The Nokia 6210 Navigator is the successor of the 6110 and is, like the name already hits, a device optimized for navigation. So, is it just a navigation tool for travelers or can it offer more? This review will answer this questions.

Main advantage:

• Great navigation experience
• Form factor, size and weight
• Comes with 6 months of free voice navigation

Main disadvantage:

• Built quality

Sales package:

The orange box looks almost like every other box. Looking into it you’ll find following content:

• 6210 Navigator (RM-369)
• Battery with 950mAh (BL-5F)
• 1GB microSD card
• microUSB-cable
• Charger (AC-8E)
• CD
• Manual

Here the unboxing video:

There aren’t neither big amount of accessories nor to little. All in all it’s all you need for the start. The 1GB card should be enough for some songs and maps. The headset for the 2.5mm audio jack actually surprised me since other 2.5mm headsets from Nokia look rather odd and boring. The soundqualty however is rather bad. However, using an adapter and a other headset you can improve the soundquality a lot.

Built quality:

Taking a look at the Nokia 6210 you will notice that it is built just out of plastic. No doubt, I have seen many better built devices. However, holding it in the hand it feels a little bit cheap but nevertheless really solid. Despite its glossy front and keys it doesn’t attract fingerprints at all. The transition between the display and the keypad is rather big and I’ve already found some dust between the gab. More over, the frame of the lower part of the slider is a little bit lose and you can move it several mm. The 6210 Navigator is obviously a slider device. Opening and closing it with one hand is really easy. Unfortunately, the slider has also its downsides. So you can press down the slider several mm (whether in closed or in opened mode). The batterycover is really solid and there is no way to move it. However, if you would like to open it, it will take you some time and some efforts to open it.

Size:
With 103 x 49 x 14.9 mm the Navigator is pretty thin and not as big as other GPS devices. During my trialing period I also had the N81 8GB which is compared to the 6210 ( 117g) heavy as a brick. Overall the 6210 feels good in the hand, is handy and light.

Keys:

Under the bright 2.4″ display you can find following 12 keys:

1. Left soft key
2. Right soft key
3. Red-end key
4. Green-answer key
5. Home/Menu key
6. Up on the d-pad
7. Down on the d-pad
8. Left on the d-pad
9. Right on the d-pad
10. OK, the middle of the d-pad
11. Clear key
12. Dedicated navigation key

The navi-key, clear key, menu-key and the d-pad stand a little bit out. Due to this the keys are well separated and good to use. The keys have a clear pressure point and give good feedback. Opening the slider you can see rather big numeric keypad. The keys are well separated and offer for every thumb a good usage.

On the right hand side you find the volume keys and the dedicated camera key. Although the volume/ zoom keys are smaller than the other keys it is still good to use and has a clear pressure point. If you’re using the camera key the first time you will have some troubles. So I wanted several friends to take pictures with the 6210 Navigator and most of them had troubles to hit the camerakey in the right way. However, after some time you can take pictures without problems. Pressing the camera key you can open the camera application, focus and capture a video or picture.

Multimedia:

The 6210 has 120Megabyte internal memory and comes along with an 1GB microSD card which is enough for some musictracks, pictures, videos and other data. Of course you can also use other microSD or even microSDHC cards if you need more memory. On the front you see a 2.4” QVGA (240×320 pixels) TFT display. This really bright screen displays 16 million colours and is good readable also against sunlight.

Camera:

On the back you can see the 3.2 megapixel camera with autofocus along with the little LED flash for bad light conditions. However, since the 6210 is a normal mid-tier device and no N-Series device it doesn’t offer as much imaging features as for example the N96. Nevertheless, the 6210 Navigator is a good mid-tier camera device.

The camera application is rather simple but still offers some settings in its tool box or in the options. So you can adjust the white balance or colour tone, activate night mode and the flash, set a self-timer or sequence mode. Here some image samples:

(click to enlarge)

The best function, at least in my point of view, is the panorama function which allows to take even 360 degrees pictures or to ”glue” 2,3 or more pictures together. It works really easy but also good. Here some samples, which didn’t become well:

(click to enlarge)

Of course, the 6210 Navigator can record videos as well. The resolution is full VGA ( 640 x 480) and 15 frames per seconds which looks really good on the 2.4” display and also on the PC. So the quality is suitable for YouTube or Ovi.

Music:

The 6210 Navigator comes with a normal music player where you can find 6 folders like ‘All songs’ or ‘Albums’. Unfortunately, the 6210 has only a 2.5mm jack, thus you can’t use your favorite headphones. However, using an adapter you can fix this problem. The music quality with the provided headset isn’t that good but if you use other headsets e.g. a Sennheiser headset (with the adapter of course) , the music quality is much better. Just like on your Computer you can create easily own playlists of all your favorite music on your 6210.

The usage of the music-player is really easy. All you need is the d-pad and the volume keys to adjust the volume. To improve the music quality, you have an equaliser with 6 modes – Default, Bass booster, Classical, Jazz, Pop and Rock. You can also playback the music through the mono loudspeaker sitting on the back of the 6210. This one isn’t the loudest but loud and good enough for the living room, bath, class room or car. The music player supports following audiofiles: AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, MP3, MP4, M4A, AMR-NB, AMR-WB, Mobile XMF, SP-MIDI, MIDI Tones (poly 64), RealAudio 7,8,10, True tones, WAV.

Connectivity:

In terms of connectivity the 6210 Navigator offers almost everything. From Bluetooth, GPRS, HSDPA, GPS, A-GPS and EDGE it offer mainly everything. Some may miss WiFi for faster internet access and the infrared port. As the name already hints the 6210 Navigator is mainly all about bringing you from A to B. Besides build in GPS it also offers A-GPS for even faster connection.  In the test it took just some seconds.The GPS works either when the slider is opened or when it is closed. Maps 2.0 is already pre-installed and comes with 6 months of free voice navigation (at least my version). The navigation software works quite well and exactly. You can set a route by car or by feed with great animation and information.

Usage:

The 6210 Navigator runs on S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2 which offers a lot improvements and addition in terms of usability and personalisation. Thus this is the perfect platform for a device like the 6210. As a result of various polls S60 totally improved the Task-manager. Either you open it via the traditional way (long press on the menu-key) or you go to the menu, click opinions and choose ”Show open apps”. More over, it’s more obvious now that you can open application by clicking on the central soft key. I have to confess, that I can’t judge this category that good because I’m a S60 user for some years. However, for a new user it’s pretty tricky to find into the menu. I’ve seen a lot user pressing the navigation key to get access to the menu which is the wrong way. After pressing the home key you can find plenty of icons and some folders. The icons already say what they stand for and furthermore you can read the application’s name. If you don’t like the menu structure you can create new folders, delete some, move the application as you like or change the menu view from Grid, Horseshoe, V-shaped or to List. Furthermore, you can choose between several standard themes and hundreds more which are in the World Wide Web. For those with bad eyes you can also change the front size. The 6210 has a ARM 11 369 MHz CPU and about 18MB RAM after a fresh boot available for the user. Unfortunately, the 6210 doesn’t bring all the advantages S60 3rd Edition FP 2 actually could offer. So you’ll miss the really cool looking transitions which you may know from other Feature Pack 2 devices. For new S60 user you can find a application helping you finding you through the menu and its features. This is indeed a great feature.

Business and Organizer:

Its obvious that the 6210 isn’t a devices targeted to the business market. Nevertheless, it still offers some useful business and PIM applications. In a folder called ”Office” you can find following content:

• Calendar
• Quickoffice
• Wlss. keybd.
• Zip
• Active notes
• Clock
• Converter
• Calculator
• Notes
• Adope PDF
• Dictionary

Quickoffice enables Word, Exel and Powerpoint files. Unfortunately, you can’t create files or edit them without upgrading your version. So you have to upgrade your version or search for an alternative.To don’t miss any meeting you have the calendar entries on the Stand-By-Screen. You can create a to-do list, a memo and also some more. The calendar, the contacts and your bookmarks you can sync with the PC using the PC Suite. In the test it worked also pretty well.

Verdict:

The 6210 Navigator puts a full navigation system and a full S60 device in a handy but unfortunately not that good hood. From a music player, a great web browser, GPS, a 3.2 megapixel camera it offers almost everything you need.