The Nokia X6 is a music phone first and foremost, but that's not the only media it handles. On board is a five megapixel camera, seemingly the new standard on Nok's flagship phones. But can the snaps it takes match the tunes it slings for quality? Read on and find out in our Nokia X6 camera review.
As you'd expect, the camera on the Nokia X6 is built into the back of the handset so that when held in landscape mode, it's facing out on the left and the shutter button on the side of the phone is now on the top right, like a regular compact camera. There's no shutter, as on the Nokia N97 and N900, but you'll be wary of putting anything sharp in your pocket anyway with the X6's lovely display, so we're not too fussed.
On a software front, the layout is fairly easy to get to grips with. Digital zoom is on the left hand side on the screen, while options are in a column on the right. The camera settings button on the right pops up all the options like timer, video, white balance and ISO (Only three options, low, medium and high are available), while pressing scene mode lets you choose between close-up, portrait, landscape, sports, night, and night portrait. Pictures are processed fairly quickly and once they've been chomped, an option to upload springs up, letting you share your snaps to Ovi or Flickr.
Taking the shot can however be a bit tricky. The physical shutter button pushes neatly down halfway to focus, but it's a tough to give it a final shove to shoot, and can sometimes lead to shaky photos as the Nokia X6 wobbles in your hands. A much better option is to tap the screen to trigger the shutter, and since the Nokia X6's capacitive display is so responsive to even sausage finger prods, you won't miss a moment this way.
Check out our Nokia X6 full review
The image quality from the Nokia X6's camera however is a bit disappointing. It's not too bad in lowlight situations where you can use the flash, as objects come out with the right tone of white rather than the green tinge we saw on the N900. But even in broad daylight you can see some unexpected noise on the coffee mug we snapped, to go with the mottled green and red dots camping out in the background. The lip of the mug in focus is well defined though, which is something.
Unfortunately, the Nokia X6's performance was also surprisingly bad when it came to middle distance shots outdoors. These garden snaps, on both automatic and scenic modes, aren't noisy, they're just as far way from sharp as possible.
As a camera phone, the Nokia X6 is just about passable. Most shots in bright daylight will come out fine, but that's to be expected of ansy phone camera these days. It certainly won't match the Nokia N86 for optics, but then it's not meant to. It's a music playing phone, with the snapper as a handy side feature if you need it, and if you're looking for a phone with these priorities in mind, you still can't go wrong with the Nokia X6.
Check out our Nokia X6 Camera Review image gallery:
