Nokia's Comes With Music service, which includes unlimited music downloads through the whole of your contract, has not taken off as we had expected. It has been further hampered by the news that both Apple and Android are making Spotify, the well-used internet song streaming service, available as a downloadable application.

Nokia wouldn't be blamed for cutting its losses and trying something different but, unbowed, it is fighting back with a rebranded XpressMusic range – now called X that come bundled with Comes with Music. The first of the range is the Nokia X6.

 

Capacitive touch-screen on the Nokia X6

The Nokia X6 is Nokia's first foray into the world of the capacitive touch-screen. For those of you who don't know, a capacitive touch-screen is worked by swiping your finger over it lightly, as opposed to a resistive screen which needs pressure to work. We're definitely prefer the capacitive option – most people do – so it's good to see Nokia getting behind the technology at last.

Not all capacitive touch-screens work well, though, so we're happy to report that the Nokia X6 is both tactile and responsive. It can almost be a little too responsive at times and we did fire up applications by mistake a couple of times. But once you've got used to it it gets easier, and we recommend that you scroll down the scroll bar on the right of the display. More of an issue was the slight delay we often got between selecting an app and it actually starting.

 

Design on the Nokia X6

The Nokia X6 is available in red on black or blue on white; our review model was the latter. But while the back and sides of the device are white, the fascia is, in fact, black and the blue is confined to a couple of streaks of colour on the front and a matching home screen. We would recommend that you don't pick at them – they do seem a little delicate.

The Nokia X6 is a fairly chunky device, but it has lots of buttons and ports to accommodate them. On the right-hand side of the phone sit the volume/zoom keys, a dedicated camera button and a sliding switch for locking and unlocking the phone. On the top are a 3.5mm headphones jack (always a bonus, and too often missed out by manufacturers), a miniUSB port and the power key. On the left, a slot which we had thought was for a memory card but was actually for the SIM card. In fact, there isn't a memory card slot at all, which is a missed opportunity. The phone does have an impressive 32GB memory, which will hold a huge amount of music, but with over six million tunes available from Comes With Music, you may well wish you had more space to store them. Especially if you have photos and video files on there too.

Music on the Nokia X6

Otherwise, the Nokia X6 is a great little music player. The headset port means you can plug in your own quality cans, but the handsfree kit Nokia supplies with the phone is really good. They sound great, feel comfortable and include built-in media controls for controlling your listening without taking your phone from your pocket.

Our favourite is new app 'Playlist DJ', which allows you to choose music according to mood. There are four colour bars that you adjust depending on how you're feeling. So switch the red bar to full and you'll get romantic music. If you have all the bars at the same level, you'll get a random selection of your tunes. As a new way to shuffle your music collection, we really like it.

 

Internet on the Nokia X6

The Nokia X6 offers a range of shortcuts to take you to popular sites including YouTube, Facebook, MySpace and Friendster. YouTube works well using the Wi-Fi connection, even though our connection inexplicably disappeared more than once. We did like being able to save YouTube video links to play later, though.

If you turn the phone to landscape you can enjoy a more viewing-friendly widescreen view. Unfortunately, nearly a quarter of that view is taken up with a toolbar that sits there the whole time, instead of disappearing between uses. A plus point is that you can search for keywords while in a page and flick between pages you have already visited.

 

Camera on the Nokia X6

As regular readers will know, we get quite annoyed when there's no lens cover. Frankly, it's an accident waiting to happen, especially if you have clumsy fingers. It's particularly upsetting here because the Nokia X6 boasts a Tessar lens. It also has Carl Ziess optics, a five-megapixel camera and dual LED flash. Video recording is also good, and you can shoot up to 90 minutes of material.

 

The verdict on the Nokia X6

This is Nokia's first capacitive touch-screen and it's lovely. The Nokia X6 is a great little music phone, with good bundled headphones, great sound and endless downloads with Comes with Music. We especially liked the Playlist DJ function. But for a high-end phone, it lags a bit on opening application.