even so, the 6280 played the MP4 format (which is even more compressed than MP3 files and near CD quality) songs skilfully. The music player also offers equaliser settings like Rock, Pop, Jazz and Classical while you can manually set your own sound equaliser. Lodged in the side of the phone is a small speaker that actually pumps out some fine, voluminous audio whether listening to music, video audio or conversation during a video call.
The 6280 adopts the dual front camera pose famously pioneered by Sony Ericsson, which lets you handle the phone like a standalone digital snapper. The handset’s size and weight lends itself nicely to this operation. The two-megapixel camera can be fired-up by a dedicated side key and shoots photos in a 1600x1200 resolution. In capture mode the 6280 lets you intuitively and easily delve into the settings menu to change modes. It really is one of the simplest camera phones to manage. The photos themselves are of consistent quality, showing good detail and colour, but they can be prone to overblown highlights and a lack of focus around the periphery of the composition.
For a 3G phone the 6280 has a lot going for it but in design stakes lacks a certain je ne sais quoi. Of course it will appeal to some but if it came down to a choice between this and the N70 which one would you plump for?
