Nokia 6270: A feature-packed slider phone

The first time I laid eyes on the Nokia 6270 was June of last year at the Nokia Connection event in Singapore. Among the dozens of upcoming Nokia phones I saw during the three-day exhibit, it was the 6270 that really caught my eye. And it wasn’t even because of any groundbreaking new feature or styling. It was the 6270’s generously sized keys.

I have a fetish for large, well-spaced keys. Blame it on my large thumbs. Blame it, too, on my penchant for high-speed eyes-on-the-road texting habit that demands large buttons and keypads to minimize typos. (I’m an O.C. in spelling.)

But a large keypad is hardly the only strong suit of the 6270. This new slider phone from the Finnish giant also comes with a 2-MP camera with flash and 5x digital zoom, a landscape mode for image capturing, an enhanced and more colorful Series 40 interface, stereo speakers, and MiniSD card support for up to 1GB, and is a quad-band handset.

Perfectly in sync with the music generation, the 6270 also boasts an FM radio, MP3 player, video playback and recording, 5MB of onboard memory, an active 262k-color TFT display, USB connectivity, a Tomahawk (Pop Port) connector and a new 2-mm charger plug. If 5MB of memory is too small for you, Nokia bundles the 6270 with a generous 512MB MiniSD card.

These and a host of heavyweight productivity applications and accessories make the 6270 perhaps the most feature-packed slider phone on the market. Oh, and did I mention that it’s a good-looking phone, especially in silver white? (It also comes in dark brown.)

I also appreciate the quick charging time of the 6270; speaking of which, this phone uses Nokia’s new 2-mm charger socket. The test unit came with an adaptor, however, so any of Nokia’s numerous chargers can work with it. I used the common narrow-bodied Nokia charger, which gave me a quick one-hour average charging time from having one bar left on the meter. Battery life averaged 24 to 36 hours per full charge with moderate use.

So what are its downsides, you ask? You don’t even have to turn on the unit to know the first and most obvious one. Yep, the 6270 is a heavyweight in more ways than one as it weighs a relatively substantial 125g. Full-featured here also means full-sized. The 6270 measures 104 x 50 x 23mm. The height and width are okay but the thickness, which approximates that of the original Nokia slider phone, the 7650, is just a bit much.

My other gripe is that the keys sometimes lag when I type too fast. For instance, four quick clicks on the "7" key for an "S" sometimes ends up with an "R." I have to type slower and more deliberately to avoid typos. But other than that, the 6270 should make many more friends than enemies. Much more.