It’s a great phone, firstly. The sound is extremely good, both what you hear and what your caller hears. The Contacts feature is great. It can hold 500 names and in each case you can include a lot of info, various phone numbers, fax, e-mail, postal address… even a note. Quite standard for Series 40 Nokias to some extent. It’s friendly to it’s master and easy to use.

The FM radio is great. People seem divided on this newish issue of FM radios in mobiles. Personally, I think it’s a great idea. The quality is high and I really enjoying listening to music and the news. The headphones aren’t so well designed unfortunately. It’s good that you can exit the radio application and wander through the rest of the phone… write/play a game/check contacts… and the radio just plays away. I’ve had a great sense of calm composing a note or an e-mail, then turning on the radio and playing Block Buster downloaded from midlet.org

To the writing. Obviously the key feature of this phone is it’s hidden full qwerty keyboard. You flip open the standard mobile phone keyboard and there it is. This is a thumb-based experience, and entirely satisfactory. Some would say it’s awkward. To me, a laptop is awkward ’cause then I need a bag. To be able to flip open my phone and be typing in qwerty, either an e-mail or note: is a dream come true.

A word about e-mail. In a move they themselves must have regretted, the e-mail application provided is very poor. It’s slow, it lacks inspiration in the design and it has real problems with POP3. I have had to settle for using a separate account to the one I normally do. However, I made the ‘return to’ address on it my regular e-mail, so if someone presses reply: it still goes to my regular mail. The signatures on both are the same and I don’t think anyone ever notices the difference. It’s only sometimes I send an e-mail from the handset but great to have the facility. Once or twice I have been on the train and had to e-mail someone and, slow though it is, the typing isn’t – and it works. It’s as sure as sending a text.

The 6820, which many may opt for has a smaller keyboard – actually a disadvantage because these are little laptops I feel – and no FM radio which is a real loss. Furthermore the camera is, people should note, nowhere near the quality of the camera on the 7650 etc. It is the same as that of the 7210. Only really suitable for phone-phone. Also, despite it’s smaller size the 6820 doesn’t actually look as good! Bluetooth is the only gain with the 6810 and the 6820…

Indeed, getting back to the 6800, this brings me onto something else. You need to by the lead the connect it to your PC if you have one and struck me as somewhat overpriced. However, since I got it my life is a dream. I never hated Bluetooth the way some do, but I must say I prefer this lead. The software that comes with the 6800 is great, offering a range of choices. You can edit and import images, scale down Midi tones to Polyphonic, back up your phone, synchronize. It syncs with my XP Address Book beautifully… no probs…

The battery life is good at 3 days.

I have downloaded to applications – other than games – from midlet.org. EmailViewer and WebViewer, both by ReqWireless. The EmailViewer POP3′d easily. There’s no signature option, and you can refer to the phones contacts to choose an e-mail address you want to send a mail to, but I’m keeping it on the phone for something else. It’s great for viewing, like the titles says. It downloads all my spam titles and lets me delete ‘em. The email client that came with the phone, that I like for sending, ain’t so hot at that.

WebViewer is fine for when you have to look at something before you can reach a computer screen. It has a facility that alloed ya to switch on/off images.

It just seems to do it all. It’s not overly fragile either. Quite robust.