Nokia 6120 Classic

Despite its somewhat familiar numeric designation, the 6120 Classic has nothing in common with the old TDMA model with which it shares this number. The 6120 classis is a GSM Smartphone using the Symbian operating system. Here’s one aspect of the phone that’s simple way below part. The keys are so tiny and fiddly that it’s nearly impossible to use them. Even Howard Chu, who lent me the phone, said that his smaller fingers still had enormous problems with the keys.


I was forever pressing incorrect keys during my testing and I found it really annoying. Especially poor are the keys clustered around the tiny 4-way pad below the screen.
Like all Nokia Smartphones that I’ve tested, the 6120 comes with a gorgeous-looking 320 x 240 screen. The only problem is its overall tiny size, which makes seeing many things on the screen a real squinter for many people (especially those who wear contact lenses for distance viewing).


The backlighting is bright, and the screen is visible in bright daylight (though direct sunlight is a bit of an issue). The 2-megapixel camera is about par for Nokia, which means it suffers from a lot of digital noise. If that noise was just noise, it wouldn’t be so bad, but the noise gives shadows a distinct green cast that impossible to remove easily with photo-editing software such as Photoshop. I reported exactly the same problem with the E65’s camera, and so most likely they both use the same device.


With the exception of the really fiddly keypad and the slightly harsh incoming audio quality, there’s very little to complain about in the 6120 Classic. It has excellent RF performance, generally good audio performance (the harshness notwithstanding), and a terrific speakerphone. It’s also quite small, which is a good thing in many ways, but a bit of issue when it comes to the screen.