Nokia 6120 Classic

(Note 1: The Nokia 6120 Classic has the "Classic" tagged on the end to avoid confusion with the Nokia 6120, a much older phone.)

(Note 2: The Nokia 6121 Classic is the same as the 6120 Classic, but they have slightly different 3G frequencies. To save space, we'll just refer to the 6120 Classic in this review, though all of the content in the review applies to both models.)

We at AAS don't often mention our site statistics, but one unusual moment last week was when the 6120 Classic unboxing article drew a surprisingly large number of visitors, in one day managing to equal the total that most articles get in a week. This took us by surprise somewhat, as the 6120 Classic hasn't had any hype, and doesn't, on paper, appear to be any more special than other S60 models released recently.

Indeed, when this reviewer first heard about the phone it seemed like just another S60 model, without anything as novel as a built-in GPS or a twistable keypad. What would make the 6120 Classic stand out from the crowd?

Well, all it really took was seeing the actual phone in real life: it's probably the most compact and light smartphone in the world right now, just 66 cubic centimetres and 89 grams / 3.1 ounces. The photos don't do it justice, because they don't get across the sense of size that you get from holding the phone itself. If you didn't know it was a smartphone, you would be absolutely sure this was a normal "dumb" phone. On top of that, the launch price is also very distinctive, just 250 euros plus taxes, the lowest S60 launch price so far. It's about the same launch price and size as the Nokia 6300, a Series 40 non-smart phone.

The Hardware Bit

Technically speaking, the 6120 Classic is a Symbian S60 3rd Edition FP1 smartphone. It has Quadband GSM (850/900/1800/1900) and Dualband 3G UMTS/WCDMA (850/2100) as well as HSDPA compatibility. The 6121 Classic has different 3G frequencies, UMTS/WCDMA (900/2100), but is otherwise completely identical to the 6120 Classic.

HSDPA is a rather snazzy new standard for phone networks which lets you download internet data at 3 to 14 megabits per second, far faster than traditional 3G, and faster than many home broadband connections. For this reason, HSDPA is often called 3.5G.

The 6120 Classic has a 16 million colour QVGA (240 x 320) screen. It has a 2 megapixel main camera and flash, which can also capture video at 320x240, and there's a secondary camera on the front for videophone calls. On the bottom of the phone there's the charging jack, a USB port to connect the phone to a PC, and a 2.5mm stereo audio jack for headsets (you can use 3.5mm headphones if you buy an adaptor). The 6120 Classic is Bluetooth 2.0 compatible, and supports Bluetooth stereo wireless headphones through the A2DP and AVRCP standards. On the right side of the phone there's some external volume controls and a dedicated camera button. The left side of the phone has a mono external speaker, and a hotswap microSD memory card slot. There's a power button on the top of the phone.

The keypad has the usual alphanumeric buttons, a direction pad, a Symbian S60 swirly menu key and a C delete key. The old S60 pencil/edit key has been merged with the # key, and this works fine, you really don't miss the separate key at all. Holding down # from the standby screen activates the Silent profile, holding it down again activates the General profile. Using the keypad was generally fine, although people with very large fingers may have trouble with the small buttons. One slightly annoying thing was the position of the blue soft keys, it takes time to get used to them not being in the top right and top left corners.

The casing is very shiny on the front and back, with matt plastic and steel edges. It looks excellent, but the black version does tend to be a bit of a fingerprint magnet. 

The 6120 Classic's battery officially provides a standby time of 9 days in GSM and 3G mode. It has 3.1 hours talk time in GSM mode, and 2.4 hours in 3G mode. How long the battery lasts in real life depends on what you use it for and how long you use it, it will vary tremendously from person to person. This reviewer charged the phone every couple of days.

Telephony

The 6120 Classic worked fine as a phone, it didn't drop any calls and the sound quality was good. The Quadband GSM and Dualband 3G means you can use the phone on practically any GSM or 3G (UMTS/WCDMA) phone network in the world, and if the 6120's 3G frequencies don't quite suit you, there's the 6121 Classic variant instead.

As you'd expect, there's all the usual extras such as speakerphone mode, wireless Bluetooth headset support, voice commands etc. The 6120 also supports Push-To-Talk.

The messaging app lets you send messages by SMS text, MMS multimedia, email (including POP3 and IMAP4) or voice message. Webmail can be accessed through the built-in S60 browser.
Multimedia

The 6120 Classic has similar multimedia features to other S60 3rd Edition FP1 models. It has a hotswap microSD memory card slot which can use cards up to 2 gigabytes in capacity (about 500 to 1000 music tracks). As stated above, the 6120 Classic is A2DP and AVRCP compatible, so you can use Bluetooth stereo headphones with their own music controls. If you prefer wired headphones, the 2.5mm headphone socket is stereo, and you can also use 3.5mm headphones through an adaptor (third party adaptors are small and very cheap, about 5 to 10 euros from any major electronics shop). There's an external mono speaker which is very clear and loud, but obviously a single speaker can't do stereo.

The 6120 Classic has a music player compatible with an array of formats (including AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, MP3, and WMA), and which can filter tracks by artist, album, playlist, genre or composer. There are customisable equaliser profiles, with five built-in presets. There are also various special effects including Bass Boost, Reverb and Stereo Widening. Playback can be sequential or random, and you can loop playback as well. The sound quality is good, but as with other S60 phones there's a one second gap between tracks and a one second delay between pressing a button and the music player responding.

You can use ringtones from an even wider array of audio standards: AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, MP3, MP4, M4A, WMA, Mobile XMF, SP-MIDI, AMR (NB-AMR), MIDI Tones (polyphonic 64 channel), RealAudio 7,8,10, True tones (WB-AMR), WAV.

MP4 files can also be used as video ringtones, and can be selected from the ringtones menu. Videos can be watched horizontally in full-screen mode, or vertically with bars at the top and bottom.

There's a built-in FM radio, which lets you download all your local presets from an online database. The radio can be listened to through wired headphones or the built-in speaker, but whichever you use the headphones have to be plugged in to act as the FM aerial.
You can also listen to internet radio on the 6120 Classic, through the Streaming Links option on the Gallery application. To listen to a station you need its RTSP address, which can usually be found by searching Google, or alternatively some station websites such as those of BBC stations have a "Listen in standalone player" link which contains their RTSP address. Clicking on a standalone player link in the 6120 Classic's web browser automatically starts the phone's streaming links player, and the stream's RTSP address can be saved to the Gallery so you can listen to it directly without having to use the web browser. If you haven't tried Streaming Links on an S60 3rd FP1 device, this reviewer strongly recommends it. (One slight complication, the phone may say you don't have a Default Access Point for streaming. This can be solved by going to the main menu screen, then Settings > Phone Settings > Applications > RealPlayer > Streaming > Network > Default Access Point - then just choose your normal internet access point.)

The 6120 Classic has a point-and-shoot 2 megapixel camera with flash, and the camera app contains the usual S60 options (flash on/off/auto, night mode, sequence mode, timer mode, panorama mode, white balance, colour tone, quality settings). There's a dedicated camera button on the right side of the phone which activates the application, and takes pictures if the app is already running. Pictures are taken while holding the phone horizontally, just like a normal camera.

3G vs 3.5G (HSDPA)

The 6120 Classic's HSDPA compatibility shows up when you use the internet in a HSDPA-compatible 3G network. If you start to download data from the internet (for example by starting up the web browser), the 3G network icon turns into a 3.5G icon, which means download speeds can be up to 14 megabits per second. HSDPA only speeds up the downloading of pages, and doesn't affect how quickly the phone's processor renders pages once they've been downloaded, so a complex page can still take about 10 seconds to fully appear. However, there's no processing required on downloads of raw data such as application or video files, so the difference between 3G and 3.5G is much more noticeable when using things like the Download! service.

You can make and receive phone calls while using a 3.5G connection, but the phone automatically switches to 3G for the duration of the call.

This reviewer raced the 6120 Classic with the 6290. They both have the same browser (S60), the same platform (S60 3rd Edition FP1), the same speed processor (369mhz), and the same amount of free RAM (20mb), but the 6120 Classic has 3.5G while the 6290 only has 3G. Some pages loaded just as quickly on both phones, but on some sites (for example All About Symbian) the 6120 Classic was about twice as fast as the 6290. However, as with all internet speed tests, performance will vary greatly depending on which network you use and how much congestion there is on the network when you use it.